I'm a chef, a cook of American foods, and simply put my job is to feed people. You can assume correctly that the better the food tastes and looks and is reasonably priced the more people I get to feed.

In this regard I am doing well and the people who eat the food I cook like it and continue buying meals I make--and we are all happy.

Even so, I have discovered that the nutritional quality of the foods I cook (and most likely you and everyone else) are declining. NOT because of some Tom-fool method of cooking that destroys the food, but because the food starts out with less of what it is supposed to have in it. I wanted to know why and found that this issue of the nutritional quality of foods in America and the world is a terribly confused, complicated mess with some very interesting consequences for all of us.

The first lesson I learned about this prime issue is profound: I have no idea ( nor likely do you)whether the good tasting, nice looking, economical foods I cook are worth eating. This assumes you want more for your life than fluff.

So the journey begins.