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Courtesy of Ambrosial Granola

It's not just about calories in versus calories out.

If that were all it took to lose weight — eating a little less and exercising a little more — then weight loss would be as simple as grade-school math: Subtract Y from Z and end up with X.

But if you've ever followed a diet program and achieved less than your desired result, you probably came away feeling frustrated, depressed, and maybe a bit guilty. What did I do wrong?

Rachel Carson altered how Americans viewed chemical pesticides by writing Silent Spring. César Chávez founded the United Farm Workers (UFW) with Dolores Huerta and improved working conditions for farm laborers. We can also thank the anonymous early responders who put organic on the purchasing radar at United, in a healthier food move that could have wings with other carriers.

In this video, NBC Nightly News asks the question:  Are people getting what they pay for when they buy organic food?

While it offers some useful information about what distinguishes organic from its non-organic counterparts (i.e.: organic products are grown and processed without the use of synthetic pesticides, hormones, fertilizers, and GMOs), it misses some important points:

An interesting new study was just published in Psychological Science, about a lab experiment at SUNY Buffalo that suggests junk-food taxes increase the overall nutritional quality of a shopping trip, while subsidies on healthy foods actually decrease the nutritionally quality (via Science Daily).

To read the full article, click here.

When the public school office of the 6th district of Paris summoned me to a meeting late last year, the tone of urgency in the letter sent me running down the block, into the 19th century courtyard of the town hall and up the narrow stairs to the top floor.

Flexitarian Claudia Schiffer says she tries to eat more organic foods, a practice that started with her first child.

“During my first pregnancy, I started to eat organically and healthily because that was the first time I actually thought about what I was putting in my body,” she told Celebrity-Babies. “I’m still doing that today and I’m also just taking it easy, not working out too much, just enjoying this time in my life.”

When it’s not cooked well, chicken can be a terrible disappointment. Need we mention the famous “rubber chicken” you sometimes get at buffets on in airplane meals?

But with just a little care and attention, chicken can be an amazingly easy, versatile ingredient in any kind of meal. Chicken sausage, marinated and grilled chicken breast, stir-fried chicken with spicy Asian sauce, breaded Italian chicken cutlets…the possibilities are as varied as they are delicious.

Let's start with full disclosure: I am not by nature a frugal shopper, nor a shopper on a budget. In fact, I've been known to make sales people gawk at me when my bill gets tallied (like when I drive an hour to the closest Whole Foods with a cooler in the back of my truck to stock up for months at a time). I am fortunate in that I don't have to worry about my grocery bill. However, I know that lots of people do, including my mother-in-law, who would be a frugal shopper even if she were a millionaire.