José Andrés

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Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, it's Sophia and welcome back to work in Progress. Today's guest is world renowned chef and owner of Think Food Group, Jose Andres. I am just so happy to have Jose here, as he is a chef and an incredible global humanitarian. He's all about food and activism, which, as you know, are two things I love the most. Jose is known for bringing small plates or tap us from Spain to the United States, but you might know him more for a number of other reasons. He's a New York Times bestselling author, he is a television personality. He is the owner of nearly twenty restaurants, including Mini Bar, which has received two stars from the DC edition of The Michelin Guide. And he is the founder of World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit devoted to providing meal in the wake of natural disasters. Jose has been awarded the National Humanities Medal, he was named Outstanding Chef and Humanitarian of the Year by the James Beard Foundation, and he has been twice named one of Time magazines hundred Most Influential People. He and I got to talk today about how he first became interested in food, his childhood in Spain, his career in the restaurant industry and how that led to his work around the world to help end food scarcity and hunger. Without further ado, let's jump in and get cooking on this episode with Chef Jose andres Chef. It's such an honor to have you on the show today and I'm really excited to talk about your work and World Central Kitchen and your activism. But before we get into all of the amazing things that you're up to now, I'd like to go back a bit and start closer to the beginning because I'm curious about a young Jose. I know that you grew up in what is the proper pronunciation? Is it mites me? It is? That's that's the perfect pronunciation. Okay, good. So you grew up in midtest Spain, and I've never been to that part of Spain, and I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about it, and you know, what, what were you up to as a little kid? So me it is is a mining town. Mining has slowly been fading away, but back in the days when I was born fifty one years ago, in the hospital of the Spanish Red Cross. It's a place that I I speak about my childhood, but my mom, who passed away three years ago, always told me that was impossible. I had any ideas of remembrance of what was going on, because it was only four or five when we left. Mids Medes is in the province of Stories, in the very north part of Spain, and he's a beautiful place that you can be uh surrounded by his snow in top, beautiful mountains with shades, beautiful greens, with chestnut trees and all of the silent Thirty minutes later, if you go towards the coast, you are in the ocean where you will see cows in the landscape next to apple trees where they will make cider, which is the national drink of that region. And at the same time you will see the fishermen arriving every day to the local tavern after a very long day up in the ocean, trying to get anything that the ocean will be willing to give them. That was very much my my my childhood Aromas, outsider of of apples, of chestnut trees, of the sea. Obviously, I was an immigrant very very early in my life because when I moved to to Barcelona, in Catalonia. I guess it was the moment I was realizing that my mom, my dad came from one part of Spain, but here we were coming to another part of Spain with different food, different history and itself, different culture, different language. And I think my early childhood was that beginning to understand that I will embrace being an immigrant, that we became bridges that will bring far away places closer together, showing that what makes us different is actually what makes us unique. And that was very much my early years. My chillow I love that it's beautiful. I fell in love with tapas in Barcelona. My one of my best friends went to grad school there and we used to go and visit her over our Thanksgiving break, and I mean I had to roll me home by the end of the week because I was just like trying to eat everything I could get my hands around the city. It's so amazing. So Barcelona for me, obviously is the city I became a little, a little boy. I left the school very early. My father relies on my mother. The traditionally school system was not for me. Was the days that I began learning about how to code, how to write my own programs, on on on basics, something like look so far away now when I had a computer that was the Commodore sixty four and strand that. Now when you tell anybody about those things, they look at you were like you had to pride your own programs, like well you did if you wanted. I wanted to be an actor. I was in uh in my the little town where I grew up in Catalonia, in this acting group, and we will do different things like the Ghost of canter Bill where I played the ghost, or even accuse of Peter Schaefer. Uh and I will play basketball and I will play soccer because the town was very little and you had to play everywhere in order to have enough people to play anything. Uh uh. And this was like, okay, let's do it. Who do you need. I don't know how to do this, but if you need people, let's do it. And very early on is when always helping my dad and my mom, who were nurses. My mom will be more than cooked during the week my father will be more the cook on the weekends. Even each each one will help each other. I will do more the shopping. I was the older brother of four, going on my bike every day to the bake freshly baked breath uh, surrounded by amazing uh cherry trees. I remember in a spring when all the beautiful white flowers will be like these amazing horizon that sometimes will be touches of pink, because the peach trees also will say hello, we're here too. It's not only the cherry is the ones that count. Look at me, Look at me, and you will look at the white of the cherry flowers, the beautiful peach trees. And this was my other obviously next childhood, and my father will put me to cook, often helping he make the fire, gathering the wood out of the near by forest, making branches, making the fire, and he will make paea, these traditional rice Spanish dish that is a lot of people love by, but a lot of people do love research how is uh done in Spain. So everyone makes their own recipe, which which is great. But sometimes the recipes you see made around American around the world, they're a little bit too much in the star trek outer edges of the universe. Um too many cling too many clingers. And I used go up helping my fire, make the fire, and knowing that cooking was the happy place for me that shopping and going to the market, being around the farms and the workers was my happy place. I guess I didn't decide I wanted to be a cook. Life decided for me I had to be a cook. Well. And the way you talk about the place and the food and the process and the people and the environment, it's very poetic and it's very intimate, and cooking, I think is so intimate. You know, there's something to using the land around you and knowing who grows your food and having