"Top Chef" Judge Executive Produces Documentary About Hunger In America

Many students in online cooking schools already know Tom Colicchio as the owner of three high-end restaurants and one of the celebrity chef judges on Bravo’s “Top Chef.”

However, Colicchio is using his success and fame as a chef and host not to critique the country’s best up-and-coming cooks in the culinary academy, but to champion a nationwide issue that Colicchio believes needs government action: hunger.

After his wife mentored a young girl who was struggling to find her next meal, Colicchio looked into this public health issue and found that hunger has become a real problem in the United States, according to American Public Media. This lead Colicchio to executive produce “A Place at the Table,” a documentary film that follows three people who struggle with hunger: a single mother of two in Philadelphia, a fifth-grader in Colorado and second-grader in Mississippi. Colicchio believes that politicians and governmental officials need to step in to combat this nationwide problem.

“If the hunger problem in America was just about charity or money, it would have been solved already,” Colicchio explained to the source.

In addition to the film, Colicchio is launching a social action campaign that helps people with food assistance and encourages citizens to take action within their community to stop hunger.