The Next President Could Change Food Forever — Here’s How

Here’s what I love about food: It connects every person on this planet, and every person who has ever lived on this planet (everyone has got to eat to survive, right?). On a deeper level, food is a conduit to other issues that I care deeply about — from individual health to the global environment.

This week, Mark Bittman and Michael Pollan (et al) wrote a big opinion piece declaring that the next president of the U.S. needs to establish a National Food Policy (NFP), because right now we have a bunch of piecemeal solutions that end up overlooking the major problems our food system faces. Pollan and Bittman rightly point out that such a policy would have far-reaching consequences in national security, the environment, education, and healthcare. They say that the first step is to call on all presidential candidates to "put forth their own NFP." That’s where we foresee a problem: The Food System is incredibly complicated — where does one even start?

To help the presidential candidates get an idea of what experts are concerned about, we went straight to the source and asked this question: "What would you change about the food system if you had a reset button?" Here are 14 ideas for change from some of the best in the food biz, such as Mario Batali, Dan Barber, Tom Colicchio, Jamie Oliver, and Ruth Reichl. For anyone (including future presidents) looking for a primer on these issues, this is a good place to start.