I do feel like food should cost more, because we aren't paying farmers a living wage. It has to cost more.
I think the biggest impediment to fixing the food system in the United States is that we expect food to be cheap. We want to by other things with our money. We're so disconnected from agriculture - from the culture in agriculture.
Our biggest fear is that 'Food, Inc.' will move heavy-handed food-safety regulations forward.
There is nothing I love more than helping someone realize how corrupt our food system is and them making great changes in their own life because of it.
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.
One of the effects of cheap food is, we have food that is so unsatisfactory. We need to go back to flavor.
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.
It's been a mystery to me and a disappointment why conversation about health care reform hasn't turned more attention to the subject of food.
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.
One thing that makes me very happy is to see the growing activism among chefs in America. Chefs like Tom Colicchio, Bill Telepan, and Rachel Ray and food writers like Michael Pollan have gone to Congress, indeed sometimes even have testified before Congress, have lent this support to Mrs. Obama's effort to combat childhood obesity.
Federal policy tells us to fill 50 percent of our plates with fruits and vegetables. At the same time, federal farm subsidies focus on financing the production of corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, sorghum, dairy and livestock.
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.
I think there's a lot of work to be done with our societies. My biggest passions are the environment and health. And when I say 'health' I mean the secrets behind health and our food system.
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.
We have to understand that we want to pay the farmers the real price for the food that they produce. It won't ever be cheap to buy real food. But it can be affordable. It's really something that we need to understand. It's the kind of work that it takes to grow food. We don't understand that piece of it.
Even today with the public's growing interest in food and diet issues, politicians rarely include food as part of their political platforms.
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.
I would love to encourage all my teammates to eat the best way they possibly can. High school athletes. Now, that's not the way our food system in America is set up. It's very different. They have a food pyramid, and I disagree with that. I disagree with a lot of things that people tell you to do.
We need real farmers who grow real food, and the will to reform a broken food system. And for that, we need not only to celebrate farmers, but also to advocate for them.
In this country, the health concerns and the environmental concerns are as deep as in Europe. All the surveys show that. But here, we didn't have the cultural dimension. This is a fast-food culture.
As an anti-hunger advocate, I found the perplexity of the obesity problem and the hunger problem existing side-by-side in our increasingly global food system begged further investigation.
The sad thing is, when it comes to diet, is that even when well-intentioned Feds try to do right by us, they fail. Either they're outvoted by puppets of agribusiness, or they are puppets of agribusiness.
