Tired of the Alice Waters Backlash - Are You?

[cinghiale]

How much does it cost per pound versus Costco's lamb from Australia? Is there enough of it to replace all of Costco's lamb from Australia? Would the environmental and energy impacts of producing enough lamb in New York to supply all of New York's lamb demand be greater or less than the impacts of producing it in Australia and shipping it in?

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How much does it cost per [barrel] versus [oil] from [OPEC]? Is there enough of it to replace all [oil] from [OPEC]? Would the environmental and energy impacts of producing enough [oil] in [the U.S.] to supply all of [the U.S.'s] [oil] demand be greater or less than the impacts of producing it in [OPEC countries] and shipping it in?

Self-sufficiency is the mother of invention. It would drive down the carbon footprint and more than likely lead to better school lunches in Rapid City and elsewhere.

The U.S. birthright to the cheapest possible everything from whatever source at whatever time is unsupportable.

[Fat Guy]

The point is that it uses less oil to produce many items far away and ship them in.

[cinghiale]

Just like oil. Under "conventional wisdom".

[Fat Guy]

I don't really understand that comment, but again to quote McWilliams:

it is impossible for most of the world to feed itself a diverse and healthy diet through exclusively local food production — food will always have to travel

We must accept the fact, in short, that distance is not the enemy of awareness.

New Zealand’s most prominent environmental research organization, Landcare Research-Manaaki Whenua, explains that localism “is not always the most environmentally sound solution if more emissions are generated at other stages of the product life cycle than during transport.”

Worth reading just as an introduction to his larger body of work:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/opinion/06mcwilliams.html

[Fat Guy]

I really think anybody who is wondering about the impetus behind Alice Waters backlash should invest the 12 agonizing minutes in watching her 60 Minutes profile. Granted, the editing of TV segments is not under the control of the subject. But they hardly seem out to get her. The few tough questions they ask, they don't really drill down on. And despite that, to me Alice Waters comes across as cringe-inducing, out of touch and, yes, condescending. Am I the only one who finds her tremendously annoying based on this footage?

[cinghiale]

You raised the issue of cost. Oil and food products both are cheaper -- and undoubtedly have a lower energy and enviromental impact -- when imported than when obtained it in the U.S. In both cases, cost seems to be driving the reluctance to explore other avenues of providing for sufficiency. Those who argue that cheaper means better have not learned from the past and are damned to repeat it.

it is impossible for most of the world to feed itself a diverse and healthy diet through exclusively local food production — food will always have to travel

I thought we were talking about Vermont or Iowa or New Orleans. Or does the citation merely help assuage any concern about our eating cheap, imported lamb?

We must accept the fact, in short, that distance is not the enemy of awareness

Jeez, absolutists. Real problem-solvers, they. But maybe one could read the "awareness" as meaning that once oil-based transport gets untenable, McWilliams's argument is no longer valid.

[Fat Guy]

I assure you McWilliams is absolutely familiar with the cost of oil, both cost as in price and cost as in environmental and social cost. But what he's saying is do the math and look at all the things that use oil. Transportation, McWilliams points out, only uses a small amount of oil compared to the actual processes of agriculture. So more efficient agriculture is a huge oil-saver, and if that more efficient agriculture has to occur far away it still saves oil even taking transportation into account. Then there's what McWilliams refers to as the "last mile problem." Farmers markets are wasteful of oil because all those farmers driving to the farmers market, and all those people making an extra trip to the farmers market if they need to go by car, are using more oil than it would take to truck larger quantities of food to large supermarkets.

In other words, raising food locally can waste oil.

[daisy17]

Eat locally and sustainably.

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Eat seasonally.

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Shop at farmers markets.

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Plant a garden.

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Conserve, compost, and recycle.

.....

Etc.

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This is just tragic. She must be stopped immediately.

If Lesley Stahl's attitude doesn't jump out at you as problematic in that 60 Minutes interview then I don't know what to say. Without her preposterous commentary the piece would have left an entirely different impression of AW. I saw a woman who is wildly enthusiastic about food caring about what she eats and where it comes from and who she supports in buying it, and wanting to have kids understand that what they eat matters. Thank God someone does. Stahl mocked every move she made and I was disgusted by it.

