More people are finding improved health when they cut back or eliminate gluten from their diets. We shed light on this sticky subject. Also the latest on super-gluten.

Aren’t wheat allergies like the Snuggies of diseases? Everyone has one this year.
—Crosby Braverman in “Parenthood

If you’ve read about gluten-free diets or seen the gluten-free label added to everything from breakfast cereal to cold cuts, you too might be wondering if this is the latest fad in a long line of diet crazes. The reality is plenty of people need to cut gluten from their diet—not to lose weight, but out of medical necessity.

But are you one of those people? To figure it out, you might have to cut out gluten for a trial period and see how you feel. The good news is you don’t need a doctor’s prescription and you can start today.

How (and why) to score local meat. Meet the farmers and their families. Also: an extensive list of where to purchase locally raised meat.

Whether or not you buy the “meat is murder” argument for vegetarianism, there’s no way to deny that the meat industry is one of the most environmentally-damaging, inefficient and, above all, cruelest, aspects of our modern way of life.

The proof is all around us: documen­taries such as Food Inc. and books such as The Omnivore’s Dilemma have pulled back the curtain on industrial food production. And guess what?—it’s not pretty. Mega-farms that produce the vast majority of our meat products are huge polluters of the soil, water and air. Animals on these farms suffer through outrageous living conditions, with chickens that can't spread their wings, pigs that can't turn around and cattle that are fattened on a diet of illness-inducing grains. The rampant use of hormones, antibiotics only adds to the list of mega-farms’ offenses. We pay another environmental tax to have these food products travel an average of 1,500 miles to sit on our plates.

Thankfully, the desire to “buy local” is becoming increasingly common as people are more informed about where their food comes from—after all, if you know where it comes from, you know how it was raised or grown and the impacts it has on your local environment.

Although we don’t have as many local meat producers as other states, the industry is growing. Local pro­viders are discovering there are plenty of people who want their products.