a relationship with people. When when you make something then for everyone around your table, it's it's a love language. It is a love of language. Because even I am very pragmatic when I talk about those things, because we need to be pragmatic because at the same time, as a young child, I only saw the beauty. Then you realize that in that process sometimes the people that fit the world are hungry themselves or those beautiful places that we take photos that we have a woman in any part in the world cooking in the middle of the street, where we we we romanticize that moment when actually sometimes there's a lot of hardships on that person cooking in the streets I have no problems supporting a street food, but sometimes we need to be slightly careful because some people are in the streets because they have another place to belong and and and it's not all a beautiful photo Instagram. Uh you mentioned love. I mean, let's see, how can I expend this uh without anybody thinking I'm a strange uh, John fifty one year old boy. But the first moment as we come to the world that we receive a gift that is physical, even we are highly unconscious because we have only a few minutes, a few hours of life outside the bomb of our mother. Is that moment that we are being fed a moment that I wish we all will remember because I think this attachment we all have to our mothers or the father if if I gave you baby bottle, if you think about it, is the first moment that we receive a gift, that receives something that happens, is food that happens is probably one of the most beautiful moments you kind of experience. I've been there watching my wife fitting my three daughters and most with emby because that's a beautiful, fascinating moment that forever we get attached to food, and that's why longer tables and not higher walls, and giving and sharing food with people we know and people we love or new people that come into our lives. That moment of sharing food and making sure that we share with others who we are through food, that seat is planted in the very early minutes in our life with the love of our mother. I think that's so beautiful day. And it strikes me because you know the story that you tell about your experience with your family in your neighborhood making a I think about you know, my mom talking about man making pasta with her grandmother, you know, her grandmother and her mother who were born on the same farm in Italy. I mean, it's that the beauty of the locality and the familial nature of food is the best of what it is. And to your point, when we begin to look larger, when we back up and we get more of a bird's eye view and we look at the system of food and the system of subjugation that exists in food and so many other industries, and and the food insecurity that causes hunger. One of the things that struck me as so special that you said you spoke about your parents both being nurses, and in an article that you wrote about the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico, you said kitchens and hospitals are two different worlds. But I believe that the fight to feed the hungry needs to learn from the history of the fight to heal the sick, and that really hit me. Beca has. The best of medicine is healing, and yet the medical industry is broken. And the best of food is intimate and beautiful and local and about family. Yet the food industry is a mess. And I'm so curious about how you have found your way both as a chef and an activist, because there is so much love in what you do, and there's so much beauty in the way you talk about it, and even in the way by the way that you talk about being a father. You know, you talk about your wife and your three daughters. I'm curious as you learned about food. You know, you you mentioned that you left school early because it wasn't for you. You enrolled in culinary school in Barcelona when you were just fifteen. You worked at LBO, which I have so many questions left for another day, but I'm so curious about how how you're sort of launch pad into this world of incredible culinary work and cuisine is also mirrored by your commitment to people. Were those things happening at the same time or or or was it first about the food and the courses and then later you looked at the systems? I mean obviously where when you are young, he was you, You're happy to be long, right, you. You're happy to be part of the celebration of life, and and you look to discover. I got my early opportunity of discovery when I joined the Spanish military. Was mandatory too, but it changed my life because was a very powerful experience. They put me to cook for the Admiral of Spain, and I was like, no, way, who say first time I got an opportunity. I told him there, sir, uh, thank you for the honor they chose me to cook for you. But I want to go on a boat. And I don't want to go on any boat. I want to go in the training ship of the Spanish Navy where the midshipmen get their training. This was a foremast tall ship. Uh. He granted me my wish almost with tears on his eyes and I remember a tenth of January of ninety ninety that I got onto that boat and I sell the oceans, uh of of life. And this first time I saw Africa, first time I saw South American, the Caribbean, first time I came to America, Pensacola, New York. Um. This for me was my early start in seeing that the Wall was a beautiful, big place, that I was hungry, hungry for more, and obviously for me, coming to New York in more ways than one, after I finished my military service changed my life in the sense of without moving from my hat and the melting pot that America is described, I could experience every ethnic cookie, every ingredient, um, every new technique, romans and flavors and never even imagined. And as a young boy growing up in the streets of my hat, and I got my first opportunity to eat escamoles, the amazing mcgay worms of Mexico in a taco or having coury that I never imagined, all the fragrance and the flavor in one dish, or the very different things that a young mind that wanted to learn, that was hungry for more. Without moving from a not even a city, but without moving from an entire neighborhood one of the biggest, most populated islands in the world. I was literally, uh eating my way around the world, and this really made me in many ways who I am today. So what was the pathway to eventually coming to live in the States? How did you make the decision to leave sane? So I finished my military service, I went back to El Bougie. For the ones that don't know, how can I explain El Buggie? If we will speak about the Big Bang and the creation of the universe. Obviously cooking was already invented, but somehow, obviously for four hundreds of thousands of years in a million we we we realized that for Ruan, I was probably sixteen seventeen when I went to work with him, Uh, that he was this young man, he was only twenty four on his own, but his way to see things was very different. He will he will respect tradition, but at the same time he will say we need to respect tradition, but we should question where that tradition comes from, and if it not, should be evolved. Why we need to keep doing the