We chatted about backyard chickens live on CNN Newsroom with Suzanne Malveaux this afternoon. Here are a few of the most frequently asked questions about the growing trend. Q: Will having a backyard chicken reduce the cost of eggs for my family and me? A: This varies wildly depending on the way you decide to house them (a do-it-yourself coop or pen versus a fancy Egglu ) and if you decide to feed them chicken feed, organic chicken feed , kitchen scraps or allow them to be free-range. You should also factor in how many chickens you or your neighbors have, since buying bulk can reduce the cost a tremendous amount. Try this handy chicken cost calculator and explore a few ways to reduce expenses . Click to watch video Read: Can You Actually Re-coop the Costs? and Urban Chickens: Frugal Fad or Pricey Pastime? and Are backyard chickens profitable? A cost per egg comparison for more insight. Q: If I'm not saving money, why would I bother? A. What you're really paying for is the knowledge of exactly what your chickens are eating (and what's going into your diet), assurance that they're both humanely treated and not as susceptible to conditions plaguing factory farms ( poor hygiene , battery cages , and infection that leads to salmonella ), and better tasting eggs that haven't traveled hundreds of miles to get to you. Chickens also produce excellent garden fertilizer and provide an incredible lesson for the young people in your life about where their food comes from. Q: Who else is taking this crazy ride with me and who can help me when I get stuck? A: You're hardly alone in this effort because there are 128,012 members of the forums at backyardchickens.com , a chicken hotline at mypetchicken.com (or 888-460-1529), publications like Backyard Poultry (distributed nationally in an average of 75,000 copies per issue) and Chickens magazine. Not only are local chicken raising communities popping up in towns and cities around the country – there's also Andy Schneider, better known as The Chicken Whisperer, just a click , “like” , tweet or podcast away. Q: So what are some other things to consider? A: Your local laws (and neighbors) may not be chicken-friendly, and it's vital to check beforehand. Consider your attention span and level of commitment. Are you willing to keep a hen after her egg-laying years or are you ready to humanely dispatch her or eat her? Does your lifestyle support having chickens? Do you have children, pets, a sitter or feeder for when you're gone? Can you afford to feed, house and keep up their quarters? A few fun facts: Chickens come in an incredible variety of breeds, plumages, sizes – and they produce eggs of all different hues and sizes. Some chicken breeds are so tiny, they can be kept in an apartment. Chickens have personalities, just like dogs and cats, and they can live well over a decade. Nope, contrary to popular misconception, chickens do not need a rooster to produce eggs. While they're not totally silent, at least they won't be crowing at the crack of dawn. Previously – Backyard chicken farmers say egg harvesting is all it's cracked up to be and Backyard chicken farming makes a comeback See all egg safety information on Eatocracy

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F.A.Q. about the backyard chicken boom

