For quite a while, my son refused to eat chicken. I didn't push him on it -- before I adopted him he lived on a ranch where one of his chores was to take care of the chickens. I can totally respect his not wanting to eat chicken because of ethical reasons (though I don't think he realized that's what he was doing).

So you can imagine my surprise when, all of a sudden, my son started expressing an interest in eating chicken again. Now it's one of his favorite meals. It makes things easier for me as many of my easy and healthful recipes revolve around chicken.

So, while I was relieved to be able to cook it again, I'm already starting to feel like I'm in a rut. I needed to add some new recipes to my chicken repertoire. Here comes Cooking Light to the rescue -- they have 20 tasty and healthful chicken recipes to try. Next up on my family's dinner plate? Peanut-Crusted Chicken with Pineapple Salsa.

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I've often said that I could be a vegetarian. While I like meat, I just don't crave it. And the health and ethical reasons for going veg are tempting. Yet, knowing everything that I know, I still haven't made the leap. But I do cut down on my family's overall meat intake. For example, this week we only have three dinners that contain meat -- the rest of our dinners will be vegetarian. And, when I do purchase meat, I make sure it's lean.

John's Hopkins has some good tips on how to choose lean meats. Their picks for the leanest choices in each category are:

• Beef: Round steaks, roasts, top loin, top sirloin, chuck shoulder, arm roasts, ground round, and ground sirloin (at least 90% lean).
• Poultry. Chicken, turkey, and Cornish hen without skin.
• Pork. Tenderloin, center loin, pork loin, sausage with 1 gram of fat per ounce or less, and Canadian bacon.
• Lamb and Veal. Chop or roast.
• Sandwich meats. Lean turkey and lean ham.

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You've hear it before: Eat smaller portions. Use smaller plates. A little friendly reminder never hurt, though, and to drive these points home, consider this: A muffin once weighed 1.5 ounces and housed about 210 calories. Today's muffin is not so dainty with its hefty four ounces and 500 calories. I know. I know. I ate a pumpkin muffin recently and was appalled at what actually went into my body.

The point here, according to the Publix Greenwise magazine is that everything, from bagels to burgers, is ballooning in size. So are our waistlines. It's more important than ever then to watch ourselves. Watching how we distribute the food on our plates is a good starting point. So start with a nine-inch plate and proceed as follows.

Divide your plate into quarters. In three of your quarters, pile on the whole grains, the veggies, the fruit. Fill the remaining quarter with lean meat, fish, or poultry. That's it. The smaller plate, dominated by plant-based foods, is key for keeping calories in check. Simple stuff, right?

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Although the U.S. Department of Agriculture indicated to chicken giant Tyson Foods over the summer that it could begin using "raised without antibiotics" on its products, the federal agency has now reversed that position.

Apparently, the USDA did not catch the inclusion of a very specific item it classifies as an antibiotic, although Tyson indicated that the FDA does not classify the substance -- ionophores-- that way.

Tyson will now probably have to scramble to remove these labels from possibly millions of fresh chicken products. Why the USDA and the FDA disagree on the classification of ionophores seems odd, but hey -- it's the federal government, right?

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High protein foods can be converted into muscle in elderly adults too, a study shows, proving that those protein shakes won't just benefit the young folks at the gym. Therefore, as adults age and begin to lose important muscle mass, a diet high in lean proteins will be beneficial, as well as some gentle exercises. But currently, it's estimated that 27% of older adults aren't getting adequate amounts of protein in their diet.

On an interesting note, this study was partially funded by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, but I'm recommending that seniors get their protein from lean sources like fish, chicken breasts, lean turkey, nuts and low-fat dairy.

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I live in a place known for it's ranches and its meat, where being a vegetarian is a sometimes bizarre and incomprehensible lifestyle choice. I'm not a vegetarian but I'm not much of a meat eater either. Basically, if it's served to me, I'll eat meat but I don't keep much of it in my house and I rarely cook it for myself. It's not that I don't like the taste of meat--I do--but I do lots of research about food and nutrition, and hearing about all the hormones that go into meat frankly grosses me out. Plus, I read Fast Food Nation and let's just say it does not paint a pretty picture of how meat is produced.

The Daily Apple has a great post on the safety of meat. Whether it's beef, pork, poultry or even fish, all meats have gone through questionable practices to get on your plate, including being exposed to toxins and injected with hormones. And chances are the hamburger is made from stripped spinal meat. Ewwwww.

But although I don't eat much meat, I would have trouble cutting it out of my life altogether. The key is buying free-range and organic meats that aren't exposed to the same conditions as regular meat. It's expensive, yes, but you have to be careful about what you're putting in your body, don't you think?

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Garbage in, garbage out. That is the theme that should go through the mind of every person who eats meat, but I doubt it does. Do you have any idea of the quality of food that cows and chickens eat?

That has a direct effect on how nutritious that meat is when you eat it, and unless "free range" or "organic" is part of your vocabulary, you probably do not want to know much about the nutrition of many animals used for human food.

What about the waste these animals leave behind? That also is a reflection of what they eat, and much of this waste finds its way into the public water system as well. Last month, the sustainability of animal nutrition was discussed in Canada with global experts to talk about this. Want to see what was talked about? See this.

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Tyson Foods, one of the nations largest producers of chicken and poultry, has announced that they will no longer be using antibiotics in chickens intended for sale in supermarkets. And along with this shift in production will come a $70 million dollar advertising campaign to promote the new approach. Antibiotic-free chicken will be available in stores as soon as later this week and will be easily recognizable due to special packaging.

Expect to pay a little more, however, for the luxury and peace of mind of no antibiotics. How much? We'll have to wait and see this week.

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Even though beef and chicken sometimes get a bad rap, in moderation they definitely can be part of a healthy diet. Personally, I'm a huge veggie fan and don't even always cook meat at home, so some of the stuff in this article on 10 tips for buying meat and poultry was new to me. When I do buy meat in the store it always seems easy enough to just look for the "beef" or "chicken" sign, head over and pick something with the latest expiration date possible.

If that's not your style (and it shouldn't be!), then refreshing -- or increasing in my case -- your shopping knowledge is definitely a good thing, because things change everyday and "what to look for" in today's market is somewhat different from years ago.

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North Korea claims that it has a vaccine for the H5N1 type of bird flu. While there's no news of where the vaccine was developed, or how effective it is, the North Korean government is now mandating that entire flocks of poultry are inoculated with the drug.

210,000 chickens and other poultry were slaughtered last year after the Bird flu hit North Korea. This new vaccine arrives just as the disease hits South Korea, where the government has been forced to cull 1.13 million poultry.

While the number of Bird flu cases has sharply declined in recent months, the disease, if it were to mutate and infect humans, has the potential to cause a worldwide pandemic.

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