things that people two hundred three hundred years before us began doing is not our time to keep improving and changing and moving forward. So this is the amazing place I was where I began understanding that too. To cook with ingredients, you must understand ingredients. You must listen to the ingredients. You must look at the glass of water, not like you know what it is, but almost with wonder, to say what secrets this glass of water holds? That? Because I go through life like I know everything, I'm not stopping to second guest myself, and second guest everything is known. This was for run Adria, a guy that helped many of us that within through his prism of life, the person that planted the seat of innovation, obviously, but innovation that came out of willingness to be surprised, willingness to as yourself the right because we forget that sometimes the important thing is not a good answer, but the right question that opens you the whole world of opportunities. The right question. I love that when you think about the questions, food leads you to how did that inform your next steps? Because after a bui and coming here, you ended up in Washington, d C. And you started a hugely successful restaurant there, Minibar in two thousand three, and you you've done all this work in the community, you know, because of the d C Central Kitchen and these local food organizers. So so when you are talking about being at the sort of pinnacle of food molecular gastronomy, you know, looking at the glass of water as hydrogen and oxygen and figuring out how something oxidizes in a pan with another ingredient. I mean you're talking in science and art, and then you're talking boots on the ground activism and making sure that you can empower people and their communities through food. So where do those two things? Me? How does that begin? I know you've been asking me that, and I seem not to get to the to the answer because there's many I love all the stories. We don't have to get there right away. It's it's many ways to get there right When I was in the military service on that tall ship selling the world his first time, probably I saw mak inequality. No like in a Spain where I grew up, because no people maybe having hardships. But this is what I saw in the streets of Abidjan. Inequality I didn't see back home, is where I saw in the fabellas of Rio Janeiro that they saw in equality. I never saw back home in the streets of Dominican Republic, that I saw inequality. I didn't see in the same way. But a moment this began connecting my early first readings, when John Stemberg became my first American author. I read in English and read learning about the Pearl and how there was inequality. Uh and and reading about the grapes of wrath, and they were saying who it was in equality in the richest country in in the world. All those little things began, little seats that began shaping this young boy. Still I feel I am at times uh uh And I think was many people, right, Sophia, You and you and I. We are the people we are thanks to the people that we have around us, people we had in the past, even people we forgot. People we read a quote that somehow became very important in our brains by somebody. Sometimes we don't even remember. A teacher, a friend, a foreigner in a bus station giving us as isle or or helping us covering the ticket we didn't had an no money in our pockets to pay, and a person you never saw again, a small acts of kindness and empathy that began shaping all of us in the way we are and we become to this day, I am who I am thanks to my wife, my daughters, my friends, uh, the people working obviously with me. So those stories began being those seats I arrived this sea. I learned that across the street from my first restaurant, Halleo on seventh and in Northwest, in a place in Washington we call the Penn Quarter, Clara Barton had her office, the Missing Soldiers Office. Many people don't even really know who Clara Barton is, even we see her here and there on walls and buildings on the streets. Maybe Clara Barton was this amazing woman like a Norse, like my mom, who very much studied to be a North pregnant of my fourth brother, so my father could be getting some help with an extra salary to who keep feeding all all of my brothers and i Uh. Clara Barton single handed created this organization to take care of the wounded soldiers on the Civil War, began finding what happened to the loved ones, so the families could bring some closure to what happened to those men and woman that they never saw again. Clad Barton became influential figure in my brain in the distance of time. Amazed that I didn't even know about her before she founded the American Red Cross. I saw myself almost like emulating her. She when the capital was attack over a century Over a century ago, she went with food to the capital to provide food to the soldiers that were guarding the capital. Can you believe this ws central kitchen? Myself I was following her footsteps bringing food to the many people, providing relief and security to the capital after January six fascinating Robert Egger you mentioned this is central kitchen. Robert Egger became a fatherhood figure to me in more ways than one. He's the man that I met when I was twenty three, upon arriving to the sea away from my restaurants. He had this kitchen. He everybody talks about food waste, Why we don't talk about wasting people's life? Of sure, we should not waste food, but this is not about wasting food. Is we are wasting people? This is what is really important. So let's not get caught in the wrong. Uh important issues. Food waste should not be happening, But what we should not be happening is wasting people's Robert Egger, Robert Eger was that person for me. He told me that philanthropy seems it's about the redemption of the giver, when phil anthropy should be able deliberation of the receiver. It's okay to do good, It's okay to feel good doing it nothing wrong. Everybody should feel good if you do something good. But we must do better. To do good is not enoughing that on the first century. We must do a smart good because if we are not able to solve the problems that we are facing, uh yeah, let's keep giving money, let's keep giving our volunteer time. But then fifty years from now we look back and the same problems will stay there because we keep repeating the same old recipes. So why wasn't the kitchen Because many of those stories, many of those moments, many of those books, those places a piecy, those connections that you began seeing that everything seems is totally disconnected. But every one of us and every single issue, especially when we talk about food, it's more interconnected than we think. At the end of the day, if we really look deep, when we have a plate of food in front of us and we shouldn't, but I think sometimes we must. We could very much as brillat Savaran the French will alsofer in the six he said, tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are. I think this is even deeper. Tell me how you eat, and I will tell you what world you want to live in. And that's why food requires more understanding, and it requires that we give more