5@5 is a daily, food-related list from chefs, writers, political pundits, musicians, actors, and all manner of opinionated people from around the globe. We all tend to go a little overboard during the holidays. Too much merrymaking (also known as cocktails) and a lot of overindulging in the kitchen – that second helping, that extra cookie, the second glass of spiked eggnog – we’ve all been there. Chef Chad Sarno, the research and development chef for the Health Starts Here program at Whole Foods Market, is ready to step into the kitchen and help you get back on the healthy eating wagon that you may have barreled off of recently. Post-holiday guilt and bloat be gone with these helpful tips for eating clean, detoxing and starting fresh for the New Year. Five Ways to Detox Post-Holidays: Chad Sorno 1. Get your greens on “Choose dark leafy greens ( think kale , spinach, chard, collards, etc.) and amp up your veggie consumption with produce that packs a nutritional punch. Dark greens are full of micronutrients and very low in calories, so you can eat a lot of them. Think you can’t eat greens for breakfast? Wrong! Check out this recipe for one of my favorite green smoothies – it’s packed with nutrients and the almond butter keeps you full until lunch.” Green Power Smoothie 3 cups non-dairy milk of your choice 1 banana 1 cup frozen berries 1 tablespoon of almond butter 1⁄2 teaspoon vanilla extract or 1/2 vanilla bean, split and scraped Handful of spinach 4-5 leaves of kale Using a blender of your choice, blend all ingredients until smooth. 2. Eat whole foods “Limit your consumption of processed foods and start incorporating whole grains and fats from whole food sources like avocados, nuts or seeds into your diet. Small steps like brown rice or pasta instead of white is a great way to get started. It’s also helpful to make a big pot of brown rice or quinoa (very high source of plant-based protein) at the beginning of the week so you can work it into different meals – soups, salads, stir-fries, etc.” Kale, Carrot and Avocado Salad Serves 4 1 bunch kale, stemmed and finely chopped 2 cups grated carrots 1/2 avocado, peeled and pitted 1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion 2 tablespoons lemon or lime juice 2 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted 1/2 teaspoon reduced sodium soy sauce Toss all ingredients together in a large bowl. Use your hands or the back of a large spoon to thoroughly mash avocado into kale. Set aside at room temperature for 30 minutes before serving to allow kale to soften. 3. Tip your glass (of non-alcoholic beverages!) “Give your body a break from the Hot Toddies and hydrate with tons of water, herbal teas, fresh juices (not the kind with added sugar – remember, we are trying to cleanse the system!) If making your own juices, be sure to sneak in the greens. A great juice template is two-part veggie, one-part fruit, one-part greens. I like to work in juicing when my body feels sluggish from toxins and bad eating, but there’s no need to do a full-blown juice cleanse, unless you really ready to make that commitment. Aiming for a juice a day is a great start. One of my favorite combinations is green apple, cucumber, ginger, kale, lemon; you get tons of nutrients from the greens, and a bit of natural sweetness from the citrus and apple to balance out the taste.” 4. Snack smart “Snacking in between meals can spell trouble – especially if hunger strikes when you only have a vending machine to seek refuge – so I always keep healthy snacks on-hand to avoid temptation. I like to make my own trail mix with some raw nuts (usually almonds and pistachios), pumpkin seeds and some dried fruit for quick hunger fix. Having fresh fruit is also key – my recent go-to is an apple or a slice of whole-grain bread with some almond butter. Hits the spot! Nuts and seeds are a great source of healthy, whole food fats, but don’t overdo it – the calories can add up quick!” 5. Cut back on oil “Creating sauces and dressings without oil and butter helps lighten a dish, and when you use whole food ingredients you also get the benefit of more nutrients. It sounds scary to some, but it’s a cinch. Low-sodium vegetable stock, coconut water or wine are all great alternatives for sautéing veggies. You can even caramelize onions that way! Start with a hot pan, add chopped onions and constantly stir until the onions have become translucent and golden, and then add a little veggie stock when needed – they come out great! I also create my own salad dressings by blending fresh or dried fruit, nuts, vinegar and herbs in a high speed blender. The nuts (I like raw cashews best) give a creamy texture without dairy.” Renewal Salad with Shaved Roots, Spicy Greens and Miso Dressing Serves 2 4 cups of baby, spicy mesclun green mix 4 ounces miso mandarin dressing (see recipe) 1/2 cup shredded carrot and beet 2 cups mixed sprouts (sunflower, buckwheat, pea shoots) 2 mandarins, or clementines segmented 3 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds Black pepper, freshly cracked In mixing bowl toss the greens, dressing, roots, sprouts, sesame and cracked black pepper well, equally dispersing the dressing. Center all salad in bowl and top with more sprouts. Miso Ginger Dressing Makes 4 cups of dressing 2 cups mandarin juice (or orange) 2 whole mandarin peeled 1 cup white miso 1/2 cup rice vinegar 3 tablespoons ginger 4 cloves garlic Sea salt to taste In high speed blender, blend all ingredients until smooth. Will keep for 1 week in fridge. Is there someone you'd like to see in the hot seat? Let us know in the comments below and if we agree, we'll do our best to chase 'em down.

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5@5 – The post-holiday detox

