[Scpg] Alice Waters' Crusade For Better Food

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

Alice Waters' Crusade For Better Food
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/27/60minutes/main4863738.shtml
(CBS)  This story was first published on March 
15, 2009. It was updated on June 10, 2009.

When it comes to food, Alice Waters is a legend. 
At age 65, she has done more to change how we 
Americans eat, cook and think about food than 
anyone since Julia Child.

Waters was only 27 years old in 1971 when she 
opened her French bistro Chez Panisse in 
Berkeley, Calif., today considered one of the 
finest restaurants not just in the United States 
but in the world.

Waters has produced eight cookbooks, but she's 
more famous as the mother of a movement that 
preaches about fresh food grown in a way that's 
good for the environment. The movement, now 
called "slow food," is a healthy alternative to 
"fast food."

You might think this appeals only to the 
Prius-driving, latte-sipping upper crust, but 
Waters' ideas have gone mainstream, as 60 Minutes 
correspondent Lesley Stahl found out when this 
story first aired in March.

It all started at Waters' culinary temple, Chez 
Panisse. She still shows up almost every day, as 
she has for the last 37 years, to oversee the 
cooking with her exquisite, infallible taste buds.

It's not just the cooking that has made her 
famous: it's the ingredients. She was one of the 
first to serve antibiotic and hormone free meats 
and insist on fresh, organic, locally-grown 
fruits and vegetables.

"You started a revolution in food. How we think 
about food. How we cook food. But do you think of 
yourself as a revolutionary?" Stahl asked Waters.

"I guess I do now, but when I started Chez 
Panisse I wasn't thinking of a philosophy about 
organic and sustainable. I just was looking for 
flavor," Waters replied.

It's flavor that comes from serving only seasonal 
food, one of her hallmarks; say "frozen" and 
Alice Waters shudders. Because all her food has 
to be fresh, she buys only from local ranchers, 
fishermen and farmers.

People who meet Waters are struck by how gentle 
and dreamy she seems to be, and they wonder how 
someone like that became so successful. Truth is, 
Alice Waters is a steamroller, relentlessly going 
after what she wants. And now she wants everyone 
to cook the way she does. And that has put her in 
the spotlight

"People have become aware that way that we've 
been eating is making us sick," she said.

She has become the leader of a movement to change 
how we eat. And she's getting traction. Now you 
can go to your neighborhood grocery store - even 
Wal-Mart - and buy organic. But in the process, 
she's become a target.

"People say Alice Waters is self-righteous and 
elitist. And these are words I've heard over and 
over," Stahl pointed out.

"I feel that good food should be a right and not 
a privilege and it needs to be without pesticides 
and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. 
And that's not elitist," Waters argued.

Even as a little girl, Waters says she had a keen 
sense of taste. But what turned her into a cook 
was going to France in 1965 and eating simple and 
healthy country food. She had her epiphany.

Back at Berkeley, she was an activist involved in 
movements: anti-war, free speech, women's rights. 
But what she really loved was cooking, and 
feeding her friends. And she still does.

One day last August, she took 60 Minutes to a 
Mexican food stall in San Francisco where friends 
of hers were making slow food to go with organic 
corn and lots of spices.

You realize two things when you travel around 
with Alice Waters: one is that deep down she 
loves it when people eat, and two, it is that you 
can't resist her.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, a Waters 
disciple, told Stahl, "She has, I think, done 
more to change our eating habits for the better 
than anyone in the United States of America."

He agreed that obesity is a huge issue now. "We 
consume lousy food. This is killing us. I mean it 
really is. We have a drinking and eating problem 
in this country, not just in San Francisco. And 
this whole movement to me is the antidote for 
that."

Waters talked Newsom into letting her organize a 
"slow food" festival outside City Hall last 
September. Growing the slow food movement is one 
of her passions: she was ecstatic that 85,000 
people showed up.

She walked Stahl through the taste pavilions, 
introducing her to her acolytes: organic cheese 
merchants and bakers.

The centerpiece of the event was a sprawling, 
urban victory garden - a real vegetable garden in 
front of City Hall. Waters called it "the 
ultimate symbolism."

The garden, Waters' idea, was planted to encourage people to grow their own.