importance in at the social level, at the political level. Uh And because if we start thinking, food should stop being the problem and food can once and for all become part of the solution. Mm hmm. And I think for most of us being more emotionally and geographically connected to our food. I remember years ago um with a with a wonderful group of people actually talking about hunger and food systems and water, being asked to go through almost like a waking meditation at a dinner and to look at everything on the plate and imagine where it started and how many hands it had to touch. Who picked this tomato and then put it in a crate, and then someone carried the crate and put it on a truck, and then the truck was taken to the front of the farm, and then from there, the crates were loaded onto a larger truck, and then they were driven by someone on a highway who had to get gas from a gas station on that highway and pay someone for that gas, and then they had to bring them to and it goes on and on and on and on and on until it's processed and gone into the grocery store and put on the display, and then you go and you pick it up, and you bring it home and you cook it and you serve it as one And can you imagine all the hands that had to gently hold that piece of food so you could eat it. And I can't help but think about, especially now, you know, a year into this pandemic, the incredible work that the people who have kept the world fed have had to do. And then the strange politicization we see in America of certain governors saying, you know, immigrants who work in in um in our food industry aren't going to get vaccinated. And I'm like, hold on a minute. It it feels so personal, and it feels so big. And sometimes when I look at the scope of the industry and where the problems are and where the people inside of it can be harmed, I think about your TED talk and you're talking about getting on the ground in Puerto Rico and you are going to all these meetings and this deva stating a hurricane. It just happened, and millions of people were without power and the island was devastated, and there was FEMA saying, well, okay, so what what program can we launch in twenty days? And you're just my favorite. You're like, twenty days, we have twenty minutes. And you just started making phone calls and all these people were saying, how did you get this and how did you get a kitchen? And how could you get food? And you said, because I called people, and you went into immediate response mode because you knew there was no time to waste. And and I wonder, does your experience in restaurants, because restaurants are immediate, cooking is immediate, serving people as immediate. Do you feel like in that moment, you could see through all the red tape and you knew that you essentially just had to get in the kitchen and get to work. By the time I was going through those meetings, I think we were already doing like thirty thousand meals a day, already already we we We We went from thousand meals a day to almost hundred fifty thousand meals a day. We went from ten friends to more than twenty five thousand Puerto Ricans that helped feed Puerto Rico. We went from and this only within our organization. I'm not counting many other people that they did amazing great things. We went from one kitchen to twenty six kitchens. We we didn't only do almost four million mills ourselves, but I know we were able to plant the seed in many other organizations, many other people all across the island that because they saw what we were doing, they said, you know what, we can do the same in our neighborhood. We can do the same in our little too town. And this was the most beautiful thing, not so much what we did, but how we are, how we were able to used to inspire many other people that maybe they didn't join us directly, but in the spirit we were are all one very big family doing tens of millions of meals. I think the words of Martin Luther King, the urgency of now, especially in emergencies, are more more important than ever for us. It's not even the urgency of now is the origency of yesterday, because if we don't even bring more urgency to the issues we're facing today and recognize that they come already from from behind, we are always too slow and to And you know, one thing I realized of here that some of the bigger problems we face they actually technically they have very simple solutions. We are humans. We are a beautiful animal is specy the homosoppience. We are we we are we are very unique species because we're smart. We are already uh, with a helicopter in the surface of Mars flying for four seconds. Uh. And this tells me that there's nothing the human is physical and not achieve when we put our empathy, our pragmatism and our brains and heard at work. Uh. And obviously when you mentioned before the health food system, it's plenty of things that work, obviously in our socialty. Uh. Sometimes I look around, I'm like, why some people so negative sayings that nothing, nothing works? When this works, this works, this works, this works. But we need to recognize that this this, this doesn't And especially for the people you mentioned, the voiceless, the gooest of our system, and I mean goes with the most respect, goes because technically they don't belong Goes because technically they are not part of the America. We love Goes because but let me tell you one thing. Those men and woman eleven million and documented for example, one to million Dreamers that they don't know any other country but America and the many other Americans, sometimes many generations that live in parts of America that they feel forgotten. Those people, especially in emergencies. I never see Republicans of Democrats. You see American people that they pull together, they believe in longer tables, and they do whatever it needs to be done to take care of their fellow citizens, the fellow Americans. That's the beauty of what we see, that people inside them. Everybody wants their worst demons out and everybody wants to bring the best angels on the table. And we need to have leaders, and we need to elect leaders that want to bring the best angels inside all of us. And when sometimes it is much better used to be creating mistrussed and and showing that those that don't look like you or are the enemy versus they are used people, that they are different and they bring something else to the table. Is when we began having problems. But are you still. I'm a big believer that America and the world is full of wonderful people that we need to give boys to those that have the good messages and try to put away the ones that want to break us apart. We don't need those people anywhere in America or anywhere around the world. Yeah, I agree, And I think you know, to your point, this idea of coming here as an immigrant and what the American dream means. You know, my mother's mother came here through allis Island and my father immigrated to the United States and the seventies, and you know, the American dream is the most alive and households of immigrants because it is this global idea of a literal dream, a family and opportunity. And and to your point, I get excited