ABOARD THE USS WASP (CNN) – Most chefs strive to get their customers to come back maybe once a week, but Benny Brockington's clientele come for breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday, sometimes even a midnight snack. They have to. They are sailors with almost no other options. But as the Food Service Officer, the man in charge of all meals on the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp, Chief Warrant Officer Brockington is the crème de la crème of Navy chefs who sees his captive audience as a challenge. Before was assigned to the Wasp, Brockington was chef to President Clinton and his family at the Camp David presidential retreat, and then went to work for one of the Navy's highest ranking admirals. Now Brockington has switched from cooking small meals for big shots to cooking thousands of meals for the heart and soul of the military. He is in charge of five messes, overseeing all food preparation on a ship that can carry as many 3,000 sailors and marines. The largest mess is for the enlisted men and women on the ship. There's the “chief's mess” for the senior non-commissioned officers and the wardroom for commissioned officers. Capt. Brenda Holdener, the ship's commander, has her own cook as does her boss, Rear Admiral Kevin Scott, who uses the Wasp as his flagship. Feeding that many people on a ship that is tossing and turning in the waves while hundreds of miles from the nearest grocery store isn't easy. And the giant bureaucracy that is US Navy procurement put up some more hurdles. In order to buy enough food for sailors around the world and reduce waste, the Navy uses a 21-day menu cycle. Someone in a Navy office decides what will be served on every ship at each meal, every day, and after 21 days the menus start over. For sailors who often spend six months, things can get old pretty quickly. “The crew gets burned out,” Brockington said. “They tell me 'seems like we have the same thing over and over.'” Even Capt. Holdener says the Navy's system makes the job harder for the man she calls her cook boss and his team. “The Navy provides us with menus, the Navy provides us with 'This is what you shall serve' and they make magic out of that,” Holdener said. The magic involves getting the best from what the Navy allows. “The menu may call for baked chicken, but I can change the recipe and have my cooks make curried chicken.” Brockington said. One day while the Wasp was sailing the waters south of Long Island, NY after Hurricane Irene, the lunch menu included cornbread. That night the dinner menu called for turkey with “bread dressing.” I noticed it wasn't made from your typical white bread, it was a delicious corn bread dressing that raised the quality of the dinner meal. It also wasn't lost on some of us that corn bread was part of the lunch menu and the dinner dressing obviously helped Brockington avoid wasting leftovers. Brockington, who grew up on Florence, South Carolina, didn't start cooking until he joined the Navy and was assigned dish duty. When he showed up for work, sometimes a few of the cooks would be late, so he'd start heating up some bacon. But the man in charge said “you aren't supposed to be cooking.” Still he kept cooking because he didn't want the late cooks to get in trouble. Finally the man in charge let him try his hand in the kitchen instead of the dish room.' His first test was cake decorating. He still considers baking his area of expertise. “I still do a lot of baking. I do hands on. That's how I train and motivate my guys.” Brockington tastes the food coming out of his galleys, so he doesn't have to sit down to eat a meal like other folks on board. Still when he does eat, it's usually in the main mess hall. “I try to eat with the enlisted. If's it's good enough for me to eat, it's good enough for them,” Brockington said. Most of the sailors CNN talked to had good things to say, or were at least luke warm about the food. We did overhear one sailor as he ripped into the plastic wrap around a Meal Ready to Eat (MRE). “I'd rather eat one of these than ship's food any day.” Still, his commander has high praise for the man she calls the ship's cook boss. “My food service team is awesome; I would take them any day over the finest restaurant that exists,” said Capt. Holdener. But even she has some issues with the food on board. She is a vegetarian. And the Navy's 21-day cycle of menus doesn't really accommodate her personal preferences. “The quality is not the challenge. The challenge is the options of availability, for me you can't feed me a salad everyday and call it good. I think that it is challenging to have, not just a vegetarian, but if you are restricted in your diet, whether it's religious or whether it's personal preference, I think if you have a restricted diet, then it becomes very challenging to try to work around the Navy's cycle of food,” Holdener said. “We are not as flexible with that.” Now that she has command of her own ship, she has her own chef who can, within the constraints of Navy rules, make the Captain food that match her diet. On the day we visited, her chef, or “culinary specialist” in Navy terms, Petty Officer 2nd Class Solrosita De Perio, had prepared a dish of tofu, onions, garlic, red, green and yellow peppers mixed with sesame oil. De Perio said preparing vegetarian meals for the captain wasn't easy, because she's from the Philippines, where the diet tends towards “meat, meat, meat.” But after just a few months of cooking for the captain, she's now making vegetarian meals for her own family. As for Brockington, I asked him what he would prepare for his wife on a special occasion. His menu: “Scalloped potatoes, rosemary crusted beef tenderloin, asparagus tips and maybe a béarnaise sauce or red wine demi-glace.” That night, he was serving pizza to the sailors on the Wasp. Most of the pies came to the ship frozen, but back in the galley of the enlisted men's mess, he had about half a dozen pizzas he and his team had made fresh by hand. If they tasted as good as they smelled, some sailors were in for a treat. But Brockington won't be on the Wasp for long. He's due for a promotion and a new job. He will become the officer in charge of the Culinary Specialist A School at Fort Lee Virginia where chefs from all branches of the service go to train and practice their skills. So soon the culinary skills once enjoyed by the Commander in Chief will benefit sailors, marines, airmen and soldiers all over the world.

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Navy chef has captive clientele

Olive oil in the diet can help prevent stroke in the over-65s, study suggests.

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Olive oil ‘helps prevent stroke’

Overweight Americans turning to prescription medication for help lost another option Thursday, as the FDA rejected the diet drug Qnexa. That makes Qnexa the third weight-loss drug this month to be spurned by the group, which has recently heightened its…

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FDA Kills Another Weight-Loss Pill

Many miners came bounding out of their rescue capsule, testimony to their diet and organization underground.

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Miners Defy Dire Predictions on Fitness and Spirit

The withdrawal of the diet drug Meridia on Friday marks the latest setback in the long, frustrating quest for a pharmaceutical solution to the nation’s obesity epidemic.

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In long quest for diet drug, another setback for obese