Chef

My real emphasis is on the farmers who are taking care of the land, the farmers who are really thinking about our nourishment.

To have a basic ingredient that can be prepared a million different ways is a beautiful thing.

In Berkeley, we built the garden and a kitchen classroom. We've been working on it for 12 years. We've learned a lot from it. If kids grow it and cook it, they eat it.

We eat every day, and if we do it in a way that doesn't recognize value, it's contributing to the destruction of our culture and of agriculture. But if it's done with a focus and care, it can be a wonderful thing. It changes the quality of your life.

I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege, and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist.

I believe there should be breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack, all for free and for every child that goes to school. And all food that is good, clean and fair.

I have been talking nonstop about the symbolism of an edible landscape at the White House. I think it says everything about stewardship of the land and about the nourishment of a nation.

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 you have to plan ahead. When I go to the market on a Saturday, and I'm buying for family and friends, I'm thinking about what I'm going to eat on the weekend but also about what I'm going to make for the following week.

I really appreciate the many neighbourhoods of Berkeley. There is still the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. And it has the University of California, which is the greatest gift, to my mind, to be close to it. It keeps the place alive.

Buy foods from nearby farms and have that food served in the cafeteria.

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.

The act of eating is very political. You buy from the right people, you support the right network of farmers and suppliers who care about the land and what they put in the food.

I eat meat, but no meat that isn't pastured is acceptable, and we probably need to eat a whole lot less.

Food isn't like anything else. It's something precious. It's not a commodity.

I was a very picky eater.

It's around the table and in the preparation of food that we learn about ourselves and about the world.

The problem with living in a fast-food nation is that we expect food to be cheap.

It's hard to come into a new relationship with food unless you're engaged in an interactive way at an early age; it's hard to change your values.

I don't think it ever works to tell people what they can't eat. They can do it for so long, and then they fall off. You have to bring them into a new relationship with food.