On Twitter, I follow the hash tag "food addiction," and it is startling how seldomly those who bother to deploy the tag are talking about food addiction.

"Theres nothing worse than reaching for a pizza roll and realizing they're all gone" - #foodaddiction"

"ya man cheers for many more trips to noodles." #foodaddiction

"I'm addicted to the Pomegranate! #FoodAddiction! lmao!"

Oh, my tweeps, if you only understood that to food addicts, food addiction isn't quite as funny.

#alcoholism!

Woo. hoo.

Another bite from "Animal Vegetable Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book:

I don't know much about Deepak Chopra, other than that he's established himself as a brand on matters involving personal health. That is to say, I've heard of him, and perhaps seen him on TV talk shows, and whatever impressions I have of him are neutral-positive.

Usually, I try to have a larger point when I post, but I haven't found it yet for this one: Still, I'm pretty sure it fits in here somewhere.

Saturday was my wife's birthday. I went about my early day, including two-plus hours in the cooperative community garden whose second season is (sadly) drawing to a close.

Possibly as a result of a listing of telephone support meetings for anorexics and bulimics, a friend sent me a list of telephone-support meetings affiliated with Overeaters Anonymous. I'm happy to share them as well.

A version of this was also posted today at Sprout Savvy. I'm delighted to share with them, and delighted they invited me to.

One of the first questions people have for me is, Never mind how you lost 155 pounds, how have you been keeping it off for almost 20 years?

I have several answers, depending on how much time we have, but the best, most accurate one is, I finally realized and accepted that I’m a citizen of the planet.

Is it common for sick people to wish they had a different disease, if they have to have one at all? I don’t know, but a couple of examples have come up for me in the two decades I’ve identified as a food addict.

Another snippet from Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal Vegetable Miracle":

... To the extent that it is understood, this [American] cuisine is widely assumed to be the property of the elite. Granted, in restaurants it can sometimes be pricey, but the do-it-yourself version is not. I am not sure how so many Americans came to believe only our wealthy are capable of honoring a food aesthetic. Anyone who thinks so should have a gander at the kitchens of working-class immigrants from India, Mexico, anywhere really. Cooking at home is cheaper than buying packaged foods or restaurant meals of comparable quality. Cooking good food is mostly a matter of having the palate and the skill. [page 31]

As in my first installment of this series, I am completely down with the author in spirit and intention, but I have a quibble.

To me, the foremost bar is neither palate nor skill. It is willingness to make the effort, which she almost gets to in her next paragraph when she raises "attitude."

Cooking for one's family and oneself has definite, quantifiable benefits — nutritional, relational, financial — but to get them, we'd have to bother, and it's just easier to hit the drive-thru.

Too many Americans think it's the same thing, and if so, they'd rather relax. The thing is, it isn't so.

I'm finally reading "Animal Vegetable Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book in which she and her family eat for a year only with local sources, save for one personal exception each. As I've done with other books, I thought I'd blog along.

So it turns out that when I wrote yesterday about the Jane Brody squib in the Times yesterday, referred there by my friend Ron-the-voracious-reader, I had actually been referred slightly elsewhere, to the mainbar of what Brody wrote. She was reporting the release of a series of reports in the British medical periodical The Lancet that address the growing obesity epidemic.