I also fail to see how this could possibly be all about oil (you don't mention the use of pesticides and the oil utilized there), but then again I walk to my farmer's market, so what the hell do I know.

[MomOfLittleFoodies]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the school budget in Berkeley, California (median household income $86,542, median property value $736,200, very education-friendly population) is a tad bit higher than the school budget in, say, Cedar Rapids, Iowa (median household income $43,704, median property value about $135,000, not exactly full of liberal college professors and students).

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Here's the deal though... BUSD has 40% of it's student population enrolled in the free and reduced lunch program. That's 40% of the student population whose families with incomes at or below 185% of the federal poverty level. 3,540 someodd students (total district enrollment is 8856 students).

I'm going to venture to guess that the 40% of the school population aren't living in the $736,200 homes or have parents making $86k/year.

The way that the free/reduced lunch program works is that the USDA reimburses schools for part of the cost of the lunches provided to students. For schools where less than 60% of the population receives free/reduced lunches, the reimbursement rate is as follows. $2.57 for each free lunch, $2.17 for each reduced price lunch (costs the student 40 cents), $0.24 for each full priced lunch.

National School Lunch Program fact sheet

It's a lot easier for a school district who has 40% participation in the program to break even than a school district with 10% participation, no matter what is being served.

I live not far from Berkeley, and my little foodies attend public schools. I'm pretty happy with the school lunch program here. Plenty of fresh fruit and veggies offered daily (the kids can take as much as they like), whole grain breads, nothing deep fried.

Both schools my kids attend have school gardens where veggies are grown, but not in enough of a volume to serve in the cafeteria.

I'm a lunchroom monitor at the elementary school, and even though the school lunches aren't as "fabulous" as the ones BUSD serves, they are healthier than 60% of the stuff kids are bringing from home.

[Fat Guy]

you don't mention the use of pesticides and the oil utilized there

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McWilliams and other advocates of "life cycle assessment" are carefully considering all such factors.

If Lesley Stahl's attitude doesn't jump out at you as problematic in that 60 Minutes interview then I don't know what to say.

It doesn't strike me as the slightest bit problematic, save for her failure to follow up as rigorously as a journalist should when the subject doesn't give real answers to questions. Lesley Stahl didn't invent Alice Waters backlash. She's reporting on it. And having seen the footage, I have a much better feel for why Alice Waters rubs so many people the wrong way.

[weinoo]

Isn't McWilliams the same dude telling us we should all be eating factory farmed pork because it's "safer" than pork products from pigs that are humanely raised and sustainably farmed?

Has he ever done any studies for the "agribusiness" industry?

[cinghiale]

Isn't McWilliams the same dude telling us we should all be eating factory farmed pork because it's "safer" than pork products from pigs that are humanely raised and sustainably farmed?

Here.

Bloggers and others were quick to note:

Guess who paid for the study? The National Pork Board, of course.

Five days after publication of McWilliams's piece, the Times appended this editors note:

An Op-Ed last Friday, about pork, neglected to disclose the source of the financing for a study finding that free-range pigs were more likely than confined pigs to test positive for exposure to certain pathogens. The study was financed by the National Pork Board.

McWilliams responded, admitting he "may have erred" on the seropathogen issue, on The Atlantic. IMO, he lacks the credentials to discuss with any authority the matters cited upthread. To bring this back OT, how can anyone who claims with the straightest of faces that "locavores are endangering the future of food" be taken seriously?

Edited April 26, 2009 by cinghiale (log)

[weinoo]

To bring this back OT, how can anyone who claims with the straightest of faces that "locavores are endangering the future of food" be taken seriously?

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That's easy enough - when you're a history professor, and someone offers you a nice chunk of change, I guess your moral standards are lowered.

[Fat Guy]

Ad hominem attacks aside, McWilliams's work is just one of many examples of life-cycle assessment, which is clearly the superior way to measure energy and environmental impact. The reality is that when viewed in the context of life cycle assessment, locavorism often simply fails as a matter of mathematical fact.

