In most of the world, it is accepted that if animals are to be killed for food, they should be killed without suffering.

Well, it's very easy for me to gain weight, but even though I tried not eating for a week when I was really young, I couldn't do it any longer because I liked my food too much.

Instead of going out to dinner, buy good food. Cooking at home shows such affection. In a bad economy, it's more important to make yourself feel good.

In fact, in many ways my mother was quite hippy-dippy, serving macrobiotic food and reading 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.'

Some argue that now isn't the time to push the green agenda - that all efforts should be on preventing a serious recession. That is a false choice. It fails to recognise that climate change and our carbon reliance is part of problem - high fuel prices and food shortages due to poor crop yields compound today's financial difficulties.

Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.

My contribution I hope is to get people to eat full-flavored food. If I could come away with that alone, that would be a fantastic accomplishment. I'm also very proud of being a very American chef.

At one point I had to shove as much food in my body as possible to pack on calories. My trainer wanted me to do six meals a day and not go two hours without eating. If I would cheat on eating one day, I could tell - I'd drop a few pounds.

I know lots and lots and lots of vegetarians who think it's perfectly all right to kill animals for food to eat, but don't do it because they think all the ways in which it's done are wrong.

There's never been a culture that wasn't obsessed with food. The sort of sad thing is that our obsession is no longer with food, but with the price of food.