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Now that the polls have closed, I fear we will no longer need two or three full pages for letters to the editor. There looms potential for opinion pages to shrink from a section of the newspaper back down to one measly page. While such a lull will give our fearless editor a break from sitting behind his desk sorting through and reading reams of letters, it will deplete some of the most passionate writing and reading of the year.

Regardless of points of view, when someone is motivated to put pen to paper -- or fingers to keyboard -- incredible things happen. Not only do all the opinion letters make for interesting reading, they impact the community. Just look at voter turnouts this year. And I seem to recall an increase in constituents contacting their representatives regarding the Wall Street bailout.

To keep the momentum going, we need to stir up more controversial subject matter for folks to debate at coffee houses, restaurants, around the water cooler and loitering in parking lots. We need to keep the beauty shops buzzing and high school debate teams strategizing.

Therefore, as a public service to my fellow citizens, and to keep our fearless editor working hard each day, I have decided to go out on a limb and toss out an opinion or two of my own. In the spirit of controversy, I hereby put forth to you a couple of issues that have been weighing on my mind and just might have the potential to spark in-depth discussions that may lead to passionate letter writing in the weeks and months to come.

As you know if you've read past columns, I'm a big supporter of food. Many of my family's traditions are centered on food. However, what you probably don't realize is that I regularly skip many so-called food aisles in the grocery store. I am anti-food chemicals. We make most of the food in our house, from cookies to lasagna, from scratch. We buy ingredients rather than pre-packaged, sodium packed, preservative filled, just-add-water convenience foods.

There was a time, I will admit, when we had a snack drawer in our house filled with snack cakes, crackers and "fruit" pieces that fell in the above-described category of convenience foods. Like everyone else watching commercials and reading the pretty part of the packaging, I believed that I was doing right by my family by providing snacks with 10 percent real fruit juice or a gram of fiber.

But the more I observed the world around me, watching the rates of cancer, autism, heart disease and other serious health problems rise, the more I began to blame the chemicals used to increase the shelf life and convenience of foods.

Along the same line of thinking, I will never understand the popularity of sweetening soft drinks with chemicals rather than natural sugar. I truly believe that diet drinks as well as the colorful packets of sweeteners are all poisoning the general public, slowly but surely.

If debating whether or not the general public is slowly self-poisoning itself with convenience foods and diet drinks doesn't strike a chord with some of you, then I am sure this next topic will divide everyone you know into for and against camps. In addition to being anti-food chemicals, I am anti-smoking.

While visiting my dad in the hospital a couple of weeks ago, I could not enter or exit the facility without inhaling air that was contaminated with secondhand smoke. It didn't matter that there were signs posted throughout the hospital and around the parking lot notifying everyone that all hospital grounds were smoke-free. People still lit up as soon as they left the building.

On more than one occasion, I saw hospital staff standing outside the front door of the hospital taking a smoke break. One morning, as I pulled into the parking lot, I drove past an elderly woman in a wheelchair. It appeared as if she had just been discharged. While a hospital staffer set the brakes on her wheelchair, the elderly woman lit up a cigarette and began smoking.

Call me a selfish, non-smoker health nut, but I fully support smoke-free public places, inside and out. While smokers have the right to light up in their own space, I feel strongly that those who choose not to smoke have the right to breathe smoke-free air.

So, what do you think? Write a letter to the editor and voice your opinion, whether you agree or strongly, vehemently disagree.

Now that I've offended major food and tobacco companies, growers and chemical manufacturers that sell their products to both, as well as crowds of devoted consumers, maybe we can get past the lull of post-election non-controversy and start arguing other important hot-button topics in the pages of our newspaper.

Micki Bare is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau and the Courier-Tribune in Asheboro, N.C., and author of the book, "Relative Expressions." She lives in Asheboro with her husband and three children. Her e-mail address is mickibare@inspiredscribe.com.