What is in your kitchen?
I have a wonderful view of San Francisco's coastal mountain range. I purposely made the kitchen the nicest room in the house. I´ve been vegetarian since 1970. All my fruit and vegetables are organic and very occasionally I eat organic salmon. I also have a terrace garden where I grow orchard fruits and leafy greens and I occasionally shop at the Whole Foods supermarket in Mill Valley.

How would you sum up your food philosophy?
The more colours in a meal the better. I also want locally grown food that is pesticide-free. It should be good for me and people who produce it. Food is becoming political. US government policies are creating a population of fat, unhealthy dimwits. We need to vote with our forks and demand governments subsidise healthy food. I’m also getting more militant about changing the “corporate-ocracy”. The last film I made is about genetics and the patenting of DNA by Monsanto and other big pharmaceutical companies and the effect it is having on our food system.

How has food and our attitude to it changed in your lifetime?
When I grew up there were still small fruit and veg stalls and less processed food. We had to be at home to eat food at 6pm as a family. Now everyone eats in their car. But there have been changes recently. People want to know the relationship between food, health and social justice. They are making a conscious choice to find out where food has come from - it´s the opposite of the “shut up and eat” attitude of the past.

What annoys you about the food culture in the US?
Fast food in our schools and the financial deals that allow junk food and soft drinks to be sold to our kids. Poor diet causes health and attention problems in children which they are then prescribed drugs to cure. It is hard from kids to recover from that. Studies into the differences between eating organic and non-organic show eating organic makes a huge difference to physical, emotional and mental health. An amazing amount of people in the US are on mood-altering drugs which might not be necessary if they ate well and exercised.

Expert View

I think a lot of people have turned away from farmers’ markets

Arthur Potts Dawson

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What is America's biggest food secret?
Eighty per cent of Americans have eaten genetically engineered food. This figure comes from government studies. People just don´t realise and are outraged when they find out.

Do you prefer eating in or eating out?
I like eating in. I do filmmaking work out of part of my house and have a team of people who come in and help me. We eat lunches together and it’s great to have civilised meals and good conversation.

What is the next big (real) food trend?
It´s all about accountability. I saw a cartoon recently of a man in a market holding up a piece of fruit saying to the stallholder, “I’d like to see the paperwork on this pear”. It’s funny but it is a good example of today's concerns about food security and food safety. If food transport was disrupted, most of us are just a few days away from starvation.

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