when people want to be here. I get excited. And diverse communities and the leaders who want us to think, um that someone is more American than someone else. I always want to know who they're getting paid by. I'm like, who's paying your bills? What do you what do you advocating for? Because and you've talked a lot about this with World Central Kitchen, you know, hunger is not a red state or a blue state crisis. Kentucky is an incredibly red state and in the last census, twelve percent of adults there so they didn't have enough to eat. And California is a very blue state and ten percent of adults here say they don't have enough to eat. So there there is a I almost feel like we need to lift the veil of of the lie. The other is m and say, hey, we're in this together. How can we heal this together? To your point, Jose, how can we stop talking about food waste and how can we start talking about If this many people in America go hungry every day and this is the amount of food that gets wasted wasted, why don't we just give those people this food and solve this problem. We we have the capabilities, but to so many people who aren't experts like you are, it it can feel insurmountable. It feels intimidating to try to fix it. So in all the advocacy you've done and all the learning about food and and you know, by the way, I'm going to brag on you for a minute because you're not going to do it, but you know you served four million meals after Hurricane Maria, and and you have done incredible work on the ground in so many avenues. You've been named one of Time magazines hundred most Influential People. You have Michelin Stars, you, you have a Humanities Medal, you have a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals at James Beard Award. I mean, you are at the top of your game in your personal career, and you are one of our most fierce and loving public advocates. So my curiosity is what what I see when we talk about everything you've done and achieved is expert expert expert expert. So as our expert, what would you suggest to people like me who care so much about this issue but don't know what it is they can do that idea? I'm one person. What can I do? What can I say? Who can I call? How can I advocate? How do we all as a collective, the folks listening here and the folks they are going to go talk to about this when this episode is over. How do we show up to help you help people? How do we show up for food and for hunger and for humanity? I said before that the big problems saying, hey, but he's solutions. I think very often I will say, and this has happened to me, and I'm trying to change still. I have time to change, is that, I will say in a very bad way, because you can do no harm. I want to end hunger in the world, but right now looks very difficult to achieve that. Right. So this is like if you're trying to get the apples at the very top of the trade. But why we don't concentrate in what we can all do? What about the low hanging fruit? The low hanging fruit is there for a reason. Those are the places and the things that you can touch, that you can be active and that actually you can't try to make a difference that then if you succeed, you can bring that example to all the communities, to all the states, through our country, or maybe to the world. So in my brain, I'm more and more as a big dreamer. I am for something. I born on July third teenth of nineteen six nine, and you know, we were arriving to the moon in that moment, and and uh, and I'm a cancer and and I'm a dreamer in many ways. But I think we need to have the boots on the ground and dreaming. Uh, they go hand by hand because the dreams allows you to think big, but the boots on the ground allows you to be successful in key things. So we've been talking sentire rife America about food deserts. In the richest country in the world. We have community after community, White Committee, Black communities, Native Americans, the Nalajo nation um. Anywhere is food deserts, and usually where there is food deserts happens is also job deserts, jobs deserts, hospital deserts, school district deserts. At the end, poor people they have. I'man nothing or nothing. Let's start try and used to fix one more products. Let's just stop having conferences about ending food deserts. Let's make sure we get the president, the governors, the congressman, the senators and say what the federal government can do in partnership with the private sector and in partnership with NGOs and the local communities to make sure that we stop talking about food deserts, because we're going there and we're making sure that every one of those communities will have a function in market where families can walk by because many of those families don't even have public transportation, or they don't own a car. Why we don't start making sure that they have access to fresh fruits and vestibles. Why we don't make sure that maybe because there is a tackle tract and a coffee shop and the local dinner, that those families, especially woman, especially women that have to work to jobs and still don't make it at the end of the month, that the food STAPs. We give them snaps more technically technically speaking, that they can use it in the local restaurants. In the process, you are fraying that woman sometimes from the labor of having to be feeding the entire families where she has to be working sixteen hours a day every day. In the process, that money helps with the family. In the process, that money helps that money to stay in her community, which will stop in suppoor all of the sudden, that local diner, that local food truck is doing better, all of the sudden they can be employing more people, all of the sudden, that one dollar that comes from the federal government, which by the way, I don't want to be giving anything to anybody, because people the one our pity, people want our respect. But we must understand that sometimes some Americans, some people in the world for behind. That's what you have a government to make sure that the government are not next to the ones we are doing well, but especially are next to the one is maybe not doing so well but with the wind behind the cells helping them sell on their own. We can do better by not throwing money of the problem, but investing in the solutions. If we're trying to help the poor neighborhoods of America, if we are trying to lift up those people from poverty, let's make sure that every dollar we put is not use something that is wasted, but something like actually not only empowers those families to move away from what the whole they may be, but helps their community, helps the local businesses, helps the local farmers, and all of the sudden is slowly. By slowly, using the low hanging fruit mentality, we can be fixing some of the bigger problems because they repeat the solutions are simple. But we need to have the will, because if we have the will, there will always be away. Yes, and some of the kinds of testing, and that's kind of how I think about it, right, We all as citizens, we invest in America, we pay taxes. There's meant to be a return on investment, and the return on investment has to be for the