Chefs can create so much more than a meal. This is especially true when looking at “top chefs.” The work of many chefs goes beyond just making food, into the realms of art and social awareness. Chefs are often deeply inspired and influenced by their environments, which is why when given creative freedom, many chefs take pride in using ingredients from their own culture and incorporating ethics into their work. This is typically what’s called “farm to table” or sustainable cooking. These chefs are known as eco-chefs, or green chefs, and there are some amazing ones from all over the world bringing awareness to the unsustainable global food system that leaves millions hungry and in poverty.
1. Bryant Terry
What do the Black Panthers have to do with creating an urban organic kitchen? More than you might think. In this talk from chef Bryant Terry, he connects the dots between poverty, black culture and how to create sustainable local food sources in urban communities.
2. Yuki Chidui
Yuki Chidui is one of few female sushi chefs in Japan. She lives and operates a successful sushi restaurant in Tokyo and defies gender stereotypes that women (because they have small, soft, warm hands) cannot properly prepare sushi. I’m calling her a sustainable chef because she helps create a world without gender inequality, where more girls and women can access the creative and respected careers they want. Plus, she uses sustainably sourced seafood.
3. Tal Ronnen
Apparently, Tal Ronnen’s journey into sustainable cooking was not as noble or rooted in family tradition and ethics as I like to think. His reason? To impress a girl. In high school he became vegan to win over a crush and stuck with it ever since. Now he’s designed a three-week cleanse for Oprah and advocates for the environmental benefits of the vegan diet with his cookbook and his Israeli and Moroccan influenced restaurant in L.A. called Crossroads Kitchen. He also started a nonprofit to help educate food-service operators on how to access sustainable vegetables.
4. Judy Wicks
Wicks is a pioneer when it comes to being an “eco-chef.” In 1983 she opened a restaurant called White Dog Cafe and began bringing organic, local ingredients together along with community engagement and environmental stewardship to create a sustainable business model and fair-trade farm-to-table dining spot in Philadelphia.
5. Marcus Samuelsson
Samuelsson is a little more traditional when it comes to where his influences originate compared to Ronnen. He combines influences from Ethiopia (where he was born), Sweden (where he was adopted and raised) and Japanese food culture (just a fun interest). He’s all for “farm to fork” and appreciates using local sustainably harvested foods. He’s also served a sustainable vegetarian state dinner at the US White House using vegetables from the White House garden.
6. Ani Phyo
What’s one foolproof way to combine cultures in cuisine? Don’t cook your ingredients. Ani Phyo is a Canadian chef who promotes the raw food movement, but with a raw vegan diet there is still some cooking involved. Phyo has incredible recipes for embellished avocado smoothies, and towers of marinated veggies on her website found here.
She’s also a powerlifting champion, for those of you doubting if you can stay strong and healthy on a raw vegan diet.
7. Atul Kochar
Kochar was the first Indian chef to win the coveted “Michelin” star in the food world. Since then he has impressed the rest of the world by moving toward using sustainably harvested fish, and organic products in his three famous restaurants around the globe.
8. Ben Shewry
You might recognize Shewry from the Netflix series Chef’s Table (which highlights top visionary chefs from Järpen, Sweden to Patagonia). He fuses together native ingredients from New Zealand and Australia—like kangaroo and bunya bunya—and advocates for less harvesting of fish for seafood.
In this interview for the New York Times, Shewry talks about the protein benefits of consuming mussels over chicken. Plus, mussels compared to fish are much more sustainable. He says, “most of the fish being taken are juveniles,” because they are easier to catch for the majority of fishing practices. This means these fish don’t get the chance to reproduce and replenish fish populations. It’s also part of why overfishing and eating seafood has become so unsustainable today.
9. Arthur Potts-Dawson
When you cook on your own, it’s a little easier to measure your carbon footprint. But when you’re eating out it’s hard to know the environmental impact of your meal.
Restaurants waste an estimated 10 percent of the food they purchase, partly due to health regulations. But restaurants like Potts-Dawson’s decrease that amount. Potts-Dawson lets diners choose their own portions among other sustainable solutions. His motto, “it’s not about eliminating waste, it’s about minimizing waste” which seems like a practical approach if you cannot be like Silo (a zero waste restaurant in the UK).
10. Hajime Sato
Sato fights racial and gender injustice while serving only sustainably harvested seafood. “Would you go to Africa and shoot a lion and eat it?” he once asked. “No. Then why are you eating Bluefin tuna that’s close to extinction? What’s the difference?”
Then, when two diners wrote reviews saying there weren’t enough Japanese people working at Sato’s restaurant Mashiko in Seattle, he quickly retorted by calling out the diners as to why someone’s ethnicity matters.
Sato also wholeheartedly disagrees with the notion that women cannot be sushi chefs. He employs Mariah Kmitta (a Caucasian woman—gasp!) as a sushi chef at Mashiko. Why would Sato hire a female sushi female and employ her for 12 years? #BecauseIts2015.
Being a chef can require grueling work, long hours, low pay, and serious commitment, especially if you want to make it to the “top.” Take all that and add in incorporating sustainability, and it becomes harder.
These chefs set a strong example for sustainability by bringing ethics to food production and speaking out against unsustainable agricultural practices.
Ending poverty requires a holistic approach (aka 17 approaches to be exact). Hunger and climate change are two issues the world needs to address to end poverty, and much of that change will come down to changing the way the world grows and eats food.
Subsidies in countries like the US keep the cost of large domestic food production low, which preserves unsustainable practices. This system also forces developing countries to price exported foods even lower to compete, which can hinder their growth.
Unsustainable agriculture, especially animal agriculture is a leading cause of climate change and deforestation. Clearing land to raise cattle in countries like Brazil destroys fragile ecosystems, and displaces whole communities.
By exploring and understanding ethical ways to produce food for communities, you can help change the ineffective and unsustainable way the world eats.
You can help end hunger by cooking too if you go to TAKE ACTION NOW and sign up to host your own #HungerFree dinner.