National Food Museum™

Exploring Food in All Its Dimensions

History • Culture • Nutrition • Climate Change/Environment • Social Justice • Animal Welfare

Our Mission

To celebrate and explore the transformative power of food to nourish people and our planet.

Food is culture, it is health, it is the environment, and it is community. The new food museum will celebrate the power of food to uplift, nourish, and inspire - and encourage us to come together to promote good health and protect our planet.

Chef José Andrés

Our vision

A world where food and how it is grown contributes to healthy people, a sustainable planet, and a more vibrant culture.

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  • Sample exhibits

    Agriculture's effects on the environment

    America’s farmers are the most productive in the world, but that prodigious output comes at a cost: water pollution, depletion of groundwater, soil erosion, wildlife loss, and massive use of energy that contributes to climate change.  The challenge is to maximize agriculture’s benefits and minimize its costs.

  • Sample exhibits

    Six people who changed how we eat - for better or worse

    Our diets have been dramatically altered by entrepreneurs like McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc and Campbell Soup’s founder Joseph Campbell.  But new technologies like refrigerated rail cars and microwave ovens, books like Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet, and chefs like Alice Waters in Berkeley, have also influenced what we eat.

  • Sample exhibits

    Typical diets: American, Asian, African, Latin American

    Immigrants have brought with them cuisines and restaurants, from Afghani to Zimbabwean, that delight our taste buds and enrich our lives.

  • Sample exhibits

    How food can enhance - or undermine - health

    America’s abundance of nutrient-rich food has eliminated scurvy, beri-beri, and other deficiency diseases.  But ubiquitous, delicious, high-calorie foods, often loaded with added sugars and salt, have contributed to heart disease, high blood pressure, and soaring rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes.

  • Sample exhibits

    Animal agriculture has become industrialized

    Small family farms with modest numbers of pigs and chickens running around barnyards are all but extinct.  Hogs, cattle, and poultry are now raised primarily in huge feedlots and other facilities that minimize costs, except the costs of inhumane confinement, antibiotic resistance, and environmental pollution

  • Sample exhibits

    The human diet has changed radically over the past 10,000 years

    For millennia, humans kept hunger at bay by hunting land and sea animals and gathering berries and other plant foods.  A few communities around the world still eat that way.  But more and more people eat diets comprised largely of highly processed packaged foods.  At the time of the American Revolution, foods were primarily natural and farms were organic.  But diets based largely on whole foods have given way to convenient packaged foods and restaurant meals.

    What people are saying

    “….a basic human need encompassing …science, health, and culture, National Food Museum will be a civic treasure and essential destination for people of all ages."
    Art MolellaCurator Emeritus and Founding Director
    Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation
    “A National Food Museum is a fabulous and important idea! Food can be a cause of good or ill health, and this museum can help tilt the balance toward health.”
    Tom FriedenPresident and CEO, Resolve to Save Lives; former director of the CDC 
    “In the quest to regain control of our eating habits …., there isn't a more powerful move we could make than to create this food museum."
    Michael Mossauthor of Hooked and Salt, Sugar, Fat; former New York Times writer
    "Food is culture, it is health, it is the environment, and it is community. The new food museum will celebrate the power of food to uplift, nourish, and inspire - and encourage us to come together to promote good health and protect our planet.”
    Chef José AndresFounder, World Central Kitchen and Food Systems Advocate
    “The Food Museum will be an important way of increasing public understanding of and support for a different, vastly better food system for all.”
    Ricardo SalvadorDirector, Food & Environment Program, Union of Concerned Scientists
    “A museum that looks at our changing food opportunities and at the same time examines the diversity of foods and cultures will be a great addition to our heritage.”
    Alan GoldbergProfessor of Environmental Health and Engineering, Emeritus, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
    “This new food museum looks like just what we need to teach and learn about the role of food in health and society. Even better, it looks like fun. I’m all for it.”
    Marion NestleProfessor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, New York University, and author of books about food politics
    "What a wonderful idea!  More than just about any other subject, food and its production has defined our world, no matter where we live. A museum devoted to the subject will be a great educational window on this critically important subject." 
    Harold SkramstadPresident Emeritus, Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village; Former Director, Chicago Historical Society (now Chicago History Museum)
    "The food we consume, and the way we produce it, affects our lives, our health, billions of sentient beings, and our planet more than anything else we do. The National Food Museum will recognize that fact and help the public to appreciate its significance."
    Peter SingerPROFESSOR OF BIOETHICS, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, AND AUTHOR, ANIMAL LIBERATION NOW.
    “I hope that everyone who cares about the impact of food on our health and our planet will join me in supporting the National Food Museum. The museum promises to be an informative, engaging means of encouraging adults and children alike to become an essential part of the solution to food-related problems.”
    Daniel LubetzkyFounder of KIND Snacks
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