country. It has to be for the greatest good. And you've spoken a lot about how there are so many food and nutrition programs we take for granted. There are sectors in which the government invests that we benefit from that we take for granted because these investments were decided upon a long time ago. That the last time there was a food somewhe at the White House was sixty nine. It's obviously time for a new one. And and I get so excited about what you're talking about because you put some dollars into the community as an investment and the community grows. And you've talked about this with the Feed Act, and you wrote this amazing piece in the New York Times called we need a Food Secretary. So can you tell people little bit about what that act and what a food secretary if we made those changes, like, what could actually happen in terms of communities and in terms of policy. Well, I can say that is I know in this administration is a lot of things happening behind the scenes that hopefully we will see things and announcements in the next weeks and months. Obviously, I was trying to challenge everybody because you get attention when you try to create a new department very much right, and especially when when when I don't know why even anybody published whatever I write. But but people start thinking, and then you start having pocals from different people who said, what's wrong with the US? There what I'm not doing a good job about, Like I'm only saying when buns do better. What I'm trying to say is that I created a class ideas ago at Juge Washington University. The idea came almost ten years ago, which the idea was, let's create a food institute that we will put food in the middle and we will start seeing all the opportunities we have through food for job creation, climate change and environment. Understand our history, so we can't fix with better solutions and better decisions the present we face footage, immigration reform, footage, female homeland security. Food is empower empower in the countries near America to do better so we don't have the problem we are facing right now in the southern border. Because no no person wants to live their homes. They only do it when they're so hungry that they look to the place that maybe food all of the sudden footage at the heart of very much everything we are. But somehow food is never in the conversation of any politician barely ever, never at the most when they're they're talking to farmers, and that's about it. So food is the most important energy on the face of earth. Is not gas, it's not fuel, it's food because food moves the most important assets, which are not cars or planes, which are humans. Therefore, we must not take food for granted. Uh. And we're taking food for granted. So why we have health pandemic with Americans that are poor but arrabies at the same time. And this is happening. This is a new, a new conundrum of the century that only humans could create. That we will be mal fed, overweight, and with a lot of sickness in a process of trying to to stay alive, which is fascinating. So, uh, Secretary of Food, what I'm applying, I'm asking more is to have somebody near the President of the United States that in the same time he has national security advisors on defense, terrorism, any other issue that is important that the President is aware of. That person will be bringing to attention of the President at all times the important issues with the possible quick solutions in the short meet and long term, and more important understanding that we're not gonna fix the food problems we have in America and therefore around the world only at the duo s d A at the Department of Agriculture. I think Secretary Bill set is the right person for the times. He brings off experience from before uh, he knows his staff, and I do believe he is going to be bolder even he was in the times of President Obama, and hopefully we're gonna see good things happening in the next four years or beyond. But Food is also the Department of Transportation to make sure that the right infrastructure. Infrastructure is in place so if farmers have too much production of something, food doesn't go waste and can be delivered to other parts of America or soup kitchens or food banks. To make sure that the food that is not wasted, that we can pay the farmers so diven waste the right now, we're paying farmers almost for not producing. How are we crazy? We should be paying them for producing and macture that that money is share we people that may need in America maybe in other parts of Central America and or beyond food deserts. We need the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Defense. They should be investing in better quality school lunches. Why because what was the Department of Defense the ones that actually as Congress for extra money to feed children in the schools better after World War Two? Because they had no people to join the military. And we keep going and going. Instead of the Department of Health spending money in fixing Americans, let's make sure that the Department of Health invest as medicine, good quality food that keeps American healthy. All of the subbing, saving billions of dollars a year, all of the sudden keeping America working, America prosperous. You see, all those issues are highly connected. The people we have right Antijuana in the past, in the southern border, I've been there for many weeks. We got back to back in September, October November hurricanes Guatemala and door As Columbia underwater, entire firming areas. People lost their lifehoods, They love their homes, They had nothing. Yes, they have governments that maybe are not providing for them. But Europe America, the richest countries in the world, they must do better. So we invest in them. We create factories in those communities, we create jobs in those communities. Those communities do well, we do better. So as you see, food is fascinating because if you put it in the center and you analyze the world we live in connected to food, we can't have a better world only if we think what display the food in front of me can't change tomorrow. If I have the right ingredients on the plate, we must do that. That's why I'm asking to this administration and beyond I work also with the Trauma administration. I am a guy that one needs to feed people. I work with. Anybody is willing to work with us, is welling to work with me and listen. But with this administration, I believe that President by Then gave me the honor a few months ago that probably is the first time ever that is a town hall where a candidate for president dedicates the entire hour to talk about food issues. And to me, I'm very hopeful that President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will really put food closer to the center of the plate and hopefully come once and for all with a smarter, bigger decisions. Hopefully the conference well inside the White House, well outside, uh, well the secretary of food or some other form of leaders in the departments that will handle food like throying horses of good. I hope that in the next three years, three and a half years, we're gonna see a smart