Being susceptible to the appeal of adventure eating, I've embraced the consumption of oddities of brows both high and low in places across the globe. I've had foie gras in some of New York's finest restaurants, calf fries in Fort Worth, and street food in Hanoi, and never has my cast-iron stomach failed me. So as I shivered through gut-wrenching pain under a heavy blanket in a sweltering apartment in Hong Kong, my sense of betrayal was plaintive and vast. Even worse, I suffered at my own hands: I knew there was something amiss with the Chinese scallions I sliced into my tuna salad, but my better instincts abandoned me. Fortunately, like most sufferers of food poisoning, I was back in the saddle in a day or two, but I did have some lingering questions: would I have gotten sick if I'd spent another HKD $10 (about USD $1.30) for Japanese or Australian scallions? How does one go about trying to buy healthy and sustainably-produced fruits and vegetables in an unfamiliar landscape?

Here's a conversation starter for you (try it out at the dinner table this holiday season… or maybe not): According to a new study published in the science magazine, Nature, air pollution may actually deter global warming and clean air may accelerate it. Bollocks, you say? Well it actually makes sense: Particulates in the atmosphere (called aerosols) caused by smokestacks, charcoal grills and other human activities, absorb and diffuse sunlight, thereby having a cooling effect.