Editor's note: Dr. Aaron E. Carroll is an associate professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine and the director of the university's Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research. He blogs about health policy at The Incidental Economist and tweets at @aaronecarroll.

I like to joke that the difference between other places I've lived and Indiana is that seeing a goat or a chicken used to be a field trip; now it's my commute. Humor aside, though, one of the perks of living much closer to farmland is the access that we have to amazingly fresh food. I haven't always been the healthiest of eaters, but in recent years that has changed. Two summers ago, we participated in a "farm share," where every week we would get a box of organically raised produce.

It's not an understatement to say that this completely redefined the eating habits of my family. We went from a meat-heavy diet to a much more vegetable-oriented one. My wife became much more concerned with how our food was raised and processed. Before long, she was near-obsessed with whether our food was "organic."
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