Michael Moss Quotes

When you go into a fast food restaurant, you may just think about how good your meal tastes while you're eating it. But you're not thinking about all the consequences that come from that one purchase - the consequences for your body, the consequences for supporting this company and how it's treating it workers, all the way back to the farm where the potatoes were grown, or the ranch where the cattle were raised.

People have become so much more obsessed with the stories behind their food. When we go the market to buy bacon, we want to know where that pig came from and what processes were involved in getting it to us.

I think the more prominent the actual product in its raw nature is to its final consumer, the more sympathy and likelihood they'll consume it they'll have. Some friends of mine are trying to do these rooftop farms in Brooklyn, and I love that idea. As long as they're using clean water and real soil and creating delicious things by the sun, then brilliant.

I'm not a vegetarian. Now, don't get me wrong - I like animals. And I don't think it's just fine to industrialize their production and to churn them out like they were wrenches. But there's no way to treat animals well when you're killing 10 billion of them a year. Kindness might just be a bit of a red herring. Let's get the numbers of animals we're killing for eating down, and then we'll worry about being nice to the ones that are left.

I think humankind is going to have to evolve into systems that are more transparent. Then people will be able to make more integral choices about the food they eat.

You should ask where your food is coming from.

I think there is a way to do things right to tread lightly on the world

Imagine for a moment if we once again knew, strictly as a matter of course, these few unremarkable things: What it is we're eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what, in a true accounting, it really cost.

Understanding where your food comes from, trying to bolster local farmers and local economies and having a better connection to the food around you and the people around you, only good can come of that. I love to be involved with things like that.

I've always thought the main argument for organic was more environmental than a health argument. I just don't think spraying a lot of pesticides into the environment on a routine basis is a good thing.

Whole Foods has been brilliant at changing the way food is produced because they just won't buy it if it doesn't meet their standards.

You don't have to live in the country and grow your own food to be green.

When a mother goes to the store and purchases food for her child, she has the right to know what she is feeding her family.

I'm a normal consumer but try to do the best I can. I try to buy locally, and I mostly avoid supermarkets.

Buy your fair-trade coffee beans by all means, but don't assume fair-trade principles govern the conditions of the men who fetch it to you. You would be mistaken.

It's amazing people get so detached from what they eat and what they wear. No one has any contact with how things are made that are put in their body and put in their mouths and I just find it alarming that no one questions it.

I'm not throwing pink triangles at the Farm Bureau convention. I talk to them about pesticides.

I've always believed consumers have a right to know what's in their food.

I'm a chef, so I really like knowing where my food is coming from.

We have a more intimate relationship with food than with almost anything else we buy, so people are with very good reason concerned about the real story behind what they eat.

Consumers need more insight into the goods and services they purchase. Businesses need to produce those goods and services more sustainably.

Much the way I want to know if my food is farm-raised, or wild, or if my orange juice is fresh or from concentrate. I also believe I have the right, and we as Americans all have the right to know what's in our food.

My first policy move would be to try to get a conversation going in the US about what people stand for and what we really want. Do we want to keep adding people to the world and to our country until we move to a battery-chicken kind of existence and then collapse? Or do we want to think hard about what really is valuable to us, and figure out how many people we can supply that to sustainably?

If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That's not gallons, but barrels. Small changes in buying habits can make big differences. Becoming a less energy-dependent nation may just need to start with a good breakfast.

I think people need to know what they're eating. That's why I support "country of origin" labeling. That's why I support labeling of GMO's.