No roast turkey with cracklin’ brown skin graced the groaning boards. Nor was there a pat of butter in sight to slather on the rolls, or a poof of whipped cream to dot the pumpkin pie.

As a child in elementary and middle school I was always sent to school with a funky looking lunch box or bag. Inside my personal lunch container were items most kids had never seen or heard of. I had rice milk in a box, multi-grain sprouted bread, sprouts on my sandwich and organic peanut butter with organic jelly. I had carrot sticks for snacks while the majority of my friends got fruit roll-ups and yogurt that came in a tube and squirted fun, bright colors. I was always jealous of my friends who got to eat hot lunch and enjoyed their tater-tots and school lasagna, even though they often said it was gross. It looked and smelled so much better than my box of organic raisins or my local, organic broccoli florets! I was constantly made fun of for having different food than everyone else. Sometimes my friends wouldn't even sit with me because I had such "weird food." I was poked and made fun of for having different food everyday.

Today, as a young adult, and after being educated about fast food, I could not be more grateful to my parents for feeding me healthy, nutritious snacks during my school day. After hearing an odd rumor that the meat served in schools is the meat that fast food chains and grocery stores reject, I decided to do my own research. It turns out, the rumor is true. This doesn't help considering that, as President Obama stated in 2009, for many children, school lunches are "their most nutritious meal — sometimes their only meal — of the day."

Well, that depends on the question.

Of all the things I write about – energy, the greening of business, the politics and policy of climate change, geoengineering – food is by far the most emotional. With near-religious fervor, people debate the merits or demerits of, broadly speaking, two ways to produce food.

City customers give organic farmers and sellers reason to keep growing, writes Carli Ratcliff.

"Organic food is an imposition of city folk (worried about their colons) on farming folk, telling them how they should farm.'' So said A. A. Gill on his recent visit to Sydney. Though far from the most inflammatory statement the British writer made while on our shores, it didn't earn him any favour with proponents of organic food.

I eat a lot of organic food. In fact, about 80% of the food that goes into my body is organic. I cannot tell you how many times I get teased about eating “dirt” from many of my friends, and even my family.