We use the unofficial tagline, "If it tastes good, it IS good" around these parts. This isn't to say that everything that tastes good is good FOR you - it's often rather the opposite case.

What we mean is that if something tastes good to you, and you like it, you don't need to apologize to anyone.Not everyone feels that way.With great embarrassment, I recall my first, and hopefully one of my few instances of food snobbery, from around age 10 or 11. My mother's twin sister had put together a lovely assemblage of deli cold cuts, cheeses, sandwich toppings, breads and condiments for lunch one day, and as I was happily munching away, she asked if I enjoyed the lunch she'd cooked for us."It's great," I said. "And thank you. But, you know, you didn't really cook it; you prepared it. [Read the full article]

Editor's Note: Brett McCracken is author of the recently published Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide. He works as managing editor for Biola University's Biola Magazine and writes regularly for Christianity Today and Relevant. He comments on movies, media, and popular culture at his blog, The Search.By Brett McCracken, Special to CNNI grew up within conservative evangelical Christianity, and I(TM)m thankful I did. But throughout my youth - and indeed, even now, at 27 - there are things about it that made me bristle. Things like televangelism, angry political picketing, boycotts, horrible Christian movies, copycat Christian music, anti-intellectualism, hyper-politicized discourse, Left Behind hysteria about the end times, and hell houses (don(TM)t ask).For many of my peers who grew up within this peculiar milieu, it was enough to sour them on Christianity entirely (lamentable, but understandable). [Read the full article]

Despite the way it feels, loneliness often has nothing to do with being alone. For some people, feelings of isolation are sharpest during times that are in fact defined by togetherness — celebrations or the holidays, for instance. Walk into a bustling shopping mall or a buzzing holiday party this time of year, and even within a crowd — or perhaps especially in a crowd — it's possible to feel unbearably alone.New research from experts in neuroscience and social science may give us a clue as to why. Although we tend to think of it as a self-contained emotional state — a condition that affects people individually, either by circumstance or by dint of an antisocial personality — researchers now say that loneliness is more far-reaching than that. John Cacioppo, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, believes it is a social phenomenon that exists within a society and can spread through it, from person to person, like a disease. [Read the full article]

There is no question that venomous, nasty insults hurled across the cafeteria or in school hallways hurt.A new survey published in the Journal of Adolescent Health finds that for victims of cyber bullying (insults that occur online or via text), that hurt may be more pronounced."Unlike traditional bullying which usually involves a face-to-face confrontation, cyber victims may not see or identify their harasser," according to the survey. "As such, cyber victims may be more likely to feel isolated, dehumanized or helpless at the time of the attack."A group of 7,508 adolescents in 6th through 10th grade filled out a health survey including how (face-to-face or online) and how often they had been bullied. The survey measured the type of bullying - physical, verbal, relational (exclusionary behavior) or cyber - and the level of depression reported by both the victim and the bully. [Read the full article]