FOOD FOR THOUGHT

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sdfsadf ARTICLE TITLE OPENING PAGE ARTICLE FOOD FOR THOUGHT Frank Walton Lively public discourse and controversy in America has always focused on enduring, critical issues: reviews in daily papers, websites for food products, and advertising across all media. Consider: " What city in America has the most elite restaurants, chefs, and sommeliers? Answer: Las Vegas.

(And you thought Sin City was about gambling.) " 70 percent of quick service restaurant rev- enues derive from cdrive through d customers. (We don 9t drive empty-handed.) " Americans have more, and increasing, choice and variety 4and quality 4in the foods they buy for home use and out of the home: FreshDirect; My Girlfriend 9s Kitchen; What 9s for Dinner.net; Simply Homemade. (Technology at food 9s service.) " 330 articles from top tier U.S.

media featured chefs in June 1995. 730 articles featured chefs a decade later. A 121 percent increase.

(Foodas celebrity.) Food & Wine maga- zine, July 2005, ran a cover feature 4not about Brad Pitt or Jennifer Anniston 4but about cSuperstar Chefs. Who 9s Now? Who 9s Next?

Who Matters? d Followed with other articles about cAmerica 9s 10 Best New Chefs. d And, in case you need the advice, an article on cChefs Tell ... more. less.

All: Ranking the Best Stoves, Pans, Knives, Cheeses, & More. d (Doesn 9t the c& More d titillate just a little?) " The cover feature of Cigar Aficionado , October 2005, was cThe Business of Emeril:America 9s Chef Creates a Culinary Kingdom, dwhich detailed the successes of chef, restaurateur, and Food Network star, Emeril Lagasse. cYou think you know Emeril Legasse. You 9ve seen him on theFood Network, flinging salt at a pot of simmering soup, reminding the studio audience that cooking 8ain 9t rocket science 9 and that the particular bit of sleight of hand he is about to perform is actually 8real simple. 9 You 9ve seen him poke fun at his own propensityfor full-flavored, full-calorie dishes. 8Nice and light, 9 he says as he ladles in the heavy cream. You 9ve read his cookbooks. Maybe you 9ve made the pilgrimage to one of the nine restaurants he owns and operates in five cities across the American Sun Belt 4 Atlanta, Orlando, Miami, Las Vegas, and New Orleans, where they cater to the same housewives, middle managers, firemen, and young professionals that have made him the most recognizable chef in history. You 9ve seen him on cGood Morning America, d you 9ve bought his salad dressing. You might have even been a portion of the 2 percent or so of U.S. television owners who tuned in, on average, for each of the 13 episodes of his 2001 sitcom on NBC& d " The U.S. News & World Report , special summer double issue: August 15 3 22,2005, had the topic, cAmerica Eats! How One Nation Revolutionized the World of Food. d (Typical American modesty, but also probably true.) " Parade magazine (which is read by one in three Americans every Sunday) published on November 13, 2005, its latest cWhat America Eats d survey findings (its eleventh survey in eighteen years) along with articles on cA Thanksgiving to Remember d by food editor and cookbook author Sheila Lukins; cWhat Our Annual Food Survey Says About You, d cThe Whole Truth About Whole Grains, d and cThe Latest Food Facts, Trends & Gadgets. d " Wine Spectator, September 30, 2005, published its special issue on cThe Encyclopedia of Food: With Exclusive Wine Matching Advice. d " Among all magazines launched in the past three years, the second most successful magazine is Cooking Light . According to the Washington Post in July 2005, the top circulation food publications are Cooking Light , 1.7 million copies monthly, followed by Bon Appetit ,1.3 million, Gourmet , 968,000, Food & Wine ,927,000, and Everyday Food , 850,000. " Cable television 9s Food Network entertained an average of 550,000 households during prime time each day in 2005, a 16 percent increaseabove the previous year and a 33 percent increase above the network 9s prime- time audience in 2002. Its rating puts it well out front of E!, ESPN2, Cartoon Network, and TV Land among 18- to 49- year-old viewers. (Food has a bigger cable TV audience than does entertainment gos- sip, sports, and cartoons.) " In the last three years, the Food Network has expanded its reach from 54 million to 84 million households, enough for the 10-year- old network to be considered a universally available channel. It delivers more than 800 hours of original food programming a year. According to Kagan Research, the Food Network 9s advertising revenue has soared from $150 million in 2002 to an estimated $225 million in 2004. " According to the Washington Post in July 2005, cFood Network star Rachael Ray 4 whose three highly rated shows and 10 best-selling cookbooks stress no-brainer recipes for busy people 4will have her own magazine out in September, published by Reader 9s Digest. Every Day with Rachael Ray will feature (big surprise) no-brainer recipes for busy people. Available at newsstands, it will initially be published quarterly. d " According to an article in the Duluth News- Tribune , by Candy Sagon, May 4, 2005, cIn April, six of the 10 top-selling cook- books on Amazon.com were by three Food Network stars: Giada De Laurentiis (with the No. 1 best-selling book), Rachel Ray (four titles) and Paula Deen (one). Ina