Take for instance, egg selection. Sounds simplistic, right? However, this is the dialog that played in my head as I stared at six shelves of egg cartons:

"Should I buy the omega-3 eggs that are supposedly good for my heart? But wait, they're not organic. Maybe I should spring for the expensive organic eggs from Horizon, even though I read that the company has gotten so huge, it's driving out the smaller organic farmers. Perhaps I should get the cage- free eggs? Or the brown eggs from vegetarian-fed, free-roaming hens?

"Oh, never mind. I need to save money. So what if the hens are living a miserable existence in the poultry version of the state pen. The eggs are cheap. I have bills to pay."

Note to PETA: Don't worry. I couldn't live with the guilt. I ended up buying the brown eggs from free-roaming happy hens that were raised by local farmers and only feed their livestock organic foods.

OK, that’s a slight exaggeration, nevertheless, the point is, choosing what to eat and drink has become hard work. It's not simply a case of taste or price. Now we have to ask ourselves: is this good for my health? Have animals suffered? Is it local? Organic? Bad for the planet? Harvested by child workers? Holy shit, were does it all end?

What's worse, the answers are often contradictory. Should I buy the locally grown lettuce at the market, even if the grower uses some pesticides? It's good to support local growers, but what about pesticides' link to cancer? Then again, that California-grown organic lettuce at the supermarket has been flown in thousands of miles, burning up thousands of gallons of fuel. Does that make environmental sense?

Even when you think you know the answers, it turns out you don't. Consider salmon. To prevent the over-fishing of wild salmon, which was also wildly expensive, farm-raised salmon was developed. It seemed the perfect solution to controlling cost, protecting the species and meeting the exploding consumer demand for the kind of fish that health experts insisted we needed to eat. Except that now farm-raised salmon is said to have high levels of chemical contaminants and other carcinogens because of the way the salmon are raised.

Should we limit our intake? Switch to something else? (But not Chilean sea bass, which is over-fished, or shrimp, which is farm-raised in equally contaminated water in foreign countries, or canned tuna, which is full of mercury.) Or should we just take the risk because we're told - last week - that fish oil is good for us?

The tough decisions aren't limited to the fish counter. Books such as Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation have raised questions about the humane treatment of cattle and of the immigrants working in packing plants. Critics wonder how closely government really inspects the meat we eat. The feds say our meat supply is safe, but companies aren't required to announce recalls of contaminated beef. And what about that Texas cow discovered last year to be infected with mad cow, the brain- wasting disease? Government officials played it down; should we trust them? Switch to chicken?

I think I need to lie down.