When scientists look behind the scenes, local food doesn't always come out on top. A 2005 report for the U.K.'s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) found that growing local tomatoes caused more than three times the carbon dioxide emissions of importing Spanish tomatoes. The culprit was the glasshouse heating required to grow tomatoes locally.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/food/eat_drink/20...iles/print.html

Regardless, the focus on food-miles and transport must be analyzed in terms of the overall climate impact of food. Results in Figure 1c show the breakdown of total life-cycle GHG emissions associated with household food, in terms of final delivery, supply chain (nondirect) freight, production, and wholesaling/retailing. Total GHG emissions are 8.1 t CO2e/household-yr, meaning delivery accounts for only 4% of total GHG emissions, and transportation as a whole accounts for 11%. Wholesaling and retailing of food account for another 5%, with production of food accounting for the vast majority (83%) of total emissions.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es702969f

Dubner is also worth reading on this, in the Freakonomics blog:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008...lion-locavores/

[weinoo]

We know a point is trying to be made here - what it is exactly might be beyond my comprehension.

In other words, I'm pretty sure Alice Waters drives a car - so is that the reason for the backlash? Or is it because the 60 minutes piece was so agonizing to watch?

For some.

[Fat Guy]

Yes, many found Waters's comments in the 60 Minutes piece, and Alice Waters in general, to be condescending, unrealistic, etc. I thought that was clear, because so many people said just that. But I can say it again just in case.

In addition, Waters is advocating all this expensive, time-consuming food during a punishing recession, so she comes across as insensitive to the needs of working families. She says she's sensitive to those needs but her comments come across as unconvincing.

Finally, she's wrong about some of the fundamental assumptions of her argument, which is basically locavorism. Locavorism, which gained traction with the whole "food miles" concept, is currently not holding up under the more rigorous assessment of life-cycle assessment. So while in the past it was possible to excuse the lecturing and apparent condescension by claiming to be saving the planet, that doesn't have good factual support. It seems, based on the best of what has been written, that a full-on shift to local production would actually be a planetary catastrophe both environmentally and socially.

Please let me know if that's not entirely clear.

[weinoo]

Here's what's not "entirely clear." The broad brush being used to paint Alice Waters into a corner as simply being a locavore and elitist, when in actuality the main focus of her foundation, the foundation that she started, is, as the Chez Panisse Foundation website makes clear,

1. School Lunch Reform

2. The Edible Schoolyard

3. The Edible Schoolyard Affiliate Network

Now, it's certainly obvious that her personal food philosophy, the ideals she strives for and seems to live on a daily basis, are not attainable by many. But at least she practices what she preaches. And if she has to step on some toes and piss some people off along the way, well, sometimes that's what it takes to bring about change.

To simply wish someone would "go away," as Ozersky wrote in his Feedbag piece, is as much about him using his bully pulpit as Alice used hers on 60 Minutes. And it's also disingenuous coming from someone touting a $26 hamburger, which I'm sure we can all afford, and which I'm sure a number of Cedar Rapids moms are feeding their kids.

[rancho_gordo]

Aren't there many, many reasons to support local food and local food traditions, even beyond mileage? I think so. I also think it might be cheaper to produce abroad when you throw away your whole infrastructure as you take on imports in order to take your excellent profits to the obscene profit level.

I don't think you can make blanket statements saying it's good or bad. Growing wheat in Hawaii probably isn't the wisest idea. Of course, beans from anywhere other than the California delta should be illegal!! But where do hot house tomatoes from Holland fit in? They taste like crap and local tomatoes here in California sell for about $60 a ton.

I'm all over the map on this one. I just wish there were more conversation and less speaking in absolutes on all sides.

[dividend]

I'm confused about what critics of her opinion would want her to do/say instead of what she's doing.

I've never looked her example and message and felt condescended to because what she's doing isn't possible for everyone right now; I don't think it's snobbery to take a reporter to a boutique farmers market stall, and I certainly don't think that sharing her visions of what should be possible is worth of jabs and eye rolling. That doesn't do anyone any good.