Garten, whose previous three books have sold more than 1 million copies, had the No. 11 spot with her latest cookbook, Barefoot in Paris . At Borders and Waldenbooks, 12 of the top 25 cookbooks in 2004 were by five Food Network authors (Garten, Ray, Deen, Emeril Lagasse and Alton Brown). d In a special issue of The New Yorker , September 5, 2005, Jane Kramer notes in an article, cCookbook Nation, d that cSome fifteen hundred cook- books are published in America each year, and Americans buy them by the millions. d " That same special issue of The New Yorker included articles by leading writers on the following topics: Calvin Trillin, cLetter from Ecuador: Speaking of Soup, While learning Spanish, You Have to Eat. d Judith Thurman, cOur Far-Flung Correspondents: Night Kitchens, Japan 9s Artisanal-tofu Masters. d Mark Singer, cProfiles: Gone Fishing, A New York Chef Catches What He Cooks. d Adam Gopnik, cLetter from London and Paris, Two Cooks, Opposing View of What 9s Really Good. d John Seabrook, cAnnals of Agriculture, Renaissance Pears, Growing a Museum of Fruit in Umbria. d Burkhard Bilger, cIn the Kitchen: The Egg Men, What It Takes to Be a Short-order Cook in Las Vegas. d Malcolm Gladwell, cAnnals of Technology: The Bakeoff, Project Delta Aims to Create the Perfect Cookie. d " According to the Washington Post , public television stations across the country broadcast more than 71 cooking shows. That 9s a 69% increase from the 42 shows theyoffered three years ago. There are as much as 11.5 hours of chopping, dicing, and baking across RUDER·FINN MOV e ! 11 national security, America 9s role in the world, how the federal government expends national resources, fairness, and the rights and responsibilities of citizens. Contemporary media coverage, a reflec- tion of American ideas in flux, has another set of enduring concerns: the integrity and corruptibility of power elites, breakthroughs in science and technology, economic forces, celebrities, the arts, entertainment, shopping, and (always) the weather. Yet in the past decade or so another compelling and pervasive topic has emerged as one of the most powerful in America 9s imagination, aspirations, and fears. Food. How it entices us. How it satisfies us. How it can harm us. How it saves our souls. Food, perhaps even more than fashion or economics or technology or social justice, has become the topic in which the American public and its institutions align and define themselves. Our physical, social, and spiritual values, our economic and political priorities, our personal commitments are focused, with the help of media and marketing, on food. What we eat, and how we think and communicate about what we eat, sometimes even affects our ideological positions. In the 1960s, we discovered that cthe personal is the political. d In the first decade of the 21st century, we now must grapple with the fact that cthe culinary is both political moral. d It affects our lives as individuals, and it presents a transformational challenge for the global food industry. Food! Glorious food! Food has become a uniquely American entertainment medium. Americans ceat out d 4outside the home 4more than the citizens of any other country in the world, primarily for special occasions and for convenience(some of us are too busy to prepare meals ourselves). Americans have more selection and variety in food than has any other society in the history of the world. America celebrates the abun- dance of the American table. Chefs become famous. Cookbook authors are national icons. Food entrepreneurs are social heroes. One of America 9smost popular and pervasive reference guides is Zagat. Attention to, perhaps even an obsession with, food permeates American culture and the media, and it goes far beyond the restaurant individual liberty, political equality and economic equal opportunity, personal and 12 FOOD FOR THOUGHT major markets. cFood is the most popular genre of programming we make, d says Cynthia Fenneman, president and chiefexecutive of American Public Television, a programming distributor to public television stations. " In 2004 Oxford University Press first pub- lished its two-volume, 1,500-page The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America , edited by food historian Andrew F. Smith with entries ranging from Airplane Food and Beech-Nut to Vending Machines and Alice Waters. " (I cannot trust myself to paraphrase the fol- lowing, so I will provide an excerpt from Bon Appetit , September 2005.) cFor an entire year, Tucker Shaw photographed every single thing he consumed, from Thin Mints at home to sautéed skate on cauli- flower puree at Artisanal in Manhattan. Then he turned those photos into the book Everything I Ate: A Year In the Life of My Mouth . It 9s a weirdly addictive record of what, literally, makes an eater& [according to author/photographer Shaw] c 8Ulitmately it is a big, silly stunt. But as I got deeper into the project, I realized that there 9s a bigger story surrounding this. At this moment in the history of food, we have unprece- dented access, variety, and volume, and the means to record it all. I 9d like people to get a kick out of it 4and maybe see some of themselves in there. 