8th Annual Spring Benefit

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Celebrating more than two decades of empowering children across America to make healthy food choices independently.
   

At the benefit, Spoons Across America honors the outstanding efforts of individuals and corporations committed to supporting their community through the promotion of healthy eating, ensuring access to quality food, and advancing culinary and nutrition-based educational programs.

Join us for a lively 90-minute VIP Cocktail Reception in the Metropolitan Club's Great Hall with Master of Ceremonies, Emmy-winning and four-time James Beard Award-winning TV personality, chef, writer, and social justice advocate, Andrew Zimmern, an elegant three-course seated dinner, special guest speakers, and an exciting live auction.  

Festive Cocktail Attire (Men are required to wear a jacket and tie, no jeans allowed)

8th Annual Spring Benefit Committee

Co-Chairs
Katherine Gage Boulud - Jeff Bank

8th Annual Spring Benefit Committee
Lauren Amanda Adler - Audrey Bellovin - Marisa Colaneri - David Curtis

Dr. Lara Devgan - Lynda Dias - David Finkel - Tara Halper

Rita Jammet - Evan Merlis - Lauren Muzinich - Rachelle Parker

Salvatore Rizzo - Whitney Rouse - Lauren Secchi - Suzanne Seymour

Stephanie Stamas - Natalia Torres - Annie Watt

Individual Award for Excellence
Daphne Oz
 

Live Life Unlimited.

Daphne Oz is an Emmy Award-winning television host, New York Times-bestselling author, natural foods chef, wife, and mother of 4. She has amassed an online following of nearly 2.5 million who flock to her channels for content to inspire more delicious, more beautiful, and more fun living through family, food, beauty, fashion and wellness.

Daphne is known to television audiences for her effortless, confidence-boosting recipes, healthy twists, and her delicious approach to living life in full. She was previously co-host of ABC's The Chew and the syndicated daytime culinary show The Good Dish, and is currently a judge on the FOX hit MasterChef Junior and a guest judge on FOX's MasterChef.

Her newest cookbook, Eat Your Heart Out: All-Fun, No-Fuss Food to Celebrate Eating Clean - a collection of 150 recipes free from gluten and refined sugar and full of flavor - was an instant New York Times-bestseller.  The book details the simple, 5-days on, 2-days off reset Daphne has followed after pregnancy and whenever she needs to renew healthy habits, lose weight and feel great. Her motto: taking good care of yourself should always be delicious!

Daphne is a highly sought-after guest on shows like The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Rachael Ray Show, The Drew Barrymore Show, and Fox & Friends.  She has also been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reader's Digest, Glamour, Teen Vogue, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, People, and US Weekly. 

In addition to Eat Your Heart Out, Daphne is the author of The Happy Cook, Relish and The Dorm Room Diet. She received her chef's degree from the Natural Gourmet Institute and is a graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Daphne holds an undergraduate degree from Princeton University. She and her family live in Florida.

Find Daphne online at DaphneOz.com and @DaphneOz across social media.

Julia V. Jordan Award for Volunteerism and Public Service
Professor Marion Nestle

Marion Nestle is Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University, in the department she chaired from 1988-2003 and from which she retired in September 2017. She is also Visiting Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell. She holds honorary degrees from Transylvania University in Kentucky and the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York.

She earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology and an M.P.H. in public health nutrition from the University of California, Berkeley. Previous faculty positions were at Brandeis University (1968-1976) and the UCSF School of Medicine (1976-1986). From 1986-88, she was senior nutrition policy advisor in the Department of Health and Human Services and editor of the 1988 Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health. Her research and writing examine scientific and socioeconomic influences on food choice and its consequences, emphasizing the role of food industry marketing.

She is the author, co-author, or co-editor of fifteen books, several of them prize-winning, most notably Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (2002); Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety (2003); What to Eat (2006); Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics, with Dr. Malden Nesheim (2012); Eat, Drink Vote: An Illustrated Guide to Food Politics (2013); and Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning) in 2015. She also has written two books about pet food, Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine (2008) and Feed Your Pet Right in 2010 (also with Dr. Nesheim). She published Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat, in 2018 and a book of short essays with Kerry Trueman, Let's Ask Marion: What You Need to Know about the Politics of Food, Nutrition, and Health in 2020. Her most recent book is a memoir, Slow Cooked: An Unexpected Life in Food Politics (2022). She is working on an updated and thoroughly revised edition of What to Eat, to be retitled What to Eat Now and published by Picador Press, most likely in September 2025.