She brought Stahl over to one of her favorite 
local farmers, John Lagier, who uses only 
eco-friendly, or as Waters would say, 
"sustainable" methods. That day he was showing 
off his specialty grapes, Bronx seedless, which 
he was selling at $4 a pound.

There's the rub. A common complaint about organic food is that it's expensive.

"We make decisions everyday about what we're 
going to eat," Waters said. "And some people want 
to buy Nike shoes - two pairs, and other people 
want to eat Bronx grapes, and nourish themselves. 
I pay a little extra, but this is what I want to 
do."

Continued
To prove to Stahl that healthy, slow food is 
worth the money, and can be fast and easy, she 
invited her to her house for breakfast.

She was going to cook some eggs and make a salad 
with tomatoes. It was at the house that Stahl 
realized that Waters lives in a different world - 
for one, she doesn't have a microwave.

Asked how she lives without one, Waters replied, 
"I don't know how you can sort of live with one."

But how many stressed out working mothers have 
this kind of patience in the morning? She chopped 
up chives, diced up tomatoes, and marinated them 
in olive oil and garlic.

Waters told Stahl she rarely goes into a regular 
supermarket. "I'm looking for food that's just 
been picked. And so, I know when I go the 
farmer's market that you know, they just brought 
it in that day."

"I have to say, it's just a luxury to be able to do that," Stahl remarked.

"In a sense it is a luxury," Waters agreed.

A luxury that's delectable: once she spread the 
ripe tomatoes and Tuscan olive oil on a slab of 
organic bread, she started on the eggs.

Her cooking "equipment" includes a fireplace in her kitchen.

Not sure if it was the roaring fire in the 
kitchen or the "fast and easy" part - is she 
kidding? But Stahl said it was one of the best 
breakfasts of her life.

Waters is already trying to influence the next 
generation by creating another garden, something 
she calls "The Edible Schoolyard."

"This is an effort to bring kids into a new 
relationship to food," she explained.

Waters got a local middle school in Berkeley to 
create a course where kids learn about growing 
food right on the school grounds.

The students told Stahl they were planting 
strawberries and cultivating the bed; one kid 
says it was the most fun class he had.

They also thought they were learning something 
important. "We're learning about compost, crab 
grass, how to raise [a] good healthy garden," one 
boy told Stahl.

"You know it's kind of a thrill every time I come 
here. I think I just want to get my hands in the 
soil," Waters told Stahl. "I want to go down on 
my hands and knees and be a child again."

he garden is just half of the program. The kids 
also learn how to cook what they've grown. For 
many of the kids it's the first time they've 
cooked and eaten fresh, organic food.

"Did you ever cook anything that you thought 
before, oh my god, I'd never eat anythingŠlike 
that in a million [years]?" Stahl asked the 
children.

"Oh yeah. This one thing with toast and then 
there's spinach and mushrooms on top of it. I 
thought I would hate it but it was really good," 
one student told Stahl.

If Waters had her way, there'd be a program like this in every single school.

"We have schools across the country that are 
cutting gym, where they can't afford books for 
the kids. Do you think it's possible that what 
you're doing or what you're trying to do can 
really be spread all across the country in these 
times?" Stahl asked.

"In these times it needs to be spread more than 
ever," Waters argued. "That children would grow 
up knowing how to cook. This is something that we 
don't know how to do anymore."

"But can we afford it? I guess that's what I'm asking," Stahl said.

"But we can't not afford it," Waters argued.

She did agree with the notion that she's a dreamer.

But to others she's a visionary. Now she has her 
sights on a new project and we would like to warn 
President Obama that the steamroller is on its 
way.

"You have been pushing for a vegetable garden at 
the White House for years. Rose garden? Forget 
that. You want a broccoli garden?" Stahl asked.

"I have been talking nonstop about the symbolism 
of an edible landscape at the White House. I 
think it says everything about stewardship of the 
land and about the nourishment of a nation," 
Waters said.

Asked if she thinks she'll achieve such a garden 
at the White House, Waters told Stahl, "Well, I'm 
very hopeful. I've always liked the idea of doing 
press conferences at the compost heap."



Five days after this story first aired, Michelle 
Obama broke ground for a garden on the South Lawn 
of the White House. It's 1,100 square feet, with 
organic herbs, fruits and vegetables.



Continued
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