Trickle-Down Foodonomics: Do the Elite Really Change the Way We Eat?

The chef-activist is now as much a part of the grassroots food movement as animal welfare groups and muckraking journalists. Jamie Oliver is one of the most vocal advocates of the United Kingdom's sugar tax. White House chef Sam Kass was one of the most effective surrogates for Michelle Obama and her Let's Move! campaign. Vegan Chloe Coscarelli used her 2010 win on the Food Network's Cupcake Wars to show that baked goods do not, in fact, require butter or heavy cream.

Perhaps most acclaimed is James Beard Award-winning Dan Barber, whose book The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food argues for a new vision of the American meal, in which grains and vegetables dominate and meat plays a supporting role. Yet at his restaurants, Blue Hill, in New York and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, north of the city, that's an expensive proposition: The tab is $188, plus tax and tip, for the bar tasting menu upstate.