By Amanda Hill

I consider myself pretty health conscious. Each week, my grocery cart is filled with fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meats, whole grains and low-fat milk, yogurt and cheese. I like serving home-cooked meals made from fresh, flavorful ingredients. Cooking healthy food, for me, is a way to take care of my family.

Now that I have a little boy, it’s become my responsibility to teach him healthy eating, too. In the last few months, he’s started eating baby food and now that he finally has teeth, some table food.

By Gene Hall

Organic. Conventional. Natural. Modern. Local. Grassfed. Grainfed. The choices are endless for consumers when it comes to food and the farmers and ranchers who grow it.

Confusion often reigns as some with evangelical zeal turn up their noses at how you like to eat. Scare tactics are used by everyone from multi-billion-dollar corporations like Chipotle, fond of slamming modern agriculture in their marketing efforts, to animal rights groups like the Humane Society of the United States with their vegan agenda, to scores of individuals who use the Internet as a platform to advance some flavor of the month cause.

By Amanda Hill

I came across a news story this morning from NBC’s Today Show that reported a group within the meat industry is moving toward renaming some of our favorite meat cuts in order to make them “more consumer-friendly.”

The group heading up the new meat monikers is the Uniform Retail Meat Identification Standards—URMIS, for short. They claim that consumers are confused by names of meats like rump roast, pork butt and others. So, to clarify the consumer’s choice of pork and beef, URMIS has suggested new names for more than 350 cuts in your local meat case.

By Jessica Domel

I’m of the opinion that there’s nothing quite like a livestock show and rodeo. I’ve only been to a few in my life, but I have to say, there’s something about standing under the bright lights with my boots crunching fresh hay while the aroma of freshly cooked hot dogs fills the air. The sounds of children’s excitement as they crowd around a display of freshly-hatched chicks is just intoxicating.I forget how exciting it can be to see those first few moments of life, and I have to tell you, it’s something to behold.

By Kenneth Dierschke

In a time when just a few keystrokes into Google can reveal the answer to many of life’s most interesting questions, many Americans are still unsure of the origins of the foods they delight in each and every day. The truth is, the one thing Google and other search engines can’t share with you is the detail of the countless hours, sweat, tears, stress and pride that go into providing Americans with the world’s best, and most readily available, food supply.