Alice Waters Quotes

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

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

The biggest thing you can do is understand that every time you're going to the grocery store, you're voting with your dollars. Support your farmers' market. Support local food. Really learn to cook.

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.

Kids today are really so alienated from the source of food. If they are going to nourish themselves properly, if they are going to safeguard this environment we have and the economy that goes with it and world hunger that goes with it, they need to know about food.

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 love the idea of farm to table and farmer's markets. I enjoy a meal more if I know I'm eating something that's good quality and good for me.

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

Farm to table is a personal choice.

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.

Now you can get artisanal everything - pickles, coffees, house-cured meats, mustard. The pendulum has swung back to this kind of food, and it gives me the greatest hope for the future, especially because we're living in a time with issues like polluted Gulf Coast seafood and food labeled organic that may not really be organic.

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 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.

There's a food revolution going on throughout the country. And it doesn't matter if you're down south, up north in Maine, if you're out west in Portland or Seattle.

Once you engage with the simple enough business of feeding yourself, of soil and water, weather, season and harvest, it becomes personal. It is about you, your family and friends. Food becomes an aspect of those relationships as well as your intimacy with your plot.

We get emails from parents asking us what kale is because their kids are asking for it. That kind of extraordinary presence in the community is critical to the future of real food.

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.

Agribusinesses should never dictate the quality of school meals.

It looks to me to be obvious that the whole world cannot eat an American diet.

The concept of being a locavore, or one who chooses whenever possible to incorporate locally grown or locally produced food into one's nutrition plan, is of great importance.

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

Beyond all our Blackberries and iPhones, we're dangerously separated from our food and water supplies.

Close interaction with farmers and scientists can expose the chef to new flavours that can be used to delight diners.

I support Alice Waters in her desire that there be a vegetable garden at the White House. I don't think they should rip up the Rose Garden, because that's something that I love. They should probably dig up another patch and grow some vegetables there.

We've been so disconnected agriculturally and culturally from food. We spend more time on dieting than on cooking.