decisions made on behalf of American people, where we all are gonna believe that longer tables, now higher walls is how we're gonna be creating a better American Yes. Ah, And it feels, you know, to the point of the conversation, how how big a problem can feel. These are the kinds of solutions that make it feel possible. I feel sparkly and excited and inspired because when you see the way the systems are all connected, and you realize that if you can get into the middle of those connections and create a solution, the solution travels to all sides of the problem and does its work. It feels so exciting. And I hope that because we're in this time where more and more people want to talk about systems and how to make them better, they that they will be willing to listen to exactly what you're saying and realize the solutions are they're not political, and they're not geographical. They're really and truly based in every single community, no matter where they are or how they vote. There's a way forward for us if we if we use this as our central connection and it it feels exciting. I I am so amazed with all you've done, and I really can't wait to see what's coming next for you because you feel like one of those people to me who I want to look to and say, Okay, what's he doing, because that's where I want to get involved. You need to understand that on this pandemic, we began very much activating. Wasn't the kitchen the first of February when we went to Japan to start feeding the first cruise ship that was arriving to port with COVID cases on board, and we began feeding in Yokohama because nobody seems were able to handle it. We've done many issues, many times cholera situations, and where we are it is never color so because we have very good systems for health and and the health protocols to protect our teams, to protect the people were feeding. We follow helping Governor Newson in Auckland when the next cruise ship was arriving in March with more people with COVID, and in that moment we realized that early on that COVID was going to be hitting everybody. We began looking at the badly college Spanish flu we I began learning about how people handle it. Over a century ago, we began buying masks, all of the salam and I remember I was with my car giving away and nary five masks to hospitals in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, New York City because we had masks, because we bought them for our teams, for our cooks. So at the at the end of we can like, how can we be so ahead of what is to come when when on paper you have experts that the only should be thinking about that uh and get more ready for it. But that's fine. I hope that the learning curve is there. I hope that we're gonna understand better our systems. I hope we will realize better what doesn't work. We should embraise what works and what wasn't worked. We should stop figure pointing and create excising. What we should do is get to work butts on the ground and the star implementing solutions to the problems we're facing so we can keep looking at the future with the hope that we all want in our lives. Yeah, and you guys have done such amazing work this year responding and taking care of people all over the place during this pandemic, which you know has really turned the world upside down and increased food and security in so many communities. So thank you for for all of that. And any time you're going anywhere, like if you need an extra set of hands. I grew up in an Italian kitchen. I'm pretty good. I'm excellent with the cast iron pan. You just let me know. I'm I'm ready to go any time. Uh, any time. So so so you you're welcome. I mean, I know you and many many people has helped us. Uh, this wouldn't be happening without the help of so many people that I didn't even have time to and get people that believe that we had to be ahead of the game, that we had to be ready for the wars. Unfortunately we were only the little tip of the iceberg. But what I know is that we were there at the very early when hospitals were having issues, to feed people, when elderly homes were having issues, when entire communities like the Navajo Nations, we're having issues. At one moment, we were in hundreds of hospitals a day UH in multiple countries. I had to go to Spain where we opened UH sixteen seventeen kitchens because I had to go to the country that I come from, and I was so proud. We were able to activate the entire restaurant community there, and we did the best we could to show that if we want, we can do it. In the process, you know, fires in California and Colorado, tornadoes in Ayowa, the Moine, hurricanes in Lake Charles, Lusiana, Honduras, Colombia, Guatemala, Lebanon, Indonesia, and the amazing thing myself, I've been to nine nine ten countries and a year later, I've been vaccinated, but I cannot believe. At the end, the only thing we did was we were masked, We kept distance, We took it very seriously. We washed hands even more than everybody tells me. If I say, why are you are your hands so soft and not like because I washed my hands so often every single day, I look like a baby. Uh, and this is what we did as SOFIA. These I'm very crowd of because I remember closing my restaurants around the fourteenth of March even earlier, and we created this protocol when when we were not having anything from anybody, no city, nobody was giving us what to do. So we did that and we shared with everybody. We tried to believe it fun because the times were dark and and this was Musky that was telling all of us how to behave in the kitchen, how to keep healthy, how to how to protect yourself, and how to protect each other. I can't I can't tell you that many many of the team members we had, they went through the entire thing COVID free. Obviously some got it, some got it even before. But I will say that overall, the vast majority of people we've been working with, we've been very blessed and very lucky for how much activation we had within a helicopter, within in military planes, in in in humbies, all across with different militaries of different countries, with volunteers all over the place, and we try to fit everybody, bring water to everybody. But more important, we try to make sure that we will not only protect ourselves, but that we will help protect the people we were feeding. And I hope we did a good job. And I'm very proud of not all the team of all Central Kitchen alone, but the many men and women that they've given time or money, or the many people working on the farms, on the fields, on the fishing boats, on the delivery on the supermarkets, refilling all the shelves so everybody could feed their families, or waiting in the comfort of our homes when we knew somebody will be delivering the home if you could afford that. Those men and women, obviously our nurses and all the health to me are people that we're going to have to be once this pandemic is over. Even understanding that we lost uh many people and many of us. We lost people we knew and loved ones I think we're gonna have once this pandemic is over. A big run of applause to all those people that not expecting anything and return, nor expecting a clap on a