What do bread, wine, cheese, chocolate, coffee, soy sauce, yogurt and beer have in common?

They're all fermented... and healthy.

Here's a tidbit of foodie folklore: We can thank Ben Franklin for bringing tofu to the American table. On a trip to France he became so enthralled with "a cheese made of soybeans from China" that he sent soy seeds from Paris to Pennsylvania, thereby launching this ancient Asian legume's slow but steady conquest of the New World.

If you're lucky enough not to have any food allergies, count your blessings. But even allergy sufferers have something to be thankful for this year starting

Many in the green community now consider Monsanto a four-letter word. But a decade ago when the company first debuted genetically modified crops, the innovation was embraced as a possible environmental panacea—one that could dramatically reduce the amount of chemicals needed to grow healthy crops and provide nutrition for poor and drought-ridden populations. On the tenth anniversary of this fast-growing biotech sector, the battle over its environmental impacts rages on.