Novella Carpenter remembers the day she killed her first chicken. It was a rooster named Twitchy who had been injured by an opossum that got into her backyard chicken flock. About to leave for vacation, Ms. Carpenter, 34, had no way of caring for the wounded Twitchy while she was away. So she took it to the back porch and chopped off its head.

Before I wrote this article for the dining section of the New York Times, I had no idea you could keep chickens in the city. Now I kind of want to get some.

Halfway through the semester, I learned a new word: orthorexia. It means having an unhealthy obsession with eating healthily, an irony that was not lost on me as I stood in line at the Berkeley Bowl watching my groceries be rung up. Wild, line-caught salmon, pesticide-free strawberries — by now, those were normal. But organic ice cream? Was I really now concerned about the origins of my junk food, worrying whether a mint-chocolate-chip-producing cow had access to pasture?

I felt myself burning with self-righteous anger at having to be so self-righteous. I wanted to know the answer to one question: after wreaking so much havoc on my own life, what, exactly, did Pollan eat? So I did what any rational person would: I demanded to see the contents of his refrigerator.

Michael Pollan was one of my teachers at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and don’t get me wrong — he is smart, thoughtful, a fantastic teacher and an all-around great human being. But, as I pointed out in the San Francisco Chronicle, he still ruined my life.

I’ve long thought that the body mass index, the oft-cited calculation of whether you’re obese, is flawed — after all, it doesn’t take into account whether your extra weight comes from muscle or fat. As an (equally meaningless) alternative, I propose a different measurement, one that reflects how you actually feel. I call it the Body Image Index, and I wrote about it for O Magazine.

What do feelings have to do with numbers? Most women know that it is possible to immediately gain 15 pounds by eating one pint of Ben & Jerry’s. And when it comes to your butt (which can enlarge six sizes in the wrong pair of jeans), the rules of physics no longer apply. 

We need a better way to quantify these fluctuations — a formula that goes beyond your BMI and calculates the feel of overweight. So I propose the personal body image index (PBII).

The general idea is as follows:

• Start with your weight. 
• Subtract seven pounds if you have just worked out. 
• Add five if you’ve single-handedly finished a plate of guacamole and chips; four for macaroni and cheese; six for death-by-chocolate cake. 
• Subtract 10 pounds if people nearby are fatter than you.
• If you’re wearing black pants, subtract two; if in a bathing suit, add eight. 
• If you are more than seven years older than the group average or are surrounded by bikini-clad undergraduates with toned stomachs and cellulite-free thighs, add 20.

Ms. Noble, professor emerita at the University of California, Davis, said the rules were simple. Close your eyes. Don’t talk. Turn off the background music. Smell before you taste. Each tester was given a comment sheet that included suggestions from Ms. Noble for tasting notes, like melon, apple, cinnamon, coffee and pumpkin.

“With the first one you’re likely to say, ‘Oh God, it smells like a tomato — how will I kill the next half hour?’ ” she said. “But that’s O.K. It takes time. And just think — you might come up with the perfect word no one has ever used to describe that note.”

With that, she set the tasters free.

During the summer, my diet primarily consists of fresh tomatoes and mozarella (and strawberries) — so I was thrilled to get to attend a tomato tasting in Capay valley and report on it for The New York Times.

It used to be, an egg was an egg. Now they can be cage free and free range, vegetarian and omega-3 fortified, organic, “certified humane” or “American humane certified.” The incredible, edible egg is becoming unintelligible.

For the New York Times dining section, I attempted to figure out how to interpret the labels on egg cartons. Unfortunately, researching this piece only made me more confused.