Giving Compass' Take:

• In this piece from Global Citizen, author Joe McCarthy tells the story of how Charles Michel, a Colombian chef and competitor on Netflix's The Final Table, is forcing people to think about sustainability in the food system.

• Michel calls the current youth "climate change kids" and says "they’re going to be the ones to make a difference,” but if we wait for the current youth to age before we take action on climate change it may be too late. How can we empower those youths who care about climate change to make a difference now?

• To learn whether organic foods really are better for you, click here.

Colombian culinary artist Charles Michel hates competition. He much prefers cooking and preparing meals in a collaborative spirit, working with people to find new ways to serve food.

But when Netflix called and invited him to compete in the series The Final Table, he realized it was a rare opportunity to spread a positive message about the problems facing the global food system and the many ways it can be made more sustainable.

“Today’s food system is one of the greatest ethical dilemmas in the history of humans,” he told Global Citizen.

“It’s OK to eat beef,” he added, as an example. “But what is not OK is the way we get beef on the plate. For centuries we had this ethical relationship with beef — they would provide dung for fertilizer so we could grow vegetables and it was a virtuous cycle. But now we’re in this dark cycle of unconsciousness, literally bite by bite eating the planet and destroying its resources because of a broken food system.”

Michel also said that the shame-based attempts taken by animal rights organizations to change how people eat can be counterproductive, and advocacy groups should instead focus on gradually shifting consumption habits by providing tasty alternatives.

“A lot of behavioral research shows that if you blame people, they will eat it anyways, but if you surprise them with something beautiful, they’ll change,” he said.

In another episode of The Final Table, Michel incorporates “forgotten vegetables” — the leaves, stems, and other obscure parts of produce that often get discarded — into a dish to highlight food waste.

Globally, one-third of all food that’s produced gets wasted. Recovering this food could mitigate world hunger and significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.

Read the full article about the food system by Joe McCarthy at Global Citizen