For every $1 advertisers spend advertising something healthful like apples, they spend $500 advertising junk food.

The problem is that we are living now with the consequences of the others people mistake. It would be nice to make our own and learn from them. That is the art of democracy. That is the art of citizenship.

One of the most abused country on earth is Mexico. The marketing spills over the border, and people are persuaded to eat food that's bad for them, more in rich countries than in poor ones. I was traveling the world. What really struck me was the way we engage with food - how it's a global phenomenon - the world becoming more and more disconnected from it.

There isn't enough planet for everyone to eat as much meat as the United States does. The meat industry is responsible for a dead zone the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico every year because of the runoff through the Mississippi - runoff from hog farms basically nukes the water.

When you have weird policy decisions in the United States that then ripple out throughout the world, the rest of the world really takes it on the chin. When the U.S. decides to set their corn on fire rather than to eat it, which is what the biofuels policy basically is - then that drives up the price of corn. It drives up the price of substitutes. And all of a sudden you have a sort of spiral of food prices. And other countries don't have the resources, because they're not allowed to, to weather the storm.

Generosity makes us happiest. We'll be happier people when we share, not when we impose, but when we learn from one another. Because when I'm connected to everyone I disappear... in being excellent you lose yourself. And when you're connected to everyone, that's the best thing that can happen.

I think we do need to worry about a food shortage, but we also need to worry about the quality of the food. A lot of the stuff that's marketed to us tastes delicious because it fools our bodies. It fools our bodies into thinking that a particular mix of fat and salt and sugar is good for us. In fact, it isn't. That's why you're seeing in the United States life expectancies are declining, particularly in rural areas. You're seeing life expectancies falling in part because of diet.