laws. They show up every day with only one idea to do what they were here to do, to take care of everybody else, to take care of the family, and in the process keeping America and the world fat. Those men and woman for me are are my heroes. And in this pandemic UH they shown that the humanities was served with those individuals because they don't care about themselves. They only care about the betterment of the lives of others. And this is this should be the new American dream, And this should be the new dream of the world we need to live in. Where do you look for your own and you love ones, obviously, but the new American dreams should be where every one of us also wants to fight to provide for others the same things that you want to provide for your own. That should be the new American dream. Yeah, to treat your neighbors the way you treat your loved ones. You know, every person in our community deserves that kind of love. And I think about something you said after the the hurricane when you guys were working in Puerto Rico, and you said, you know, we have volunteers who will go to the ends of the earth for people. And you talked about how you've built so many of the things in your life because you have friends who are crazy enough to do the big thing that you want to do. And I think it's in in between those things. You know, your your loved ones, and your friends who, in response to your big dreams or you saying I think we can fix this, say yeah, I'm in I'll go with you to do that. And then the strangers who when you say this is how I want to fix this, show up and say I'll do whatever it takes to help that. That's the energy I hope we bring out of this pandemic and into our future. And and I know you have so many good things in store for us. I'm I'm curious, and this is my favorite and final thing to ask everyone who comes on the show. It's called work in progress. You have a lot going on, but I'm curious if it's if there's something that sticks out, if it's personal, professional, political, whatever, What feels like a work in progress in your life right now? Oh? Well, one work in progress is I realized that life never comes with instructions. And I've been trying to be the best friend to my wife I could, and my to my friends, the best husband I could, and the best father I could, and I feel I'm always behind, like between work and and my daughters. Now they're going to university and and I think my working progress is sure that I catch up with them and I can become their best friend, their best father, and their best husband. Uh not like I don't think I don't a bad job. But at the end of the day, I'm I've been able to do all the things I do in my life because those for women in my life, they've been very unselfish. They've been always even when they missed me, They've been always behind me, even when I was not here, They've been behind me. And uh, you know, I need to take care of the people working with me. I need to take obviously care how many people around the world that I care for. But at the same time, obviously I need to take care of of the people that like my wife has been with me already years. I don't know what she keeps up with me, but but I know eternally I need to be thankful because if I've been able to do any of the things I do in my life, it is because then So this is my working progress, trying to trying to be more for her because she's always there for me. That's one of my working progress more personal. But but the one thing used to add one more, uh, three billion people on planet Earth cooked with charcoal or what Especially women, poverty is a formula the energy you put out versus the energy you bring in. Is many millions of woman in the world that they give more away than what they bring in. That's why they're poor and they're hungry, not because they are not any better. It's only because they give everything they have. We must make sure that every household in the world is able to make sure that feeding their families is not something like takes them hours because they have to to to go for wood on the forest, or to work four hours to buy the charcoal where they buy the charcoal daily because they don't have money used to buy for a month. And we need to make sure that we liberate those women from almost the servitude, and that is feeding humanity, making them feeding the wall easier faster, so they love they give away, can even share more. That's what I hope it will be my work in progress the next twenty five thirty years of my life. Bring one clin cookie stuff the same way you and I we have a home to every single family in the world. If we do that, maybe hunger and poverty is something we can eradicate. In our lifetimes. But we need, we need, we have a lot of work ahead of us. Indeed, are you excited about all of this new battery and solar technology that might help us solve that problem more quickly? Yes? And no, Uh, sometimes we need to be careful with the talk about technology. And even it's been a lot of achievements. We see farmers in rural America, that in rural Africa that are able to know better what's the price in the market on their phones, or that they are able to all of the sudden and the banking on their phones. But then no, everybody necessarily has a phone yet on everybody necessarily has connection to a cell tower. We've been doing things like, for example, in some projects where now we are able to give families, especially women, gas tanks that has UH technology attached to the bottle and so they can be buying the gas as they needed daily. Even we may give them hundreds of dollars worth of gas in the tank. They don't need to pay more than what they need. This is a new way of giving a loan. It's a new way to giving UH interest free loan, if you may. This is a way that yes, technology can be helping, But I'm only saying that we need to be careful that we don't go with the technology quicker than many millions around the world have time to catch up on. So, like always, pragmatismbol win the day the right. It is good that we're both and we bring technology and advances forward, but let's make sure that the process we don't keep leaving people behind, because if all those people will never have the opportunity to catch up again. So so it's it's it's I'm optimistic, but again always with prognatism, making sure that we don't go so quickly that that sometimes a simple solution can be implemented versus a more sophisticated technological one. Let's let's make sure that technology doesn't go ahead of of the simple solutions that we can implement quicker and faster, uh, and where everybody can be part of. So I love technology, don't misunderstand me. But at the same time, I want to make sure that technology doesn't create other problems beyond the problems that we're trying to solve. That's that's that's why all I have to say about that. Yeah, that's really wise advice. I think two people looking to solve problems, to make sure your solutions are immediate. That's really great, jose Thank you. This has just been such a joy. I've really loved speaking with you today, and I hope we get to do more of this in the future. Let's do it.