Michel Nischan BIO

CEO/President of Wholesome Wave Foundation

Sustainable Food Pioneer

James Beard Award-Winning Chef and Author

A son of displaced farmers, Michel Nischan grew up with a deep appreciation for sustainable agriculture and those who work the land. As a professional chef and  advocate for a more healthful, organic and sustainable food future, he has built on those childhood values and become a catalyst for change and new initiatives in local and regional food systems.

A two time James Beard Foundation award winner, Nischan is Founder/Owner of Dressing Room: A Homegrown Restaurant, located at Westport (CT) Country Playhouse, and President /CEO of Wholesome Wave, a nonprofit organization founded in 2007 to make healthy, affordable locally grown foods available to communities that would otherwise not have access to them.  Wholesome Wave’s hallmark initiative, the Double Value Coupon Program, incentivizes the purchase of fresh fruits and vegetables by doubling the value of food stamp dollars at participating farmers markets throughout the country. 

Through Nell Newman, the driving force behind Newman’s Own Organics®, Nischanmet her father Paul, who planned to become involved in a restaurant. Paul and Michel found their beliefs on food, family and community to be remarkably aligned, and in 2006, Dressing Room was opened, as the place where their shared values could have a dynamic and engaging platform.

Wholesome Wavewas created with funding from Newman’s Own Foundation and the Betsy and Jesse Fink Foundation, and is now supported in part by Grow for Good, a philanthropic initiative of FOOD & WINE Magazine. Wholesome Wave and Dressing Room work in tandem to create direct in-community initiatives that celebrate local food systems and heritage recipes. “We were well loved for our home-fried chicken, apple pie and pot roast long before we became the land of fast food,” says Nischan. Newman and Nischan appeared on ABC World News with Charles Gibson in November 2006 as Persons of the Week for their community outreach efforts, as well as ABCNews Nightline on May 2007.

When his five year old son was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes in 1994, Michel was inspired to create a “cuisine of well-being,” focusing on pure, flavorful, local, organic food without highly processed ingredients.  “Chris’s illness made me realize that floating on foie gras, bathing in cream, and dusting in processed flour might not be in my customers’ best interest,” Michel explains. He introduced his groundbreaking new cuisine at Heartbeat restaurant at the W Hotel in midtown Manhattan in 1997, and was immediately propelled to the forefront of New York’s culinary scene.

Michel puts his healthful and sustainable culinary focus in print and online as a regular columnist for The Atlantic’s Food Channel and as a contributing editor for Food Arts Magazine, where he wasa Silver Spoon Award honoree in 2006. He hasthreewell-received cookbooks: Homegrown Pure and Simple: Great Healthy Food from Garden to Table (Chronicle Books, 2005); Taste Pure and Simple: Irresistible Recipes for Good Food and Good Health (Chronicle Books, 2003) and Sustainably Delicious: Making the World a Better Place, One Recipe at a Time (Rodale Books, 2010). Taste made the New York Times and Wall Street Journal’s best seller lists and won a 2004 James Beard Foundation Cookbook Award, given by industry peers and more than 600 culinary professionals. Sustainably Deliciouswas awarded the2010 Green Book Award in the Cookbook category by the Green Book Festival.

In addition, his appearances on PBS Victory Garden were honored a 2007 James Beard Foundation Best National/Local TV Food Segment and in May 2010, Nischan was feted by the Diabetes Research Institute (DRI) at their annual D.R.E.a.M.S. in the city fundraiser. He has appeared on numerous broadcast outlets including the Oprah Winfrey Show, TODAY Show, Rachael Ray Show and the Early Show.

On May 11, 2010, the Obama administration named Wholesome Wave as one of five major strategy groups making a difference in the fight against childhood obesity in its “White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity Report to the President.”  The report cited: "Wholesome Wave's Double Value Coupon Program provides economic incentives to increase production of healthy foods such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, as well as create greater access to local and healthy food for consumers. Here is a link to the full report. http://www.letsmove.gov/tfco_access_to_healthy_affordable_food.pdf

He also serves on the boards of the Amazon Conservation Team, the James Beard Foundation and Harvard’s Center for Health and the Global Environment.  Nischan lives in Fairfield CT with his wife, Lori and their five children.