From 2008 to 2013, she wrote a monthly Food Matters column for the San Francisco Chronicle food section. She blogs daily (almost) at www.foodpolitics.com. Her X (Twitter) account, @marionnestle, has been named among the top 10 in health and science by Time Magazine, Science Magazine, and The Guardian, and still has about 140,000 followers.

She has received many awards and honors: the John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service from Bard College in 2010. In 2011, the University of California School of Public Health at Berkeley named her as Public Health Hero. Also in 2011, Michael Pollan ranked her as the #2 most powerful foodie in America (after Michelle Obama), and Mark Bittman ranked her #1 in his list of foodies to be thankful for. She received the James Beard Leadership Award in 2013, and in 2014 the U.S. Healthful Food Council's Innovator of the Year Award and the Public Health Association of New York City's Media Award, among others.

Master of Ceremonies
Andrew Zimmern

Andrew Zimmern is an Emmy-winning and four-time James Beard Award-winning TV personality, chef, writer and social justice advocate. As the creator, executive producer and host of the Bizarre Foods franchise, Andrew Zimmern's Driven by Food, MSNBC's What's Eating America, Magnolia Network's Emmy-nominated Family Dinner, and the Emmy-winning The Zimmern List, he has devoted his life to exploring and promoting cultural acceptance, tolerance and understanding through food. You can also find him judging Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend on Netflix, The Silos Baking Competition on HBO Max, and teaching live fire cooking on Outdoor Channel's Andrew Zimmern's Wild Game Kitchen.

Spoons Across America National Spokesperson
Jacques Pepin

Jacques Pepin A former columnist for The New York Times, Pepin writes a quarterly column for Food & Wine and has participated in the Food & Wine Aspen Classic almost every year since its inception in 1983. Pepin has been Head of Special Programs at the International Culinary Center in New York since 1989 and an adjunct faculty member of Boston University since 1984. Pepin is the recipient of three of the French government's highest honors: he is a Chevalier de L'Ordre National de la Legion d' Honneur, Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1997) and a Chevalier de L'Ordre du Merite Agricole(1992). Pepin is a founder of The American Institute of Wine and Food, a member of the International Association of Cooking Professionals, and is on the board of trustees of the James Beard Foundation.

In 2015, Jacques was the first recipient of the Spoons Across America Award for Excellence and serves as the national spokesperson for the organization.

Prior Honorees 

Individual Award for Excellence

Chef Jacques Pepin

Gail Simmons

 Rachael Ray

Andrew Zimmern

Jose Andres

Daniel Boulud

Lauren Bush Lauren

Corporate Award for Excellence

New York Times Food Section (Sam Sifton)

Ferguson Enterprises

Ahimsa - Dr. Manasa Mantravadi

Julia V. Jordan Award for Volunteerism & Public Service

Robert "Chef Bobo" Surles

Diane Harris Brown

Founders and Board of Directors of Spoons Across America

Kate MacKenzie, Executive Director, Mayor's Office of Food Policy

Who We Are

Spoons Across America is a 501 (c) 3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to educating children, teachers, and families about the benefits of healthy eating. Spoons Across America was founded in 2001 by a group of educators, chefs, and food professionals to increase awareness of the importance of food and nutrition education to the health and well-being of children and their families.

Our Programs in New York City 

In New York City, Spoons Across America teaches five years of comprehensive programming (Food Explorers, Farm to Book, Take a Taste, Recipe Days, and Choose Your Plate) to thousands of children in public schools every year. This immersive teaching method provides children with consistent, weekly instruction and hands-on activities around food, nutrition, and taste.

Across the Nation - The Food Exploration Project

This year, we created the Food Exploration Project - a free twelve-session food and nutrition literacy program for 1st through 6th-grade students, providing them with opportunities to learn how to make more informed decisions about their food choices. Included in the project is our Food Exploration Kit, a specially curated box with all the cooking materials educators need to help their children become food explorers. Over the past 6 months, The Food Exploration Project program has had participants in 41 schools across 10 states and reached over 20,000 children.

Programs for Homeschoolers

In 2020, we launched our Spoons at Home programs: The Food Exploration Project - Homeschooling, Food Explorers Club, Farm to Book Storytime, and Food Explorers Challenge Series for parents to teach our programs in their homes to their children. Today, over 10,000 children in 50 states are participating in a Spoons Across America home program.

A New After School Program

This spring, we will launch our pilot 12-session Food Explorers Afterschool program at University Street Settlement House in collaboration with New York University's Food Lab. Our collective goal is to measure the benefits of Spoons' healthy eating programs in an afterschool environment and to collect, analyze, and learn from the data collected by the Food Lab.