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Chefs are artists. Good ones draw people in with their inspiredplates and atmosphere performance art meets flavor. Whiledeliciousness at a restaurant is first and foremost, more patronsare now also making decisions about where to eat based on thevalues behind the food like social justice for the workers,healthy growing practices, and support for local economies. Last week in an interview with The New York Times , chefs Thomas Keller who has received many awards for hiscreative approach to food at restaurants French Laundry and the Bouchon empire and Andoni Luis Aduriz, of the restaurant Mugaritz in Spain, took the Damien Hirst approach to feeding people: It sabout the experience and whatever it takes to create radical andinspiring food is more important than the potential impact on theenvironment. With the relatively small number of people I feed,is it really my responsibility to worry about carbon footprint? remarked Keller . Both chefs admitted that they buy local when they can, but didn twant to focus on that as a practice. According to Aduriz, toalign yourself entirely with the idea of sustainability makes chefscomplacent and limited. The good food movement would beg to differ. The proliferation offarm-to-table restaurants, farmers markets and small foodbusinesses, and the increased visibility of food policy issues inthe media all speak to a sea change under way. Keller and Aduriz seem like dinosaurs when you compare them toyounger chefs like Ren Redzepi of Noma , for example, who is proving that taking a local, values-drivenapproach to food can be inspiring, delicious and award-worthy. Allthree chefs restaurants are featured on the World s 50 BestRestaurants list, but Noma is number one. While the list is not at the heart of discussions around food, thechefs that appear there do wield an influence far beyond the peoplethey feed day in and day out at their restaurants. As the articlein the Times points out, While their restaurants may be accessible only tothe world s 0.1 percent, chefs at top restaurants influence theentire global food community with the way they think, write, tweet,and talk about food not just the way they cook it. This is not the first time Keller has made the case for quality above values . Only now, it sounds even staler than the day-old bread at BouchonBakery. Food preparation can be a creative pursuit, but at the end of theday, chefs are just feeding people. They create an experience offlavor, but the results end up in someone s stomach. And inrequiring an agricultural product for their creations, a chef isreliant on nature s whims in a way that most artists are not. Thisis why the locavore movement is not a trend easily dismissed, butpart of a greater paradigm shift around how we view and valueresources. While reactions to the Times story continued on Twitter , scientists, advocates, and food policy media gathered last weekat the Monterey Bay Aquarium for the annual Sustainable FoodsInstitute, part of Cooking for Solutions . The purpose of the event, according to aquarium ExecutiveDirector Julie Packard, is to explore how the food choices wemake affect the health of our soil, water, and oceans. In contrast to the antiquated remarks put forth by Keller andAduriz, James Beard Award winner and owner and chef of therestaurant Dressing Room in Westport, CT, Michel Nischan, was present to be honored asChef of the Year. He is also known for his work as President andCEO or Wholesome Wave , an organization that seeks to increase access to healthy food.They have had huge success to date through doubling the value ofSNAP food stamps used at farmers markets, resulting in $1million more spent on produce in 2010. While not every chef feels inspired to use their celebrity and timeto start an organization to help people who would probably neverset foot in their restaurant, Nischan couldn t be more in linewith the food Zeitgeist . A growing number of chefs are now taking part in the evolvingconversation on how we value food. Chef Alexandra Guarnaschelli of the restaurant Butter in New York City remarked last week on a panel focused on foodwaste that, Chefs can convince people to eat things that theydon t know about or normally prize. She was eager for people toeat sardines and other forage fish, saying, Let s just stopeating tuna for 300 years. As a presentation at Cooking for Solutions by Jonathan Foley,Director of the Institute of the Environment at the University ofMinnesota, demonstrated, chefs ignore the sustainability of theirsources at their own peril. We re running out of everything, said Foley. Agricultureuses up a planet s worth of land, a planet s worth of water andagriculture is the single biggest contributor to greenhouse gasemissions. If you want to solve climate change you absolutely haveto address agriculture and its emissions. It s huge. Fixing this issue will require us to look beyond the next plate.Many great artists have produced world-renowned work withinconstraints. Similarly, chefs face a problem of resource scarcitythat demands their creativity. Photo: a recent plate at Noma restaurant in Copenhagen, by@ohgeffroy on Instagram. Paula Crossfield is the managing editor of Civil Eats. She is alsoa regular contributor to the Huffington Post and is a contributing producer at The Leonard Lopate Show on New York Public Radio where she focuses on food issues. An avidcook and gardener, she currently seeks out urban places tocultivate in San Francisco. You can follow her on Twitter for the latest food policy news. 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