Improving Our Diet — Still a Long Way to Go

Apart from occasional failures of our sanitation and food-protection systems, common sense tells us that common foods or nutrients as such cannot be lethal and, furthermore, that the effect of any given food on health must be minimal because of the vast array of foods consumed from even the most modest of kitchens. Nonetheless, dietary factors are strongly implicated as causes of chronic diseases precisely because they are common, subtle, and persistent over long periods of time. Exposure to agents such as radiation may have more dramatic effects than diet, but such hazards can be identified, isolated, and contained or . . .