Food Literacy Quotes

Emeril is a one-in-a-million Renaissance man. In 2002, he established his foundation to support children's educational programs to inspire and mentor young people through culinary arts, school food and nutrition.

Imagine a world where children were fed tasty and nutritious, real food at school from the age of 4 to 18. A world where every child was educated about how amazing food is, where it comes from, how it affects the body and how it can save their lives.

Change the food in the schools and we can influence how children think. Change the curriculum and teach them how to garden and how to cook and we can show that growing food and cooking and eating together give lasting richness, meaning, and beauty to our lives.

I believe that 'MasterChef' brings something more to the table, so to speak, than simply being another reality food TV show. My hope is that it will inspire America to get more involved in the food they eat, how it is prepared.

It should be that every child, when they leave school, can do ten meals, because when they leave home, they've got to be able to eat healthily. Blow the science of it and everything else. They've just got to be able to know what's good for them, how to buy it, and how to make a few dishes that they enjoy and don't cost too much.

Every kid in every school no matter their background, deserves to learn the basics about food - where it comes from, how to cook it and how it affects their bodies. These life skills are as important as reading and writing, but they've been lost over the past few generations. We need to bring them back and bring up our kids to be streetwise about food.

A farmer friend of mine told me recently about a busload of middle school children who came to his farm for a tour. The first two boys off the bus asked, "Where is the salsa tree?" They thought they could go pick salsa, like apples and peaches. Oh my. What do they put on SAT tests to measure this? Does anybody care? How little can a person know about food and still make educated decisions about it? Is this knowledge going to change before they enter the voting booth? Now that's a scary thought.

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.

It's an uphill battle to help our kids learn to make good food decisions - particularly when they are too often presented with an a la carte lunch room choice of french fries or yogurt.

A few years ago, kids from poor areas in France were asked to draw items of food. For a chicken, they drew a drumstick. For a fish, they drew a fish stick. Those are extremes, but there is a lot that needs to be done to help children discover good food.

Why can't it be a curriculum? Why can't it be a life skill that they learn just to look after themselves in terms of a healthy way of eating? I think we need to shake up that whole curriculum and give them a little bit more of a lifestyle early on, before they leave school at 18.

But I do think the idea that basic cooking skills are a virtue, that the ability to feed yourself and a few others with proficiency should be taught to every young man and woman as a fundamental skill, should become as vital to growing up as learning to wipe one’s own ass, cross the street by oneself, or be trusted with money.

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.

Cooking with your kids and engaging them in hands-on activities are two ways to begin to educate children about the healthy eating, and kick start the important task to help change how the younger generation looks at food and nutrition.

It takes several doses of any veg before children like it, but once they do they'll like it for life. You wouldn't give up on a child who didn't want to learn to read. Learning to eat is every bit as important.

We have to bring children into a new relationship to food that connects them to culture and agriculture.

If kids grow kale, kids eat kale. If they grow tomatoes, they eat tomatoes. But when none of this is presented to them, if they're not shown how food affects the mind and the body, they blindly eat whatever you put in front of them.

Getting kids into the kitchen preparing the food they and their families will eat results in them viewing food in an entirely new way. If given the right ingredients, that act alone can raise the standards of the quality of the food both they and their family eat.

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 most important thing is to teach children to cook at schools. And not only to cook but to understand about where their food comes from.

I think that people are more eager to learn about food than almost every other topic.

Food as a hobby used to be an elite pastime, and it has become something that is totally ordinary for people of every background. In that way, we see the growing up of the American food scene: that it's okay to be a regular person and be really into food.

Kids see cooking as a creative outlet now, like soccer and ballet. It gives me hope that things like fast food, childhood obesity and the horrible state of school lunches can be addressed by kids and their parents.

I wish I knew in terms of more educated in food when I was younger. Because the importance of it not just in sport but in life too has helped me and I think it'll continue.

People in my neighborhood are so disconnected from the fresh food supply that kids don't know an eggplant from a sweet potato. We have to show them how to get grounded in the truest sense of the word.