While some people may think being a chef only entails making enticing dishes and pushing the culinary boundaries, being a part of the food industry involves much more.

Without food, we cannot survive, and that is why issues that affect the food industry are so important.

You have to balance, but you can be aggressive as a chef. It benefits the food. You have to be passionate. You can't be angry cooking.

Yet the organic label itself—like every other such label in the supermarket—is really just an imperfect substitute for direct observation of how a food is produced, a concession to the reality that most people in an industrial society haven’t the time or the inclination to follow their food back to the farm, a farm which today is apt to be, on average, fifteen hundred miles away.

My advice for any entrepreneur or innovator is to get into the food industry in some form so you have a front-row seat to what's going on.

Even just a few spices or ethnic condiments that you can keep in your pantry can turn your mundane dishes into a culinary masterpiece.