She's one example of what is possible here and now, and she has the resources and means to live that example vocally and publicly. Should she moderate her message, water it down to make it more palatable? I don't think so - in fact, I think doing so dilutes her effectiveness. Someone like me looks at what she's able to accomplish, and is motivated to become more educated about food and nutrition, to seek out farmers markets and local meat producers, to grow something in my backyard, to figure out ways to spend my food existing food budget more thoughtfully. To try to say that she has nothing to say to the straw man inner city single mother with 11 kids making minimum wage is disingenuous, because at every income level and circumstance, there is some degree of choice to be made. Maybe that single mother is inspired by Alice Waters and plants a few vegetables, gets her children to help, eats a little better, and shaves a few dollars off her grocery bill. That course of action is certainly under the umbrella alongside $5/lb ramps, yes? It's also disingenuous to say that her message needs to be moderated during a recession to avoid being out of touch. It is during tough economic times that small farms need support the most, and it's during times of stress and turmoil that we most need to nourish ourselves. If we're buying/growing simple whole foods as a baseline when times are tough, and then local/organic as we can afford to choose to do so, isn't that better than using the recession as an excuse to not have to think about it?

If the person standing at the extreme motivates some people to stand halfway there, and even more to start in that direction, that person has done an incredible amount of good for the cause they believe in, whatever it is. So I would reiterate my question - what would her critics prefer her to be saying/doing?

[slkinsey]

Mitch, just because some people have written douchey articles critical of Alice Waters during a time when it's easy to do so because of some backlash, doesn't mean that some of the reasons behind the backlash don't have validity. And just because the Chez Panisse foundation has three main points of focus, that doesn't mean that these three points represent all or even most of the public message Alice Waters the person has been putting out there.

Alice Waters is a visionary who has had a major impact on American cuisine, and she is a tireless supporter of ideas the principles that are, for the most part, entirely commendable and valuable ones. I don't think that anyone disagrees with this.

But, it is also true that she can come across as condescending in the expression of even her best ideas. Josh Ozersky, for example, isn't out there saying that everyone in America should be eating a $26 hamburger and wagging his finger at mothers who use $1.99/pound ground beef instead of La Frieda Black Label.

It is further true that she can come across as insensitive to the realities of working people in the middle of the worst recession of their lifetimes. People don't like being told that they should cancel their cable TV in favor of pastured local lamb and organic eggs from the farmer's market, especially when they're already at the point of cutting back. I've preached the philosophy of "pay more and you get better food while helping to change the world" to my own parents, who are quite well off, and I can tell you that it played a whole lot better 5 years ago before the market nosedived and the economy started circling the drain.

It is still further true that some of of her cornerstone arguments -- at least insofar as the way she expresses them -- are not correct on a purely factual basis. The premise that "eating local is better for the environment" or "has a smaller carbon footprint" is one.

So, not only is paying 300% or more over the supermarket price for farmer's market foodstuffs an expensive luxury for the economically comfortable (which demographic finds itself considerably reduced in recent years), and not only does the "save the world" argument seem like "hippy talk" to a large percentage of Americans, but it turns out to be largely incorrect. But, really, I think that these things would all be okay with most people if she expressed these ideas in a way that didn't make it seem like she was wagging her finger.

I buy food at the Greenmarket, but I also buy food from Jeffrey's and Fairway and Whole Foods and even Gristede's and CostCo. And I'm sure as hell not going to take any shit from Alice Waters for doing so. To the extent that people feel like they're getting shit from Alice Waters for buying the occasional bag of frozen peas at Gristede's, there's going to be backlash. To make a comparison, I have a friend who has become a die-hard crusader about recycling and plastics use... to the extent that she won't buy many products most people normally enjoy because it comes in single-use plastic packaging. This even includes things such as the plastic lined paper that Murray's uses to wrap cheese. Now... while I haven't gone over to pursuing the same lifestyle as her, being around her and the occasional conversations we might have about phthalates or whatever has definitely changed some of my habits in a direction of which she would approve. If she gave me a withering look or tut-tutted every time she saw me sipping a bottle of San Pellegrino or eating a carton of Kesso yogurt... well, there would be backlash. And yet, her message would not be any different. There would be backlash due to the way the message was expressed and the context in which is was expressed.

