I had Chun King chop suey (or maybe chow mein?) in a can for many, many a childhood dinner. Really two cans, because you got the exciting extra can of crunchy noodles to sprinkle on top.

Yep.

Of course, none of us now (including the parent who got the vile glop) can believe we were eating that while living a scant 30-some-odd miles from San Francisco's Chinatown (and probably only 20 from Oakland's). We know better now, is all I can say.

Heh. At least I had the excuse of growing up in rural Wisconsin....

I don't think I had authentic Chinese on a regular basis until I moved to Madison. (The only time I had it before was when my aunt would take us to Chinese places in Chicago and San Francisco.) There was one place in Chicago that had ceilings so low I had to duck to walk around in it (I was around 13-ish?) - any Chicagoistas know what this place is?

I have been reliably informed that there is a Wii version of Guitar Hero. But I played the PS2 version yesterday and can definitively state that it is Teh Awesome.

a) chickens and eggs should be pastured (not free range)

Huh? Pastured versus free range? I suspect almost all "free range" chickens are kept in some kind of larger fence. People aren't going to go out and hunt down a chicken on their acreage to sell commercially. I buy free-range eggs because egg factories are probably the cruelest thing we do to animals for food.

b) beef should be 100% grass fed (not grass finished)

Again, huh? Most cattle live on grass until the last part of their lives, when they're grain finished. If you leave them on grass, they're grass finished. Grass-finished meat isn't necessarily organic or free from hormones, but is lower fat. It's probably better for the environment, although to rapidly fatten cattle, I'm guessing there could be fertilizers and pesticides involved in managing the pasture. Truly grass-fed animals, such as the old herds of buffalo, do make food from land unsuitable for crops.

I (37) kind of shamelessly love video games, but have no urges whatsoever toward guitar hero.

My dad always made chop suey when I was a kid, and I always hated it--I found the taste very strange, I still can't stand water chestnuts, and something he used in the recipe was very stringy and the texture was all wrong. That was the only Chinese food I was exposed to until I went to college (Joliet was not a hotbed of diverse ethnic cuisines then--the most exotic thing we had was thick pizza [not even deep dish] and bar-food from The Keg downtown), so I always assumed that chop suey was Chinese food.

When I went to college in Milwaukee, I was amazed to discover that I actually liked Chinese food!

We loved that Chun King glop! Also my mom made pastys (in the tradition of Cornwall by way of the UP of Michigan) a lot. That's meat, potatoes and carrots baked in pie crust. You cover it with ketchup and eat up. Not really what Pollan had in mind.

Again, huh? Most cattle live on grass until the last part of their lives, when they're grain finished.

You're talking beef cattle, right? Our dairy cows got lots of grain (corn, with some oats) their whole adult lives....

sick toddler who Needs to Take A Nap has been yawning and singing "I'm not tired!" for 45 minutes now.

I suspect almost all "free range" chickens are kept in some kind of larger fence.

Free-range chickens are legally required to have "access" to the outside, but most still spend almost all of their lives in cages. It's even more purely a marketing term than "organic."

Tommy, I was thinking in terms of meat. I come from three generations of people in the meat business. It's the "grass finished" thing that I can't make sense of.