So last week we were at the supermarket, feeling, as usual, mildly overwhelmed by the dozens of types of salad dressings and pasta sauces and toilet papers and breakfast cereals and single-serving fruit snacks. We recently discovered – and we are probably late on this – that you can purchase yogurt in a tube. In 4 colors, no less: neon green, pink, BLUE (yes, blue) and yellow. Who are they marketing this stuff to? And why? What nutritional or consumerist need does it possibly serve, to suck bright blue yogurt out of a plastic TUBE? Why does so much of what we consume, for that matter, come out of boxes or cans? If we are what we eat, what are we becoming?

Chef and food activist Bryant Terry (aka Busy B) takes these questions well beyond the rhetorical. The founding executive director of b-healthy!, a non-profit nutritional education organization, believes that revolution begins in the kitchen. Starting with the first art, that which serves the most fundamental human need, Terry illuminates healthy alternatives for lower-income youth whose nutritional choices are often restricted by their surroundings.

We’ve all noticed that the groceries are fresher and more varied, in more affluent neighborhoods. Most of us have also noticed the converse: that in the hood, bodegas flank every corner and rarely stock anything nourishing that’s not required by the WIC program, preferring instead the 4 food groups of Salty, Sugary, Carbonated, or Beer.

With start-up funding from the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) and additional funding from the New York Foundation, b-healthy! has been working since 2002 to educate low-income youth about healthy cooking and nutrition, and to train them as peer educators and youth organizers. Emphasizing nutritional training, hands-on cooking instruction, and social change/food justice education, b-healthy! urges youth to question why fast food is so cheap and easy to come by in the areas that they live, and fresh vegetables so scarce. In this way, the organization helps create healthier futures, halting unhealthy eating habits in their tracks.

So the next time you see a kid sucking on a tube of blue yogurt, slap it out of his hand and tell him b-healthy! sent you. Ok, don’t really. But know that b-healthy! is striving to change the urban palate, one young person at a time.

Bryant is currently at work on his first book, “Grub: Ideas for an Urban, Organic Kitchen.” Visit www.eatgrub.org to find out about his latest projects, and you can learn more about b-healthy?s work at www.b-healthy.org.

We thought it was delicious that Bryant and Mike Believe got a chance to chew the fat.

Click here for the Q&A

Mike Believe asks, Bryant Terry answers

If I gave you $100 right now what would you do with it?

First of all, I would give $10 to an organization that I really believe in. I tithe any income that I receive. Then I’d put $45 into my savings account. With the other $45 I’d probably buy some shirt that I’ll wear twice and then forget about.

A plane that you are in crashes and it’s full of really well fed chefs on their way to a sauce convention so they have all their new spices and chef like things. 2 weeks pass and most of the chefs died in the crash. What do you do?

Is this a SAT question?

Are you vegetarian? If so why?

Hell NO! First of all, I hate titles but especially for one’s dietary choices. Too often, people let the title dictate the way that they eat instead of listening to their body’s needs. Diets need to be fluid like everything else. It might be best for one to avoid all animal products for a few years, but it might make sense to eat fish or cheese every once in a while down the road. Be like the Tao.

If someone had a butter knife to my throat and asked me to categorize my diet, after whoppin’ their ass I would tell them that I maintain a Health-Supportive Whole Foods Eating Style.

What is or was your favorite meat

Yo, my dad used to take me to this hip little restaurant in Memphis where I would get filet mignon on an English muffin with this bangin’ sauce. And fries with Dijon mustard on the side.

What is your idea of a perfect day?

- Wake Up at 8:00am
- Morning ritual
- Make beet, apple, lemon and ginger juice
- Go hiking somewhere in the Bay Area
- Lunch at a good Thai restaurant
- Shop at the Berkeley Farmer?s Market
- Take a nap
- Walk around Lake Merritt
- Make dinner
- Watch a Spike Lee film
- Spoon for rest of the evening

What is the best part about what you do?

Eatin’ good food. What’d you think? Seriously though, educating and helping people empower themselves to be active around food issues are the most important things to me right now. Once more folks are informed about the increasing corporate control and globalization of OUR FOOD and how it affects OUR PERSONAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH, there will be a surge of resistance and creation of local alternatives. It’s happening now.

What is the sexiest food?

Figs. Definitely figs. Especially when you cut an X at the top, squeeze the base in order to expose the inside and drizzle some honey on them. Does that sound scandalous?

At a party do you dance or hold up the wall?

I’m never gonna hear the end of this. . . I pretty much hold up the wall. When women ask me, “Bryant, do you dance” I say yes and pretend like that night is an exception.

Who are your inspirations?

Artistically: All Aquarians, Black folks making cutting-edge electronic music and Spike Lee
Artistically/Culinaryly: (yeah I made that up): Peter Berley and Jessica Harris
Intellectually: Robin D.G. Kelley, Francis Moore Lappé and my sister
Politically: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and all freedom fighters
Spiritually: All the great spiritual teachers

What was the worst meal you ever cooked and for whom?

Once, my ex-girlfriend and I got into a huge fight before and during the preparation and cooking of a meal. I made ginger cornbread, roasted sweet potatoes with thyme, citrus collard greens with raisins and barbequed tempeh. The meal was horrible. That’s when I started to become more aware of the transferal of energy from chef to food.

What are you listening to right now?

Anything that 4Hero touches, Ann Peebles (she’s my aunt), Attica Blues, The Beatles’ Abbey Road, A Tribe Called Quest’s first three albums, Darker Than Blue: Soul from Jamdown (1973-1980), A Guy Called Gerald’s Essence, James Brown (old school), Joshua Gabriel, Madvillainy, The Very Best of MC LYTE, Paul Mooney’s Race and Val-Inc. (dope Haitian sister makin’ electronic music). (I’m an iPod junkie.)

Lard or no lard ?

Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Where are your parents from and what kind of food did you grow up on?

Both of my parents are from Memphis, Tennessee. While I was growing up, my sister and I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. My Dad’s Dad converted his whole backyard into an organic garden with tiny pathways leading to each section. We would help plant, tend, harvest, shell, shuck, snap and eat all that fresh food. My Mom’s Mother was an amazing cook. She only used natural foods. When I was in high school I ate a lot of crap, but I’ve come full circle.

What was the last book you read?

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer’s Manifest Your Destiny: The Nine Spiritual Principles for Getting Everything You Want. Reading it took me to a whole new level of consciousness.

What’s your favorite slow jam?

Right now it’s “Save Your Love for Me” by Nancy Wilson.

Write 2 really great questions I didn’t ask you and then answer them

1. What’s one of your favorite quotes?
“You gotta have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?”
–Nancy Wilson

2. Do you consider yourself an activist an artist or both?
I simply want to create.

I was told by a wise man in the early mid 90’s that you can tell a lot about a man by the type of Snapple he drinks. Do you consider yourself mango madness /mellow melon/ fruit punch/ grape-ade / vitamin supreme?

Snapples are the new millennium quarter waters.

Worst movie you’ve seen in the past 3 years?

Demonlover with Chloë Sevigny. She was great, but the film sucked.

If you could go back in time for 10 min to tell your 8th grade self one thing what would you tell him?

Playa, listen to Mom and Dad. They really do know what they’re talking about. Trust me, you’ll understand when you’re 30.

George Bush says “yo, B I’m gonna give you 14 million dollars if you cater this republican party I’m having, then I need you for a photo op for all the press and media” what do you do?

Politely decline.