[slkinsey]

Aren't there many, many reasons to support local food and local food traditions, even beyond mileage?

I certainly think so.

But where do hot house tomatoes from Holland fit in? They taste like crap and local tomatoes here in California sell for about $60 a ton.

That becomes a more interesting question if you don't live in California. If you live in New York, for example, local tomatoes are all quite expensive because they're largely grown on small farms. And there is some question in my mind as to whether tomatoes shipped from California are going to be better-tasting and also whether they're going to be better for the environment compared to tomatoes from Holland or Israel. If the answer to both of these questions is "no" then there is no compelling reason not to buy the Dutch or Israeli tomatoes, if that's what you can get and afford.

Edited April 26, 2009 by slkinsey (log)

[Fat Guy]

Aren't there many, many reasons to support local food and local food traditions, even beyond mileage?

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Sure, of course, and McWilliams (and I) think those are valid and worth weighing. However, the big public argument in support of locavorism has for a while been food miles. The better thinking on that issue says that, when it comes to energy and the environment, food miles are not a big deal and, indeed, many local foods are wasteful of energy and more damaging to the environment than foods that travel. So that all should be weighed when discussing which purchasing decisions are better for the world. I will say that, for myself, I started out somewhat buying into the food miles argument, and the more I've learned the more I've realized how flawed the food miles model is. I also feel the same way about organic. And I don't think we should be moving back in the direction of an agrarian society, unless people want to be farmers, in which case that's their choice. I'm currently more concerned about humane treatment of animals than about food miles, organics or farmer's markets.

So yeah, there are a lot of issues to weigh. But Alice Waters doesn't come across as weighing anything. When she goes on TV and proclaims that she couldn't imagine having a microwave, that she doesn't go to supermarkets, that she cooks eggs in a spoon over an open fire, and she starts going on about gardens and such, and you look at the lists of things she's pushing in her book (which I linked to above), she comes across as an out-of-touch absolutist who's saying "shame on everybody who doesn't live like me." I have no problem with her living the life she lives, but when she starts sending out the message that her lifestyle is morally superior to everyone else's -- and that is very much the message I get, and that a lot of people get (thus the backlash) -- then it's a different story.

[chezcherie]

aren't open fires among the worst air polluters? in fact, i thought several bay area cities have banned them?

[kalypso]

Now if the school district can provide 8,000 meals a day, and remain within their  budget while eliminating almost all processed foods, doesn't it make sense to try and spread that word?  And yes, be a little pedantic about it.

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They can't. There was a piece in Food Management magazine a couple weeks ago stating that Berkeley Unified food service is facing a $250,000 budget shortfall for fiscal 2009/10...and that the program had lost the (not identified in the article) source of it's subsidized funding.

As most of the world by now knows the State of CA is nearly broke. Every K-12 food service director in CA hears the same directive "You shalt not infringe on the General Fund", which basically means that the programs need to be self supporting. If a school district has to pay for funding shortfalls in their food service program it comes out of the General Fund, and that means less money for classroom instruction (or so the FSD is told).

Does BUSD have an extra quarter million (and the committment) lying around to sink into their food service program? Maybe, maybe not, depends on how far they've already had to deplete their reserves. One thing you can be sure of is that no superintendent of schools is going to allow a department to continue to hemorrhage a quarter million dollars a year.

[weinoo]

But Alice Waters doesn't come across as weighing anything. When she goes on TV and proclaims that she couldn't imagine having a microwave, that she doesn't go to supermarkets, that she cooks eggs in a spoon over an open fire...

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Julia Child, in her Master Chef series, went to visit the late Jean-Louis Palladin...here's that show in a nutshell...

Jean-Louis Palladin ran his own restaurant in the Watergate Hotel for almost twenty years. In this episode, he prepares Foie Gras (duck liver) with Poached Apples, roasts a Duck Breast over an open fireplace, and, to accompany the duck, prepares Sauteed Porcini Mushrooms.