There's a great book by my friend Nate Garvis called Naked Civics that was very important in my development as someone with a social conscious and that has become, I guess, something of an activist.

I know what it's like to be hungry. I know what it's like to be homeless. I know what it's like to have to choose between breaking the law and feeding yourself. I know what it's like to take meals at shelters and at Salvation Army facilities. I know what it's like to beg for money on the streets.

The food to me is just a hook, it's a button, it happens to be the social construct and the cultural totem that I'm most familiar with. So of course I built the show around food because it's where I'm familiar.

We currently reside in the wealthiest and most powerful civilization in the history of the world. The idea that someone should go hungry or be without the bare essentials of life is, to me... It's not shameful, I actually think it's criminal.

When someone who's been homeless and actually had to take meals on the handout or steal purses on the backs of park benches to be able to eat, not that that was right. My head was definitely not in the right place when I was out there using but when you share your greatest weaknesses and the most intimate parts of your story, I think it makes a real impact on people. I think what comes from the heart reaches the heart.

Remember, one in every five people in America goes hungry and there are certainly a whole lot of folks who are getting three meals a day who do know where their next week's food is coming from who are very sensitive to this issue who would like everybody to be fed. Add to that the number parents who have children in schools who would like their children to be eating healthy, wholesome food and don't want sugary sodas or chocolate milk to be chuggable at any moment of the day by their kids.

I think right now the focus of people involved in food issues have to be legislative resolution at the county, city, state, and national level. I just don't think we can run away from it anymore.