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| The Plate Debate |
| by Sarah Karnasiewicz |
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I wanted to ask you about that. One of your arguments is that in order for food to be seen as a more valuable part of society, we have to be willing to spend more money on it. How do you defend statements like that against critics who see this all as a terribly elitist pursuit?
Right now, arguably, the food movement is elitist. But the same was said once about abolition and women's suffrage and the environmental movement. Social movements begin as elite movements because people with extra money have the resources and the leisure to devote themselves to change. I don't think we should condemn a movement just because it begins with the upper middle class. If it stays elitist, yeah, you have a problem. But the influence of an elite movement can trickle down. Just look at the fact that organic food is now in Wal-Mart. It's a mixed blessing, but it does suggest that better food is now being made accessible to what is, demographically at least, the bottom half of the country. These movements may start in one part of society, but they often end up somewhere else.
Well, it's not Wal-Mart, but you did have a very public debate last year with John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, regarding the lack of support for local food in their stores. Have you kept in correspondence with Mackey or noticed any encouraging changes in their policies?
I have not been in touch with Mackey since he came to Berkeley and we did an event onstage [at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism]. I am in touch with people at Whole Foods from time to time, but I really haven't done the due diligence that is required to see whether they're keeping the promises they made. I'm hoping that another journalist will do that, honestly, since it's awkward for me, given the way I became part of the story. But I'm very curious as to how thorough their commitment is.
When I'm traveling I try to go to Whole Foods and interview the produce manager and the meat manager and see what's happening in different locations. I've heard that there have been some very positive things changing on the produce side and that local farmers feel they're getting a warmer welcome. But people selling meat report much more mixed feelings. I think it's uneven. And I don't know how sincere Mackey's commitment is to local food since he's also giving speeches saying that supporting local food is selfish.
Why is that?
Because you're not giving your dollars to peasant farmers. I think that's a debater's point, though, because when you buy asparagus, the pennies that go back to Chile tend in large part to go into the pockets of companies like Dole, not to small farmers. There may be some fair-trade schemes that are effective, but on balance, if I spend the same money at the farmers' market, I know that 100 percent of that dollar is going to the farmer. We need to have local food systems all over the world.
You are unabashed about the fact that many of your food "rules" involve doing more work. Do you think some of our issues with food derive from the fact that the pleasure of eating now seems mostly about consumption, not the act of cooking and sharing?
I'm not sure I buy that, honestly. I never see people any happier than I do on Saturday mornings at the farmers' market. Everybody seems like they're high or something. And some people, at least, are getting great pleasure out of cooking again. Then you have the weird phenomenon of all the people who watch cooking on TV….
What do you make of that?
My fear is that it is discouraging us from cooking by making it look more complicated than it is. I worry it that because we are watching these professional chefs—who are, by the way, making banquet food, by and large—it looks like you have to have a big, honking stove and a whole lot of equipment and time and a very sophisticated type of knowledge to accomplish anything. Those chefs are not demystifying cooking in the way that even Julia Child did; in fact, they are mystifying it.
Also, frankly, a lot of what we watch on television has the effect of pinning us to our couches and watching more television. Whether you're watching a cooking show or pornography, both of those things make doing the real thing seem daunting.
Have we become so alienated from the act of cooking that we don't know what to do with real food when presented with it?
The decline of cooking as an everyday activity is definitely part of the problem. In our culture, cooking has become a spectator sport. For the past 50 years, we have outsourced most food preparation to corporations and restaurants, and so that muscle that tells us how to deal with whole foods and how to turn them into delicious meals has atrophied quite a bit.
A big part of my point is that simply by cooking, you can solve almost all your health problems around food. For instance, if you want to have french fries, fine, as long as you cook them—but how often will you really cook them? They are a lot of work to make, they are messy, and, in the end, what do you do with the oil you have to clean up? My son likes to make french fries, but he sure doesn't want to do it every night.
So, simply having to cook automatically moderates people's diets?
Yes. One of our problems is that, if you look historically, much of the food we now think of as "bad for you"—take fried chicken, for example—was not everyday fare. If you talk to people who actually prepared those foods in generations past, they say, "Well, you know, we only made that once a month because it was so much work that it was only worth doing if you had a party." What's happened now is that special-occasion or banquet food has become everyday food because somebody else is cooking and cleaning up the mess. I'm saying cook whatever you want and you'll be okay, because you'll cook fairly simply most days of the week. Then, if you want to make something incredibly fattening and complicated one day, be my guest.
That reminds me of the studies that were all over the news a few years ago about the benefits family dinners have for kids. Those focused on more than just health effects—like emotional well-being and academic performance—but, regardless, do you think that cooking and eating together played a role in helping them thrive?
Many, many things come out of having a family meal. For one, everyone is eating from the same platters, rather than in a restaurant where everyone gets their own entrée and tends to eat more. Also, in general, cooked food does not have things like high fructose corn syrup or diglycerides in it. You do not find those things in your pantry.
The subhead of your book is "An Eater's Manifesto"—and manifesto is a pretty loaded word. If you see it as a call to arms, what is the battleground?
I call it a manifesto because it's about taking back control of our eating destiny from corporations that would like to do everything except digest our food and nutrition scientists who position themselves in such a way that they become a priesthood. I see it as less a war than an attempt at reformation. We need to democratize food, trust our instincts, and return control of it to ourselves and to our kitchens.
One friend of mine said that the book reminds him of Dr. Spock's book, and at first I had no idea what he meant. But then he explained that Spock's book came out at a time when women were getting all this expert and corporate advice about baby formula and new theories about child rearing. Dr. Spock came along told them, "Your mother was right, your grandmother was right, trust your instincts, you know all you need to know to raise a child well."
The same goes for food. We've reached a moment where we have overprofessionalized the getting and the preparing and the serving of food, and we do have instincts about food that we can get back in touch with. We also have a culture that can tell us all we need to know without science. We tend to privilege science in our culture, but food is one of the places where tradition really has the best information. Tradition is the distilled wisdom of the group, not just an old way of doing something. It means something.
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