9 d(Maybe.) One man 9s food,another man 9s problem On November 29, 2005, at the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) confer- ence on The Future of Food at the Ronald Reagan Building/International Trade Center in Washington, D.C., Hugh Grant, Chairman, President and CEO of Monsanto, provided some sobering thoughts on the future of food. Already, 70 percent of the world 9s fresh water is used by agriculture; the other 30 per- cent comprises all other water use. According to Grant, there just is not enough water in the world to meet the likely changing demand for food in the developing world. Sustainable agriculture globally and a sustain- able food supply are receding from our grasp. New agricultural practices, and from Grant 9s point of view, new genetically altered drought-tolerant plants, are not only desir- able but inevitable. Food, perhaps more than information technology, is leading us to a brave new world. At that same GMA Conference on the Future of Food, Joseph Quinn, Policy Director for Arkansas 9 Governor Mike Huckabee, explained that Arkansas 4not without some controversy 4conducted a body mass index (BMI) analysis on every elementary school student in the state. A full 38 percent of these young Arkansans were found to be overweight or in danger of being overweight. The danger of these young people becoming adults with obesity-related diseases 4diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke, and some cancers 4is high. At the same time, there is a complementary danger for the citizens of the State of Arkansas. According to The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 17 percent of Arkansans are on Medicare (three percentage points above the national average), many of them overweight and suffering from the obesity-related dis- eases. An overweight citizenry is also a weighty burden on the economy. The situation is not confined to Arkansas. Forbes magazine, July 15, 2005, reports, cThe American obesity epidemic is as troubling in youth as it is in adults. Results from the 1999 32002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) suggest that about 16 percent of children and adolescents aged 6 to 10 are overweight. Earlier, in the 1988 31994 period, NHANES estimated that only 11 percent in this age group were overweight. d The varying global threats relating to food production and to food consumption are the other side to the Janus-faced phenomenon of food in our culture. The World Health Organization website (www.who.int) tells us: " Globally, there are more than 1 billion overweight adults, at least 300 million of them obese. " Obesity and being overweight pose a major risk for chronic diseases, including type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hyperten- sion and stroke, and certain forms of cancer. " The key causes are increased consumption of energy-dense foods high in saturated fats and sugars and reduced physical activity. The United States Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov) informs us, cDuring the past 20 years, obesity among adults has risen significantly in the United States. The latest data from the National Center for Health Statistics shows that 30 percent of U.S. adults 20 years of age and older 4over 60 million people 4are obese. This increase is not limited to adults. The percentage of young people who are over- weight has more than tripled since the 1980s. d According to the American Obesity Association website (www.obesity.org): " Approximately 40 percent of women and 25 percent of men attempt to lose weight " Nationwide, 55 percent of Americans are actively trying to maintain current weight " Approximately 45 million Americans diet each year " Consumers spend about $30 billion per year trying to lose weight or prevent weight gain " Spending on weight loss programs is esti- mated at $1 to $2 billion per year The public and policy issues relating to obesity also feed the American publishing industry 4nearly as much as do chefs and cookbooks. Some notable books in recent years have made it to the bestseller lists and put their authors regularly on radio and tele- vision. Marion Nestle 9s Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (University of California Press, 2002) frames the several themes of the critique of the food industry in America. cThe U.S. foodsupply is so abundant that it contains enough to feed everyone in the country nearly twice over 4 even after exports are considered. The overly abundant food supply, combined with a soci- ety so affluent that most people can afford to buy more food than they need, sets the stage for competition. d Since 2002, over a million copies of Eric Schlosser 9s book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) have been sold. Schlosser 9s high- ly entertaining (if factually arguable) history and analysis of the America-born quick service restaurant industry details the corporate tri- umphs (and rogues 9 gallery) of fast food. Greg Critser 9s Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World (Houghton Mifflin, 2003) addressed itself to the question as to why the obesity rate (by the select sources he uses) of Americans jumped from about 25 per- cent of the population throughout most of the 20th century up to about 60 percent of the population at the beginning of the 21st cen- tury. cHow is it that we better-off Americans, perhaps the most health-conscious of any generation in the history of the world, have come to preside over the deadly fattening of our youth and their future? d Another recent