Lidia Bastianich Quotes

People in Slow Food understand that food is an environmental issue.

Know you food, know your farmers, and know your kitchen.

Know you food, know your farmers, and know your kitchen. Start building up your larder! We don't even use that term any more.

I know once people get connected to real food, they never change back.

Basically, the person in the White House should be principled, should have a philosophy about food that relates directly to organic agriculture. I will continue to push for that.

I think it's important for children to know where their food comes from and how much work it takes to produce the items we eat in our home.

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 would like to see people more aware of where their food comes from. I would like to see small farmers empowered. I feed my daughter almost exclusively organic food.

All schools should teach children basic cooking skills. Every school should be able to buy sustainable, good quality food wherever possible from local sources. Every school should include food-growing in the curriculum. For some, that will mean twinning with willing farms. For others, it will mean literally building their own small farms.

As chefs, we work with organizations like Oxfam to enrich their projects with culinary tools, recipes and ideas.

I think America's food culture is embedded in fast-food culture. And the real question that we have is: How are we going to teach slow-food values in a fast-food world? Of course, it's very, very difficult to do, especially when children have grown up eating fast food and the values that go with that.

We all need to know how to cook. I can buy a chicken and have many meals come from it. Is it affordable? Yes. Cheap? No. I want to pay the farmers the right price for food. They deserve it. They are the most important people in the country besides our teachers.

We need to have a course in school that teaches about ecology and gastronomy. I could imagine that all children could eat at school for free and that the cafeteria would become part of the school's curriculum.

We want kids in communities to know real food, and we want them to have a choice between real food and industrial food.

The Kitchen's mission is to strengthen communities by bringing local, real food to everyone.

We want our communities to know what real food is.

For me, creating a supply chain of what we should be eating is incredibly complicated. It's complicated to figure out how to change the food system in America.

Look at our farmers' markets today, bursting with heritage breeds and heirloom varieties, foods that were once abundant when we were an agricultural nation, but that we have lost touch with. Bringing all these back helps us connect to our roots, our communities and helps us feed America the proper way.

There is a growing market today for local, organic foods produced by small farmers. And farmers' markets have played a large role in making that happen.

As a chef and activist, I'm particularly concerned with food politics issues such as the farm bill.

We've gotten so far away from our food source. It's been hijacked from us. But if you get soil, plant something in it and water it, you can feed yourself. It's that simple.

I'm engaged in food on so many levels, and I love that. So my work, my craft, is around food, and writing is one aspect of it; communicating a narrative, cooking online is one aspect of it; solving the food chasm that we have in Harlem and finding a farmers market is another one, and all of them are equally exciting for me.

I want to know where my food comes from and the conditions in which it's grown. I also want to embrace traditional British produce, and seasonality.

To address our current food system problems, I propose a series of local, regional, national and global conversations - starting around the dinner table - to rethink the food we produce, buy and eat.

Agribusinesses should never dictate the quality of school meals.