Our These Days production assistant is a life-long vegetarian. Some people may not think that's very interesting, but having been born and raised in the Midwest, where a meal without meat was not considered a meal, I was fascinated that she has never had meat of any kind. No burger or bacon ever crossed her lips. No seafood or fowl ever entered her digestive tract. For her, this was a normal way of life - a vegetarian way of life.

Today, as part of our These Days series on food and nutrition, we talked about water and the body. I recently came across an article about the myth that we need to drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day to be healthy. I was surprised because I, like most Americans, assumed this recommendation was based on sound medical science. But no, there was no scientific basis for the recommendation that's been around for more than 50 years.

Meat has always been a primary staple of the human diet. But the American lifestyle of abundance and excess has lately given us a strange, schizophrenic relationship with meat. Either we eat way too much of it or we fall back on our puritanical roots and reject it altogether. No doubt... most Americans eat too much.

Do you like cookies?  What about pizza?  If you are like most Americans, your answer to both of those questions is probably a resounding "yes." Well, me too.  I love cookies and pizza -- they are two of my favorite foods.  Unfortunately, I shouldn't eat cookies or pizza that often, or in large quantities, because that would be unhealthy.

Why are cookies and pizza unhealthy?  Because those foods contain a lot of sugar and fat (duh!).  What I'm going to tell you next may not be a surprise either: the United States has an obesity problem.  According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in four Americans is obese and that doesn't include those who are considered overweight.

I like food. I always have and hopefully I always will. But recently, I've become more and more concerned with what's in the food we eat. From preservatives and pesticides to unhealthy fats and modified sugars. And I began to ask: "What's all this stuff doing to our bodies? And does it have to be this way?"

To answer these questions, the These Days team decided to devote a series of shows to the topic of the food we eat. We'll look at how our bodies work and what they need to be healthy, to why we crave certain foods. We'll discuss how to enjoy beef and seafood in an environmentally sustainable way, as well as explore the rising trend of vegetarianism.

We'd like to know what you think about food. What concerns do you have about the food you eat? Are you confused by all the information out there on nutrition and weight loss? Send us your questions or comments and we'll try to incorporate them into our coverage of "The Food We Eat."

- Natalie Walsh is the Senior Producer for These Days.

I don't know whether other reporters feel this way, but I almost always have a slight wave of fear in my gut when I know someone has read or watched or listened to a story I wrote about them. Did I misquote them, take them out of context, portray them fairly? Of course reporters want to be fair all the time, but sometimes we're not.

Last December, when I wrote about a convicted fraud expert and former meth addict, (Lisa is not her real name; she continues to work with the DA's office) I asked whether anyone could ever trust her again. Would someone give Lisa a job when for more than a decade she supported her drug habit by stealing mail and stealing identities. "How can you believe someone who was so good at fooling everyone? . . . I hope she finds her way. But I wonder what great leap of faith it will take for someone to trust a thief," I wrote months ago.

Lisa read that blog post and she wrote to me a couple weeks ago:

"I remember in your article that you wrote about me online and in it you talk about how can I get people to trust me, well Ms. Faryon I think that I am accomplishing it. Life is so GOOD!!"

Used to be, when you went down to Golden Hall (map) on election night, the air was electric from the moment the first numbers came out until well after midnight. There was a steady stream of results that came out every 20 or 30 minutes, and the tension mounted as the evening wore on. There was no big screen with numbers scrolling electronically down it. Instead, harried poll workers would appear from behind the curtains with stacks of printed rundowns. They handed them out to equally harried reporters, and then hastily filled in the results on a big white board with felt tip pens. Sometimes they had hardly finished writing in one set of results before the new ones had arrived.

But this year, after the first flush of mail-in ballot results arrived just after 8 p.m., there was nothing to feed the mounting speculation until nearly 11 o'clock. The crowds in Golden Hall and the related campaign hubs in nearby hotels and bars had thinned out considerably by the time the first precinct results of the day came in. It's just not the same when you have to wait so late for the returns to trickle in!

As I mentioned in my last post, there are challenges to reporting on the county supervisors. The only place to record what goes on at a county supervisors' meeting is a bank of audio outlets inconveniently close to the dais, from where board members can conveniently keep an eye on the media. The seats near this outlet are often taken, leaving TV and radio journalists to stand awkwardly in the aisle.

At the State of the County address, the audio feed was, again conveniently, made available on a loading dock outside of the Balboa Theatre, where it was impossible to see anything. (The city provided numerous audio outlets inside the theater for Mayor Jerry Sanders' State of the City address.)

The committee rooms, where the county's much vaunted Regional Fire Protection Committee meets, have an audio outlet the likes of which I have not seen in years. I happen to have a dinosaur connector to fit, but it turned out the audio feed only picked up half the mics in the room, not including the podium or the chairman's microphone!

Covering the San Diego County Board of Supervisors is no easy feat. The board meetings often end so rapidly that if you are 20 minutes late they are already over.

If you arrive on time, you are likely to spend 20 minutes sitting through endless proclamations congratulating worthy causes around San Diego.

The business of the day is usually safely decided before the five supervisors take to the dais.

So few members of the public show up to speak on agenda items that decisions often pass on consent...and are never discussed.

Positive reports about police and public safety in Tijuana have been few and far between lately. Headlines on both sides of the border have been dominated by half-day long shootouts between law enforcement and drug cartels, kidnappings and the bodies of five teenagers and 20-somethings piled on top of each other.

Tourism officials say millions of visitors have avoided Tijuana during the last three years. Violence, long border waits and stories of extortion that tourists toted home like souvenirs killed many people’s desire to cross. Tijuana police officials say during the previous administration, 12 people complained everyday they were extorted by the police.

Sunday night, I was driving from Playas home to San Diego. As I neared the San Ysidro crossing, I got stuck in traffic on Avenida Internacional, the road that runs right along the border fence. Thinking I’d avoid the backup, I turned right on a little side street to cut through the Zona Norte.

Immediately after I made the turn, a Tijuana police pickup stopped me, its lights flashing. An agent came up to my car window and asked me, in both English and Spanish, if I spoke Spanish. He then explained to me that both I and the car in front of me had turned the wrong way down a one-way street.