To my mind, berries are overrated, but because I know they are actually very good for the bod, I've been eating strawberries up the whazoo.

But they're bigger than I remember. Three years ago, when I was on Sauvie Island, in Oregon, a couple of friends and I picked 15 pounds of them straight from the ground, eating almost as many as we picked, dirt and all, and they were delicious beyond the best homemade waffle with warmed-up King syrup.

But those I've been getting from the supermarkets -- not the normal-sized organic ones, mind you -- chew like steaks on a leaf. They're huge. And tough as solid abs. But they're what we've come to expect in the bigger-is-better America we've become.

These berries clearly have had their genes messed with. Everybody's got their own thing going, for sure, but why is it OK to fill our markets with highly questionable genetically modified foods, but not with trans fats?

Polly Thornton probably wants to know just that. She wrote a letter to this paper recently, and she was ticked off about how food police turned her once-flaky pie crusts into wimps, after most shortening, including her beloved Crisco, which practically put the "cris" in "crisp," banned trans fats. Super Fresh's America's Choice shortening has become her choice. Hey, I know it's been determined that they who continue on the trans fats road are destined for insufferable deaths, including all those septuagenarians, octogenarians and nonagenarians who grew up on them. Who knew?, I ask myself, recalling the absolutely scrumptious apple pie Polly once served me at her home in Elkridge.

I know why foie gras is a no-no, some would say, morally. Even while dining in a near-ritzy restaurant in Paris, where you get to pick out your very own fish for dinner from an aquarium, I still wouldn't eat the impacted liver from a goose whose number was up as soon as it metaphorically exploded. I also couldn't pick out the fish. It was too, well, alive. The veggies, arranged like a minimalist painting, should have been displayed in the Louvre, but now I know why so many French women look like French fries while so many American women resemble baked potatoes, myself included. They just can't eat the food they're served, what little there is of it.

OK, I'm kidding, just having a high-fructose-corn-syrup moment. Still, I have to ask why it is that a nationally known brand white-meat chicken pot pie, designed to be eaten by one person and containing more than 1,000 calories and 18 grams of saturated fats, remains on supermarket shelves, while foie gras is being chased from American eateries? And why is that a forgotten loaf of dark German-style bread that sat on my porch for nearly six weeks before I remembered it was out there showed no sign of spoilage, and continues to show none as I leave it on a kitchen counter as an experiment in shelf life? So far, the total is 10 weeks. The label claims that the bread contains no preservatives, but I fear that the birds would fall from the sky if they ever got hold of it, and would demand that my next feeding be Tums for the avian tummy.

Daily, I try to wend my way in the world of American foods. Is any of it good for us? It can be if we try. For a list of good/bad foods, check out www.cspinet.org/nah/10foods_bad.

Working at the car wash

Kudos to Beaverbrook entrepreneurs Maggie, Abby, Christina, Katie and Ben for their enterprising spirit April 12. The brother, sisters and best friend, ages 6 to 13, set up a car wash in their driveway, charging $1.50 for the whole caboodle. At 5:30 p.m. they told me I was their first customer and they were delighted. Even my super dirty wheels came up shining, as they all worked like a solid team. Thanks, kids, you really made my day.

E-mail Diane Brown at dmbrown@comcast.net.

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