I'm sure there are people who just assume we can't have hungry people in America because so many people are obese, but once you start to understand that a major cause of obesity is inadequate nutrition, it really changes that conversation.

A lot of people in this country are obese because of a form of malnutrition. One thing I'd like to do is to help people understand the correlation between a steady diet of empty calories - though you may not experience hunger pangs, you can't really function well if all you're eating are things like ramen noodles, or chips, cookies, and sodas, things that are quite typically inexpensive and affordable because of the way we subsidize the ingredients that go into them.

The prices of really unhealthy food are kept artificially low, and that contributes to obesity.

Until we express ourselves, tell our elected officials what we expect from them, we can't expect them to do it on their own.

I'm sure there are people who just assume we can't have hungry people in America because so many people are obese, but once you start to understand that a major cause of obesity is inadequate nutrition, it really changes that conversation.

The thing about kids is that they don't have the broader perspective of what's happening on a national level. Anything that's going wrong in their world, they somehow assume is unique to them and they're somehow to blame. It turns into an issue of shame.