cultural milestone was Morgan Spurlock 9s Don 9t Eat this Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America (Putnam, 2005), preceded by Spurlock 9s acclaimed, Academy Award 3nominated documentary, Super Size Me . The three relatedthemes of obesity, poor nutrition connected to health problems, and the culpability of the quick service restaurant industry are brought together first in his video documented per- sonal experiment of eating nothing but food from McDonald 9s for one month, and pro- viding living proof of the consequences, and then by the book, which considers the broader implications of fast-food culture on schools,hospitals, and the home. We will be what we eat The twin obsessions of American culture and media with food as entertainment and food as a personal, societal, and environmental problem are not the whole story. A third dimension to food in American culture and media are the benefits, beyond nutrition, that some thinkers observe. One of the most influential proponents of eating our way to health and a better world is the Slow Food movement. According to their website (www.slowfood.com), cSlow Food, founded in 1986, is an international organization whose aim is to protect the pleasures of the table from the homogeniza- tion of modern fast food and life. Through a variety of initiatives, it promotes gastronomic culture, develops taste education, conserves agricultural biodiversity and protects tradi- tional foods at risk of extinction. d Slow Food boasts over 80,000 members in over 100 countries; members are organized into more than 800 local cconvivia d which host culinary and educational events as well as advocacy activities 4all focused on ceducating taste d with the presumption that people with educated taste will make a wide range of decisions and act in support of conservation, sociability, diversity, and reverence for life. Its guiding values are clocal rootedness and decentralization (plus the ensuring conserva- tion of typicality). d Slow Food USA (www.slowfoodusa.org) asserts it c&believes that pleasure and quality in everyday life can be achieved by slowing down, respecting the convivial traditions of the table and celebrating the diversity of the earth 9s bounty. Our goal is to put the carriers of this heritage on center stage and educate our mem- bershipon the importance of these principles. d Along with the local seminars, tastings, and other events of the convivia, Slow Food has created the University of Gastronomic Sciences, located in Bra, Italy (along with a four-star hotel and the Banca del Vino), which provides a three-year undergraduate degree program and one-year postgraduate Master 9s programs in cfood, travel, culture, and science. d Slow Food publishes interna- tionally an erudite quarterly journal, Slow: The Magazine of the International Slow Food Movement . The international Slow Food movement also convenes conferences such as the Université Saveurs et Savoirs, held at the Sorbonne in Paris, November 28 3 December 1, 2005, with the theme of cEthique ou profit? Le terroir se met a table. d Not only is the international Slow Food movement taking hold in American society, there are several strains of the theme of chow food can really be good for us d that are home- grown American. The University of California Press at Berkeley publishes the quarterly, Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture (its motto: cNothing is more interesting than that something that you eat. d 3 Gertrude Stein). Gastronomica offers reverential contempla- tions on the roles that food plays as a cultural RUDER·FINN MOV e ! 13 14 FOOD FOR THOUGHT asset. The fall 2005 issue includes, among other topics, a poem, cfatted, d by Peter O 9Leary, ruminating on the sacrifice of an animal and how it affects those who take the life of an animal for food; it concludes, cSlaverer. Connoisseur. Worshiper. Arriving at table/we enter a Temple. d Far from where Gastronomica is pub- lished, Boston, Massachusetts, is the home of another organization that focuses on food in American culture and the potential of American food to improve our health, society, and quality of life. Oldways is a cfood issues think tank, d founded in 1990, that asserts a unique ccombination of scholarly grounding in science, social conscience, and commitment to culinary excellence d (www.oldways.org). Oldways 9 website says, cFor a decade Oldways warned that power waves of unhealthy 8junk foods 9 and no-fat or low-fat 8techno- foods 9 were eroding healthy 8real foods 9 and fostering an epidemic of crippling chronic diseases. d Oldways organizes conferences, symposia, and tours as well as providing counsel to the food industry. cOldways cre- ates and operates a wide range of domestic and international programs based on science, traditional foods, and sustainability, all accompanied by wise eating, regular exercise, and culinary pleasures. d Back on the West Coast is yet another organization that is striving to make the world better through food. The Chez Panisse Foundation, founded by Alice Waters, chef at the world-famous Napa Valley restaurant Chez Panisse, cis committed to transforming public education by using food traditions to teach, nurture, and empower young people. The foundation envisions a curriculum, inte- grated with the school lunch service, in which growing, cooking and sharing food