Is there some agency that is charged with reviewing all the foods we've been eating for centuries, for the purpose of driving us insane about what we can and cannot eat? Seems hardly a month goes by without some food being declared unfit for consumption. It started with coffee than went to milk and I've lost track of how many foods have been deemed unfit for consumption. Is this an industry? What's next apples?

Such is the lament of one commenter on Jill Richardson's article "Shrimp's Dirty Secrets: Why America's Favorite Seafood Is a Health and Environmental Nightmare."

And yes. Now the big bad food is shrimp. Shrimp!

Given all the scare and horror stories around about various types of food, you think something as seemingly benign as shrimp would be OK. Ooops. No, it's not.

I hate to sound like a stereotype, but ramen noodles were one of my staple foods in college. I also remember eating a lot of waffles and popcorn. Sometimes for lunch and dinner. That, and Hamburger Helper. It's a wonder I survived at all, now that I think about it.

My friends recently gave me some packaged food they didn't want, and it included one lone packet of ramen noodles. It was chicken "flavor," which really doesn't mean there's any actual chicken in it (though there is plenty of MSG).

Once I cooked the ramen, I noticed how lonely they looked sitting there in the bowl. Nothing green or colorful, just a bland mix of cloudy yellow water and yellow noodles. Kind of sad looking.

I remember I had some roasted seaweed in my cabinet, and when I put some strips into the soup bowl, voila, I suddenly had something that looked like actual soup!

I just picked up some wheat bran from the grocery store. I'm on a whole grain kick and looking to add more unprocessed grains to my diet. Wheat bran is chock full of vitamins as well as phytonutrients that you can't really get from a pill.

What do you do with wheat bran? Well, you can make muffins with it, for one thing. But I plan on putting some wheat bran on my whole grain cereal every morning.

Wheat bran is not the same thing as wheat germ, by the way. Wheat bran is what's on the outside of the wheat berry; wheat germ is what's on the inside. Both are very good for you. I've heard wheat become a bogeyman in some alternative health circles...but that's only if you are allergic to it. Whole wheat is an excellent source of nutrition otherwise.

Women in particular can benefit from adding more whole grains such as wheat bran to the diet. For one, whole wheat can help you lose weight:

Here in Los Angeles, "raw food" has become a big trend. Several raw food restaurants have opened up in recent years, where nothing you eat is cooked. It can be ground up, sliced, diced, and put in a blender, but never cooked.

Even the soups are cold. (I'll never forget my friend ordering a soup at a local raw food restaurant, only to realize that it - duh! - wasn't hot!)

I enjoy eating raw food, but I find myself only being able to stomach so much of it at a time. I suppose some raw food purists will accuse me of being too tainted by my Western diet...but personally, I need more carbs to survive.

So I like raw food as an addition to my regular diet, but not a lifestyle. I think it's always a good idea to add more raw fruits and veggies to a diet. I'd actually love to take a class in raw food "cooking" (an oxymoron!). But doing it 100% isn't my thing.

I stumbled across this article from the UK about some new wonder diet pills being tried over there. One of the drugs is so extreme that it causes some interesting side effects:

The drug, which is a £1.60-a-day diluted version of the prescription-only drug Xenical, works by reducing the body's ability to process fat by about 25 per cent.

The undigested fat passes straight through the body, creating what is described as "an urgent need to go to the bathroom".

Yikes! Well, I suppose that's one way to lose some weight.

What I found interesting about the article is how doctors were saying these pills were no replacement for lifestyle changes. You don't seem to hear that too much here in the U.S., except on the Biggest Loser.

Here is some sage advice from one of the doctors:

Just once, it would be great to see a no calorie sweetener that had no controversy. One that wouldn't only make your food taste amazing, but actually be good for you! An anti-oxident-rich sweetener that would end heart disease and cure blindness! Wouldn't that be great?

Alas, we are stuck with possibly harmful sugar alternatives. Even the much-vaunted herbal stevia is surrounded with questions. But what about Splenda, which is touted as being "natural" because it is made from sugar?

Well...natural is relative. Splenda is created by replacing hydrogen and oxygen atoms with chlorine atoms. Chlorine, as in chlorine bleach? Yes! But really, that in and of itself is no reason to freak out. A chlorine atom isn't the same thing as bleach.

Some claim that this makes Splenda similar to a pesticide, but it's good to note that chemically speaking, just because something is similar to one thing, doesn't mean it is that thing.

I am working on improving my nutrition and in my reading figured out that I was probably severely deficient in DHA, one of the omega-3 fatty acids. This is the one that helps with brain function. (ALA, which I was already getting from plant sources such as flax seed, helps the heart.)

One of the reasons I was not previously taking an omega-3 supplement is that they usually come in these big horse pills that cannot be cut in half because they are filled with fish oil. I suppose you could just open the pill and eat the oil, but that doesn't sound very pleasant, does it?

Being one of those people with a bizarre psychological issue with pill swallowing (since I was a young child), I always look for alternatives to pills. I can take small pills (a small tablet is just fine), but larger pills I need to cut up and put into food to take. The main reason I have been remiss in taking supplements regularly is the pill factor.