Celebrating food champions from around the world

What does your day-to-day look like?

My day starts with ‘Mom’ duties (dropping off the kids to school), then is back-to-back meetings, recipe development, and sometimes customer training. The afternoon is picking up kids from school and homework, more meetings, planning for tomorrow’s day, and wrapping up for the day.

What does equity mean to you, as a food champion?

Equity means making sure that policies and programs are fair and available to everyone. 

I want to be part of a team that gives everyone the same ability to have a voice, be promoted, contribute, and make an impact. 

Finally, speaking up against insensitive comments. If someone you know makes an insensitive comment about a person’s gender, race, or sexual orientation, call attention to the comment, and explain how it does not promote inclusion. 

What does your day-to-day look like?

My day-to-day is an interaction and education with and by – food and people. Whether it be by cooking, studying produce or introducing ingredients to my team and guests, or learning about new foods from my producers and farmers. 

What does equity mean to you, as a food champion?

As a food activist, I try to simplify the concept of food equity – by introducing actionable practices like growing your own food using propagation, using wild ingredients, using lesser resources to cook and cooking with ingredients that consume lesser resources to grow, and educating people on mindful consumption of food via my menu and recipes.

What does your day-to-day look like? 

Morning Meditation, catching up on messages/emails, drinking green juice, world domination using pastries, and I’ll try to fit in some cycling in the middle somewhere. 

What does equity mean to you, as a food champion? 

Everyone should have long-term access to good food and clean water and it’s each person’s responsibility to respect their immediate environment for us to be able to sustain that. If we do our individual parts to act as a collective, that’s almost 8 billion parts around the world that will add up. And if only half of us are able to do it, we can help our neighbors.

What does your day-to-day look like?

My days start off at our fast casual restaurant and is the part of the day when I work on the branding, marketing, and business development side of my role – writing, designing… the behind-the-scenes work. In the evenings, I’m usually working service at either restaurant.

What does equity mean to you, as a food champion?

I answer this from my context as a woman of color, often working in fine dining kitchens as an immigrant. It means assessing someone based on the quality of their work, not on their ability to fit into a stereotype of who is “allowed” to do that work. It is more lifting others up, more kind curiosity, more generosity in our definitions.

What does your day-to-day look like?

Wake up, work out at a pilates class. Come home, and eat a protein-filled breakfast and coffee.

Email, eat lunch. Zoom, zoom zoom. Cook for a client. Eat dinner. Relax and go to sleep. Monotonous, but filled with gratitude. 

What does equity mean to you, as a food champion?

Food equity to me means having access to fruits and vegetables for everyone. The health benefits of eating fresh fruit and vegetables are beyond measure. I hope one day everyone can have access to the FARM-acy of foods, creating health care. Instead of the effects of sick care. You are what you eat.

What does your day-to-day look like?

I always do 20 minutes of yoga every morning. Reading and researching new things about plants but I always have time for my loved ones.

What does equity mean to you, as a food champion?

Cherishing the diversity of different cultures, learning from each other, to be able to collect meaningful memories while beautifying nature with this power, all together.

What does your day-to-day look like?

My day-to-day is full of rituals and deep gratitude for the many opportunities and individuals that support and show up in my life.

What does equity mean to you, as a food champion?

The power to find your own voice and empower change one dish at a time.

Equity allows moments of vulnerability to bring hope, evoke enlightening conversations, and the power of forgiveness as true acts of resistance. 

The future of equity at the table is building our own tables and chairs and breaking bread over how food truly is what tethers us all. 

What does your day-to-day look like?

My day-to-day is filled with emails/calls related to curating and attending culinary events that highlight meaningful ways to be more healthful, sustainable, and educated about our food choices. I travel weekly, so try to fit in yoga sessions when I can to help decompress.

What does equity mean to you, as a food champion?

Equity in accessibility, affordability, education, and diversity: fresh, healthy, food from diverse cultures available to individuals of all economic levels, empowered with the knowledge to make nutritious choices.

Equity in the hospitality industry: advocating for respectful treatment and fair wages for all, encouraging work/life balance, and especially taking care of mental health.

Equity for those that grow, produce and care for our food: respect and appreciation for the land, people, and the larger ecosystem needed to feed our world sustainably.

What does your day-to-day look like?

My day starts like any 4-year toddler’s mother! Then usually I am working as a dentist in the day time at my clinic, followed up by being at our new culinary venture Nila Indian Rendezvous as the culinary director and ending the day talking, presenting, discussing about Nila food with our customers.

What does equity mean to you, as a food champion?

