Yes, there are eaters who think it in their interest that food just be as cheap as possible, no matter how poor the quality. But there are many more who recognize the real cost of artificially cheap food — to their health, to the land, to the animals, to the public purse.

It can be a challenge, sometimes, to wait all the way till Wednesday for the chance to let Alex Kuczynski tell us how rich people shop. The Dining In/Dining Out section, which appears a full day earlier, on Wednesdays, feels our pain. Starting today, it introduces a new, monthly column by Alex Witchel — a.k.a. Mrs. Frank Rich — that will instead tell us how rich people eat. In the first installment of Feed Me, Witchel regales with tales of her hoity-toity dinner party (the foie gras that is apparently now served instead of caviar, of which the rich have tired, the lamb chops so exquisitely tiny they could have been another appetizer, the conversation of "the late great society walker Jerry Zipkin) and explores the mystery of the finger bowl.