Computer & Video Games.com has part 2 ready to read for your Half Life 2 interviews:
How have you dealt with health replenishment this time around?
Lombardi: I can only say we are trying to make things more organic in the environment, as it would be in a real setting as opposed to in "the videogame world". There was a tiny experiment of that in the first Half-Life with the health shots from the scientists, and people actually dug that. They thought that was a much better way to deliver that power-up.
Hopefully you'll find that there are more interesting or more plausible delivery mechanisms for both the items as well as the health.