With a name like egg, you might have suspected there was a food orientation in our DNA. And it’s true. Not only do we take an enthusiastic interest in cooking and eating good food, we are also concerned with and keenly aware of the weightier issues surrounding our relationship with food and how it has evolved over the years to become what we consider a frightening state of affairs. With all-time high rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer, it is obvious that we need to address our plates, our diets, our communities, and our food production systems.

An inspiring example is being set by a nonprofit community kitchen called La Cocina, located in San Francisco’s Mission District. La Cocina, which is an example of a kitchen incubator, is part of a growing movement to launch small food businesses around the country. La Cocina provides commercial kitchen space, food industry training, and technical assistance to low-income women who operate informal food-related and catering businesses out of their homes. Many of the low-income entrepreneurs that use La Cocina were in desperate need of affordable professional kitchen space.

“We are a small business incubator,” says La Cocina Executive Director Valeria Perez-Ferreiro. “We offer the resources necessary to help women forge their own economic futures.”

Veronica Salazar, 32, owner of El Huarache Loco, makes traditional foods from Mexico City and was one of the first participants in La Cocina and is one of its bigger successes. Another brand that has been launched out of La Cocina is Jill Litwin’s Peas of Mind, an organic baby food line that has already landed in 80 stores around California.

To see such examples of the successful blending of social, environmental, and economic entrepreneurship that address some of our blended food and social ills is enough to make anyone smile. And a tummy, rumble.