Chef and food justice educator Bryant Terry took to the TEDMED stage recently to share his approach to cooking and teaching: “Start with the visceral to ignite the cerebral and end with the political.”

From his own experience as a “junk food junky” to the inspiration he found in the Black Panthers’ free breakfast program, to his efforts in New York and the Bay Area to bring food justice to marginalized communities, Terry takes viewers along on his own journey of understanding and shares his ongoing desire to change the larger food landscape.

As Terry describes it, he has been: “helping people control their destinies, helping people who once felt powerless understand the power and the agency that they had to own and drive the solutions to community food and justice; and helping people stop blaming themselves and understand the historical and innumerable physical, economic, and geographic barriers that prevent their communities from accessing to affordable healthy, fresh food.” More power to him.