I don't understand why we have laws that prevent someone from walking a school campus and selling alcohol or drugs but somehow can't feed our children who attend those schools a healthy balanced diet, which I think is a lot worse. It's offensive and I think anyone who isn't offended by it is an idiot.

Don't eat till you're full, eat till you're tired.

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.

When someone tells me that they insist on having drinks with me, and there are some cultures where sealing the deal or celebrating or having a guest in the home, it is very traditional to slam down a couple shots or whatever the local grog is. I just tell them I'm allergic, which is not a lie, you know alcoholism and drug addiction in many ways are described as an allergy of the body and the mind. So I just tell them I'm allergic and they're like, "Oh, no problem."

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.

The whole decision to do my show was that I was trying to "true up" my work life and my personal life and I wanted the principles in both of them to be the same. And the only way that I could think of to do that was to make a show about exploring cultures through food that demonstrated those principles with every story that we told.

I think our former first lady said it last month in one of her first speeches since leaving the White House, I think I'm getting the quote nearly right- "Who could possibly be against feeding children wholesome, good food?" Well, it turns out there are people who are against feeding children wholesome good food and there are people who are against solving our homelessness problem, they're against solving our food security issues and by and along political lines.