I turned into a monk when my mother went to learn Buddhism in Burma. While she learnt at the monastery, I used to roam around with a begging bowl and ask for food.
In the 21st century our tastes buds, our brain chemistry, our biochemistry, our hormones and our kitchens have been hijacked by the food industry.
While weight loss is important, what's more important is the quality of food you put in your body - food is information that quickly changes your metabolism and genes.
Elephants seek food elsewhere if their route is blocked, and raiding crops and grain stores brings them into conflict with people, often resulting in deaths on both sides.
For the first few years we lived in a tiny rented cottage at the bottom of a friend's garden. We often joked that there was plenty of film in the fridge, but not too much food!
We wouldn't think of going to our doctor and saying 'Treat me the way doctors treated people in the 19th Century,' and yet that's what we're demanding in food production.
I understand human needs. I grew up where far too many people lived day to day without elemental needs like food and shelter.
Save the Children is an awesome charity that has helped more than 125 million children around the world, providing everything from school books to food to blankets and shelter.
Whatever I'm doing, I'm in that moment and I'm doing it. The rest of the world's lost. If I'm cooking some food or making soup, I want it to be lovely. If not, what's the point of doing it?
When it becomes hard for me not to eat bad food, I try to think about what I have to do and what is ahead of me and what I want to achieve.
I feel the pressure to be toned, yeah, and everyone's going on about the thigh gap, but I like food more than exercise, so I'll just carry on that way.
An enormous number of mothers in the U.S. are working double time, graveyard shifts, and more than one job just to put food on the table for their kids.
People think that if you have a huge appetite, then you'll be better at it. But actually, it's how you confront the food that is brought to you. You have to be mentally and psychologically prepared.
We lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Northwest D.C. I was essentially raised by a Panamanian man and a Jamaican woman. That's why I have such a fascination with Jamaican food.
If I am honest, my food is actually quite far removed from both the food of my mother and my father.
I would still like to own and run a restaurant serving Indian food with a good dollop of Parsi cooking - which you can't seem to get anywhere.
Our family was on the lunatic fringe. My mother was always completely irrepressible. My father made crowd noises into a microphone.
I like to feel that what I'm doing portrays this: a family where there is love between mother, father and the kids. It's a subject that is near and dear to me.
You always draw inspiration from your family or your parents if they've proven to be inspirational. My mother is someone who's always been inspirational to me.
My mother was a public school teacher in Virginia, and we didn't have any money, we just survived on happiness, on being a happy family.
I'm from a very politically and socially conscious family. My mother always made a point of making us look at what was going on around us and take stock of our part in it.