The relevance of equity has become even more prominent for me since I became a restaurateur. We have tried to create a multicultural and diverse team at Nila Restaurant with representation from 6 different nations who learn from each other everyday, the majority of them are women. As their chief cheerleader I do believe in giving wings to my team to fly high but more like customised wings according to their skills and abilities which can help them fly high individually so that they all can fly equally as a team. And for our customers we have an inclusive menu catering to dietary restrictions and cultural preferences, so that everyone feels equally welcome even if it’s a bit more effort from us, making us stronger as a community.

What does your day-to-day look like?

One of the perks of the profession I chose is that when you wake up in the morning, the routine is not predictable. Every day is a different day and is always filled with beautiful things. Bad experience is never bad for me. Bad is an adjective we assign to situations we have trouble solving but, experiencing a new situation, whether it makes us suffer or not, is, by all means, positive. That means we are living life.

What does equity mean to you, as a food champion?

Equity can be a divisive word as it may be conceived in a different way according to whom you ask it to. I’d rather use the concept of equal opportunity as in, the opportunity to make a difference. As a chef, I feel it is my responsibility to take action for what I, and everyone else who has studied and/or observed reality during these last few years, believe is the last opportunity to leave a better world. Choosing your produce, your farm, evaluating every aspect including the respectful and legal treatment of the employees. A few years ago, as President of an Italian National association, I launched a program called “adopt a farmer” which stressed the role of the chef as a communicator, promoter, and supporter of small local farmers. An easy but efficient project.

What does your day-to-day look like?

My day-to-day is constantly different. Each day however starts with my meditation practice and getting into nature where time permits. These are essential to maintaining my mental health and creativity as a chef. Then depending on what project I am working on I am either connecting with clients, researching, designing menus, sourcing ingredients, chatting with farmers, developing workshops, or in the kitchen. I make a conscious effort to prioritize looking after myself by slowing down to eat healthy meals in between cooking for others. I try to end each day with gratitude and if I’m lucky, time with loved ones.  

What does equity mean to you, as a food champion?

The global food crisis is highlighting how access to food is entangled in the political economy. Equity is about access. Equal access to healthy, affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food. As a chef in South Africa, equity issues are prevalent in all we do. As a chef constantly working in different kitchens and with different teams, I strive for food systems that provide equal access to nourishing food. I draw this into my work by sourcing from local farmers, highlighting their work, diversifying the ingredients I cook with, and educating people about how their relationship with food can have positive ripple effects throughout our food systems. Strengthening our food systems requires addressing the power imbalances in these spaces to amplify the voices of the excluded. Food is a medicine every person should have access to.

What does your day-to-day look like?

My work ebbs and flows seasonally, so my day-to-day varies significantly from season to season. Winter is more of a ‘hibernating’ time for me, where I focus on planning, fermenting, reading, researching, writing, developing ideas, and filming some recipes. Things start to pick up when spring arrives and from March to October, I spend much of my time between garden and kitchen, preparing for events and supper clubs, and working on educational workshops and longer-term projects.

What does equity mean to you, as a food champion?

I believe passionately that access to healthy, tasty, nutritious food should be the right of all, not the preserve of the wealthy and/or privileged. I dream of a world where we everyone feels sufficiently connected to the living world and is committed to a collective endeavour to nurture our ecosystems and deeply understand what nature can sustainably provide for us and when.

What does your day-to-day look like?

Everyday is an opportunity to build a better world, so my goal for everyday is how to be better in the work I do, with micro improvements and offer the best food to people around me. 

What does equity mean to you, as a food champion?

For me, as a human being, everyone and every child should have first and foremost the equal right of accessing good food and nutrition. For me, everything else comes later. 

So, as an action, we share 25 food packets every day, and give them to needy children in the city. Food is a basic need of any individual.

What does your day-to-day look like?

It’s a mix for me these days, with sorting out my recipes from The Breadfruit to make a cookbook, studying Dutch for hours, testing recipes, keeping my house in order, and working on a cool new project called SeafoodMAP.

What does equity mean to you, as a food champion?

Equity is the acknowledgment that gender does not determine one’s capacity, the value of their contribution, their ability to evolve, and the admission that our advancement as a people was equally built on the backs of all genders.

What does your day-to-day look like?

An early slow start, with my day energy peaking at 3pm. I am always ‘lights out’ by 8pm.

What does equity mean to you, as a food champion?

Empowering women and young people to have access to land rights.

Empowering indigenous communities with skills to help preserve indigenous food systems for the next generation, in a healthy sustainable way.

Finding solutions to food security that doesn’t compromise human and planetary health and safety.