The Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome announced last week that rising food prices caused 75 million more people last year to be undernourished -- over and above the 850 million people already with not enough to eat. Blame was laid at the door of increased fuel costs, climate change, population growth and growing demand for meat in countries like China, along with speculation in markets and the use of cropland for biofuels. Now add to this the current financial crisis, and just how high is that number going to rise?

Meanwhile, on CBS's Heartwatch show on Monday, dietician Keri Glassman revealed that in an effort to keep our hearts healthy, we're turning increasingly to "functional foods". These are products like orange juice with added calcium (you can find calcium readily in milk and yogurt), Health Valley Heart Wise cereal with added plant sterols, (how about nuts and seeds instead?) and 1 percent Plus Milk fortified with omega 3s from fish oil. Anyone heard of sardines? Tilapia? These are natural sources of omega 3s.  But apparently we're not satisfied with what comes naturally. The sum the functional foods industry expects to make from our efforts to build healthy hearts through food additives next year? $60 billion.

I hope we appreciate how fortunate we are to be free to indulge ourselves this way. And how whacko.