Greetings and welcome to another episode of 10 Words or Less, in which I ask brief questions, and request brief answers, of interesting people. Today’s guest is a senior analyst for the Environmental Working Group who focuses on food and agriculture policy. Remember, the 10-words thing is a goal, not a rule, so please, no counting.

Name Kari Hamerschlag
Born when, where Washington D.C., Nov. 28, 1963
Anything unusual about the circumstances? “My mom’s doctor had just been attending to Jackie Kennedy.” [For you young kids out there, Kari was born 5 days after John F. Kennedy’s assassination.]
Residence now “Oakland, Calif.”
A formative event early on “Living in Switzerland from ages 11 to 15, among many different cultures and languages.”
Someone outside your family who influenced you “Gary Hart. I worked for him when I was  a junior in high school, and later worked as a volunteer on his presidential campaign. He got me started in politics.”
Something that helps you be effective in your job “The understanding that it takes persistence and a long time to make the kind of change we’re working for.”
A habit you’re trying to change “Negative thinking.”

Welcome to another installment of "10 Words or Less," in which I ask brief questions, and request brief answers, of interesting people. Today’s contestant is a chef and food-justice activist who circulates an exhaustive compendium of food-related news. Remember: the 10-words thing is a goal, not a rule, so please, no counting. And besides, let’s see you do it.
Name Jenny Huston
Born when, where San Francisco, February 1959
Resides Oakland
Occupation Food services consultant
How long have you been doing your weekly news update? “Since 2003.”
How much time does it take you? “Only a couple hours. As I come across things, they just get stuck into the list.”

Judging from my in-box, lots of people heard yesterday’s “On Point” broadcast about regulating sugar. But of course, it would be wrong to use that guideline, because my friends were pinging me specifically because they knew I would be interested. And I was.

There is clever, there is brilliant, and there is transcendent. This, which riffs off the Times story on how Target knew a teenager was pregnant before her father did, is all that, even in the context of how often they are so clever, and especially in the context of having to do a show every day:

Here’s a bold idea for you: Let’s invalidate all the laws that criminalize sexual contact with minors.

Dumb, right? Abhorrent! Who would dare suggest that we not protect young people, deemed too young to make informed choices about entreaties from adults who would exploit them?

Well, the entire consumer manufacturing sector, but especially junk-food manufacturers, and perhaps the courts, too.

A semi-digression-free roundup of recent tweets...

Aussie billboard graffiti comment: "#Obesity has never tasted so good." http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/12573657/attack-on-fast-food-avalanche/

How you can help eating-disorder awareness, by Margarita Tartakovsky. http://bit.ly/w91EOJ

I'm still struggling with GMOs, though not in the way most other strugglers are. I am pretty sure that the forces allied against Monsanto are right, in every sense of that word, but so far, I haven't been able to muster a passion to go with that near-certainty. (If you read here often, you'd probably agree that I don't lack for passion on issues I'm sure about, and yet...) Anyway, here's a Food Democracy Now video shot on the day at the end of January when arguments in the Monsanto/organic growers lawsuit were heard in Manhattan.

A common polemical technique seeks to undercut someone's idea by describing what it's not. Here's an example:

By asking Americans to stop eating meat on Monday this insidious effort drives the extreme vegan agenda forward with a reasonable sounding request. “Just one day a week,” is their message, “and you are doing your part to save the planet and improve your own health.” No need to work up a sweat at the gym, go for a run or walk around the block. No need to conserve water usage in your own home (the average American household uses 400+ gallons of water per day) or reduce, reuse and recycle the 670,000 tons of trash we produce every day in the United States (84% of which could be recycled, including food scraps, paper, cardboard, cans, and bottles). All you have to do is give up your hamburger or steak one day a week.

No one argues that going meatless on Mondays is going to solve the problems of the world.

No. one.

The question is whether it moves us closer to health — personal, environmental, and otherwise — or further away from it. The writer, Daren Williams of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, does also address that question, which instantly qualifies him as a more credible source than many Big Food/Big Ag blowhards, but not before he deals this twaddle.

Sometimes people outside the news business think that people inside it — or more to the point, the institutions themselves — overreact when a journalist dies in the pursuit of her or his duties. "Big deal. A guy died where I work a couple months ago, and they didn't make such a big deal of that."

My experience is, the comment is not unfair, even if it's also fair to argue that journalists — especially those who work in war zones — are working for the broad general good, and are therefore representing all readers in ways that are different than, say, tradesmen or baristas.

I'll be appearing on the "Nia Imani Project" TV show tonight at 7 p.m. It's produced on the Boston Neighborhood Network, Channel 23 (Comcast) and Channel 83 (RCN) in Boston, and will be available for living streaming here.