These TEDx speakers want to help you eat better

Speakers with various backgrounds in food and farming will share their expertise on sustainable food movement issues, our progress and innovations at TEDxManhattan’s “Changing the Way We Eat” this weekend. We asked TEDx speakers what’s important to them about eating well in 2013.

1. Lindsey Shute, Executive Director and Co-Founder, National Young Farmers’ Coalition

“Your food choices make or break local farms; farmers are quite literally depending on you to keep their operations in business. Joining a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), where you agree to buy produce from one farmer for a whole season, is the best way to support a local farm. To find a local CSA, visit justfood.org.”

2. Ann Cooper, Renegade Lunch Lady; Partner, Lunch Lessons, LLC

“We need to assure that every child every day has access to healthy, delicious food in schools.  So I challenge us, all of us, to do one thing to positively impact the health of all of the children in our lives. At home cook, garden, shop and sit down and eat with your kids. At schools, work with the administration to increase fresh fruits and vegetable and help your school implement a salad bar, such as [by working with] www.saladbars2schools.org.”

3. Peter Lehrener, Executive Director, NRDC and NRDC Action Fund

“Eat what you buy, and buy only what you eat.  No matter how sustainably we grow our food, if it’s not eaten, it’s a waste of money, nutrition and all the resources it took to get that food to our table.”

4. Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D., Founder and CEO, Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts

“There are three very simple rules one must follow to enhance awareness about the foods that we eat:  Eat fresh, real, whole food, preferably organic, local and seasonal.  Say grace or express gratitude with every meal. Chew every bite of plant foods until liquefied, 25-30 times to ensure good digestion.”

5. Peter Hoffman, Chef/Owner, Back Forty and Back Forty West

“Protecting the air and water where we live and grow our food is paramount to our health. If we are going to preserve the cachet of New York State grown produce or Finger Lakes wineries then we need to uphold the integrity and purity of the landscape and watershed.”

The TEDx talk takes place this Saturday, 10:30 a.m.-5:45 p.m. Watch it live here: https://new.livestream.com/tedx/manhattan2013