Jose Andres Puerta Quotes

Soon after the inauguration, the Obamas gave Big Food a case of heartburn when, in the spring of 2009, Michelle Obama planted an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn, a symbolic but nevertheless powerful act that thrilled the food movement.

Even today with the public's growing interest in food and diet issues, politicians rarely include food as part of their political platforms.

Those of us who care about food and where it comes from will miss both Obama and Michelle. Even though Obama failed to do many things he indicated he would do around food, Michelle Obama has done a lot to shine a light on the link between diet and health, which is really important.

Science, innovation, safety and affordability. Who could oppose United States food policy based on these core principles? Unfortunately, this idea has become unnecessarily controversial in agriculture.

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.

Much more has to be done to democratize the food movement. One of the reasons that healthy food is more expensive than unhealthy food is that the government supports unhealthy food and does very little to support healthy food, whether you mean organic or grass-fed or whatever.

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

I love to talk about cooking and recipes, but I love as much talking about how food and cooking can change the world.

We struggle with eating healthily, obesity, and access to good nutrition for everyone. But we have a great opportunity to get on the right side of this battle by beginning to think differently about the way that we eat and the way that we approach food.

When we are trying to come up with new health laws, you bring doctors, you bring experts in medicine. In urban planning, you bring the best architects. How it is possible that when we are talking about the way we are going to feed America, no chef shows up in the room?

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.

I cannot wait to see the day that one day we will have a chef that will become the secretary of food of the United States of America.

One of the effects of cheap food is, we have food that is so unsatisfactory. We need to go back to flavor.

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

Every Mainer, regardless of their income or where they live, should have access to fresh, healthy food.

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

I have a tremendous platform and responsibility to talk to people about these issues about sustainability and about health and wellness when it comes to food.

I think that allowing the nation to become so ignorant about food has been such a backward step - and to be honest I don't think there should be a School Food Trust. It shouldn't be necessary.

The time has come to recognize that food, how we produce it, process it, package it, sell it, cook it and eat it, is as important as any other issue.

There's not a single chef I know of that does not think about the politics of the food they're serving.

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.

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

There are a lot of great things about food, but it's something that's an eternal struggle in our contemporary society, where and how food is made, where it's coming from, how much to consume. There are so many layers to it.

I do a lot of reading about food and the food industry, so I try to eat locally and go to the farmer's market.