Recipe for a business boom: take the hip lifestyle, add a pinch of nostalgia and stir in generous helpings of Ralph Nader. That unlikely combination has created one of the nation's fastest-rising businesses, the merchandising of organic foods. Basically, these are the foods that great-grandma used to eat. They are grown without the aid of chemical fertilizers or pesticides, and processed without the use of emulsifiers, mold inhibitors, bleaches, preservatives, binders, buffers, drying agents or any other test-tube additives. A ...

I just learned the word carnist. It means me. Giving special names to nearly universal attributes is a tactic used by people seeking to undercut the "normal" status of a particular lifestyle; transgender people, to take a similar, not-unrelated example, call straight folk "cisgendered." Because I write and talk so often about meat in such an unreflectively enthusiastic way, vegetarians of the Jonathan Safran Foer–type frequently charge me, and those like me, with being accessory to the ...

What makes us the way we are? Why are some people predisposed to be anxious, overweight or asthmatic? How is it that some of us are prone to heart attacks, diabetes or high blood pressure? There's a list of conventional answers to these questions. We are the way we are because it's in our genes: the DNA we inherited at conception. We turn out the way we do because of our childhood experiences: how we were treated and what we ...

Li Li has lost exact count of how many men she has bedded, but she knows the number is far above 100. "I don't keep statistics," says the former journalist, 27. But she isn't averse to kissing and telling. For the past couple of years, Li has kept a blog--written under the pen name Muzi Mei--that has chronicled everything from her penchant for orgies and Internet dating to her skepticism toward marriage when it means staying faithful to one man. ...

When Crystal Byrd's second child was born, the doctors urged her to place her baby to her breast. Byrd declined. She had already decided, months earlier, that she would not breast-feed. It was a lifestyle choice, says Byrd, 33, a stay-at-home mom in Cedar Creek Lake, Texas. "I'm a huge fan of breast milk, just not of nursing," she says. Byrd says she tried breast-feeding her first child, who is now 12, and lasted nine weeks before ...

From his glittering white glove and golden throne, to his Swarvoski-studded costumes and a treasured carousel horse, a new Michael Jackson show offers an eye-popping look at the King of Pop's extravagant lifestyle and peculiar private tastes.

There's usually not much common ground between a boy band singer and a far-right politician who would like to ban Muslim immigrants from his country. But in Britain this week, both have been at the center of fierce debates over freedom of speech. First, the pop idol. Stephen Gately was a star in Irish band Boyzone, which has sold about 30 million records since forming in 1993. Gately, 33, died on Oct. 10 of an acute pulmonary edema ...

An all-male college in Atlanta, Georgia, has banned the wearing of women's clothes, makeup, high heels and purses as part of a new crackdown on what the institution calls inappropriate attire. No dress-wearing is part of a larger dress code launched this week that Morehouse College is calling its "Appropriate Attire Policy." The policy also bans wearing hats in buildings, pajamas in public, do-rags, sagging pants, sunglasses in class and walking barefoot on campus. However, it is the ban on ...

Divorce causes more than bitterness and broken hearts. The trauma of a split can leave long-lasting effects on mental and physical health that remarriage might not repair, according to research released this week. "People who lose a marriage take such damage to their health," said Linda Waite, a sociologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois. Waite and co-author Mary Elizabeth Hughes, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, found that divorced or widowed people have 20 percent more ...

First the rumor went around that Michael Jackson was leaving the Beatles catalog to Paul McCartney in his will. Then the rumor was that McCartney was upset that Jackson didn't leave the Beatles catalog to the Beatle in his will. Neither is true, said McCartney in a posting on his Web site. "Some time ago, the media came up with the idea that Michael Jackson was going to leave his share in the Beatles songs to me in his will ...