Food is a lens through which we see the world, and increasingly our vision is focused on our health, the health of communities, and that of our planet. Our food choices—linked as they are to both acute and chronic disease prevention and control—are a primary driver of our health. These same choices affect the livelihoods of more than one billion people around the world who work each day to produce and serve our food.

As we move further into the 21st century, chefs and culinary leaders are poised to assume a larger, pivotal role in integrating key imperatives of taste, health, the environment, community, and business and economics.

Against this background, we ask:

• What if our most delicious foods—just coincidentally—were, or also could be, healthful and environmentally sustainable?
• What if America's most talented chefs, scientists and business leaders along with today's culinary students were collectively engaged in driving towards business-friendly solutions to our obesity and healthcare crises—and challenges to the future of our global food security?
• What if we could create new approaches to collaboration between nutrition and medical experts, chefs, and environmental scientists to help the business community develop new models of innovation—and new, long-term business strategies—around opportunities for the future of food and foodservice?

Menus of Change: The Business of Healthy, Sustainable & Delicious Food Choices

Menus of Change is a ground-breaking new leadership initiative launched in 2012 by The Culinary Institute of America in collaboration with select partners that will work to create a long-term, practical vision for the integration of optimal nutrition and public health, environmental stewardship and restoration, and social responsibility concerns within the foodservice sector and beyond.

The initiative, which will include an annual leadership summit and "Future of Food" report for industry executives along with other ongoing professional development opportunities, will focus on the creation of new business strategies and models to support successive stages of innovation and entrepreneurship projecting forward towards mid-century. Critically, it will also inform the Institute's approach to educating the next generation of culinary and business leaders.

The goal of Menus of Change: The Business of Healthy, Sustainable & Delicious Food Choices is to create a world-class structure of collaboration between leaders in nutrition research and public health, the environmental sciences and sustainability, the culinary arts, and business and management to consider and incubate new models of food and foodservice innovation that anticipate future imperatives and are economically sustainable, and to provide the next generation of culinary and business leaders the skills and knowledge to work at the intersection of health, environmental and social concerns.

This initiative is being guided by the CIA-Harvard Menus of Change Scientific & Technical Advisory Council as well as the college's newly formed Sustainable Business Leadership Council.

Download Menus of Change Overview

For additional information, please contact:

Greg Drescher
Vice President of Strategic Initiatives & Industry Leadership
The Culinary Institute of America
g_dresch@culinary.edu

Arlin Wasserman
Chair of the Menus of Change Sustainable Business Leadership Council
Founder and Partner, Changing Tastes
arlin@changingtastes.net

Shara Orem
Director - Sponsorship Planning & Outreach, Strategic Initiatives & Advancement
707-967-2439
s_orem@culinary.edu

Cathy Jorin
Director of Special Projects
707-537-7742
cathyjorin1@aol.com