I always knew the importance of it since I was three or four years old my mother used to feed me wine and water. I grew up with wine as liquid food.

You can buy a box of low-fat macaroni and cheese made with powdered nonsense. I'm not worried if I'm using four different cheeses and it's high in fat. It's real food. That's what's more important.

Recipes are important but only to a point. What's more important than recipes is how we think about food and a good cookbook should open up a new way of doing just that.

While weight loss is important what's more important is the quality of food you put in your body - food is information that quickly changes your metabolism and genes.

For me food is all about balance. If you eat plenty of fruits vegetables and an appropriate amount of poultry fish and red meat that are sourced from good places you're doing well. It's important to make sure that the meat you're consuming is hormone-free.

If you think of what food is it's the energy we use to do our daily work. I want people to know about the USDA. This is a very important department. It's not fully appreciated as such.

Somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of the food you eat has been touched by immigrant hands and it is fair to say some of them are not here as they should be here. But if you didn't have these folks you would be spending a lot more - three four or five times more - for food or we would have to import food and have all the food security risks.

Even more importantly it's wine food and the arts. Incorporating those three enhances the quality of life.

There are a lot of food Nazis in the U.S. but I believe if you can show people what's really important they'll judge the rest for themselves.

There's so much importance in honoring your everyday hero. It doesn't take money. It doesn't take connections. What matters is that people get involved. Whether your passion is gun control or food or whatever it may be everybody needs to stop being so self-absorbed.