at the table give students the knowledge and values to build a humane and sustainable future. We support programs that move food to the core of a curriculum that deepens the academic and social experiences of the young. d The Rodale Institute is another cultural catalyst that pushes the envelope even a little further. While most of the cfood can save us d media and organizations focus on agricultur- al practices, the Rodale Institute identifies the source of health and potential not with food or plants, but with the soil in which plants grow. The guiding principle of the Rodale Institute is chealthy soil = healthy food = healthy people. d Clean, naturallyenriched (composted, chemical-free, etc.) soil and clean water are the priorities of The Rodale Institute, which says, cWe are dedicated to working with people worldwide toachieve a regenerative food system that renewsenviron- mental and human health. d The Rodale Institute sponsors experi- mental farming projects in such diverse places as Guatemala, Japan (in cooperation withthe Shinji Shumeika, a Japanese organization dedicated to ca true integration and union of art, spiritualism, and natural agriculture as a basis for the enhancement of human and environmental health and well being, d) Kutztown, Pennsylvania, Russia, and Senegal. The Rodale Institute provides educational materials for farmers through publications and a website, www.newfarm.org. The insti- tute also provides educational information for children and educators through www.kidsregen.org. (The Rodale Institute is independent of, but has family and philan- thropic links to, Rodale publications, which publishes a number of magazines, including Prevention, Men 9s Health, Runner 9s World, and Organic Gardening .) Probably the best illustration of the concept of cfood as enlightenment d and cfood as social responsibility d is the book Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating , by Jane Goodall with Gary McAvoy and Gail Hudson (Warner Books, 2005). The world-renowned chim- panzee researcher Jane Goodall explains how she has witnessed the incursion of environ- mental degradation (and chimpanzee hunting) that is destroying the habitats of animals and plants at the same time that is fostering both a reduction of both human health and envi- ronmental diversity. Harvest for Hope makes an impassioned case for cChanging the World: One Purchase, One Meal, One Bite at a Time d (p. 283). Goodall puts a lot into her shopping basket of food-related despair: cPatents on our seeds& Billions of farm ani- mals live in conditions of utmost deprivation and misery& Humans and animals are increasingly poisoned from the chemicals that have been lavishly sprinkled over fields, crops, and food produce and that have contaminat- ed the earth 9s water, soil, and air. d Yet summoning the Buddhist concept ofmindfulness, Goodall is confident in the cresilience of nature d and that a commitment to Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) can save each of us individually, as well as the planet. She trusts that c68 million Americans, about a third of the adult popula- tion, qualify as LOHAS. Without realizing it,these people have become the most influ- ential force in the recent food revolution& Collectively we, the people, are the force that can lead to change. d Columbia University 9s UniversityProfessor Simon Schama has written eloquentlyabout humanity 9s tortuous relationship with nature. In Landscape and Memory (Vintage, 1996), Schama reminds us of hownature in our cultural history has sometimesbeen raw with tooth and claw, but at other times is our refuge and spiritual nurturer. Perhaps as we 21st-century Americans are ever further physically separated from the outdoors, the natural environment, plants and animals, we are finding Schama 9s same dichotomy in that one element in which we do, daily, interact with nature 4food. Food is a neces- sity, a threat, and a potential rescue for our physical health and spiritual well being. In November 2001, world-famous American educator and celebrator of food, author, and television star Julia Child moved to a retirement home in Montecito, California at age 89. She left her Cambridge, Massachusetts, home to her alma mater, Smith College, but her kitchen was moved to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where it now resides with all the other histor- ical artifacts of American history and culture (http://americanhistory.si.edu/juliachild/). A few years later, at Julia Child 9s death in2004, an obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle (August 14, 2004) included the fol- lowing reminiscence from Hubert Keller, chef/co-owner of the restaurant Fleur de Lys in San Francisco: cDuring the week of the earthquake [1989], she had a reservation on Friday. We were very excited. Then the earth- quake hit [on Tuesday]. We reopened on Friday. Everyone had left town, people canceled. Then here goes Julia 4she calls to reconfirm. Sure enough, that night, she came to the restaurant. That night, we only had locals; we were fairly busy because it felt like people wanted to go somewhere. Everyone recog- nized Julia, and it created such a good feeling. Everybody felt special. [People] had deserted town, and Julia stayed and was eating like nothing had happened. d Food for thought.

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