Review: “We Are What We Eat”

Play to Listen:

I don’t usually write book reviews but I recently finished We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto, by renowned chef, restauranteur, and activist Alice Waters. The book is frightening, compelling, and a bit confusing, made even more so as the audiobook version (that I listened to) is narrated by Waters herself. Her slow, methodical narrative drives home the gravity of the story and her passion for the subject matter.

Remember Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring?

If you were around in the early 1960s, you may remember the impact of Silent Spring on our thinking about the environment at the time. Carson’s book was revelatory and terrifying leaving the reader (or at least me) both paralyzed with fear and eager to make a difference. Decades later, Silent Spring still occupies a unique place in the environmental protection movement and it often regaled for its prescient message.

I suggest We Are What We Eat is to today’s generation what Silent Spring was to mine. Waters paints a complex picture contrasting her preferred “slow food” culture with the “fast food” industrial complex. Every food choice we make, every bite we take impacts the environment, the economy, and the world according to Waters. She has been on this crusade since opening her world-famous Chez Panisse in 1971. From the beginning, the restaurant emphasized serving good food from local, organic, known sources with the intent of strengthening the link between the farmer and the consumer. It was farm-to-table long before that was fashionable.

Cheapness, Availability, Speed — All Bad For Your Health

I worry about what I eat and what I feed my family, and I have listened to all the advice offered over the years, and try to be smart, adopt what I can, and slowly improve our diets. It’s not easy! A wholesale change to becoming a vegetarian or vegan or whatever is not in my cards though sometimes I wish I could just go that route. My goal (assuming I actually have a goal) is to buy quality produce and proteins that are as local and fresh as possible and delivered by providers who are at least aware of their impact on the environment. I don’t try to buy everything organic (mostly due to price), and I do try to minimize exposure to traditional fast food. Mostly, I would describe myself as following an “everything in moderation” diet. Nothing is truly out of bounds but I try to avoid it becoming a habit. I’d love to know what Alice Waters thinks of this approach.

I have made a few changes lately as I became more aware of the implications of my purchasing and eating habits. First, during the pandemic, I started using the online service ButcherBox, a provider of quality frozen proteins. I liked the service and I’m not a big fan of frozen stuff, but it was convenient, affordable, and the meat cuts were good. Then, a few months ago, I was educated by one of my chef friends in CA who advised me that their meat comes from Australia, and it would be far better to support a local provider. He suggested Walden Local Meat Company, a local provider that partners with about 75 different supplier farms in New England and New York. Again, I like the convenience, the quality of the products, and the customer service. Plus, given their local nature, they are able to deliver eggs, bread, and soon, milk from local providers. It’s not all perfect, and it takes some work to learn how to properly prepare grass-fed beef, free-range chicken, etc., due to the differences in the characteristics of the meat, but I feel like I’m making a good choice for my family all while supporting local farms.

My current challenge is getting smarter about produce. I try to buy local when in season but I never make it to my local farmers’ market. Local markets such as Whole Foods and Fresh Market are my fallback but it’s not always easy to discern what’s truly local and in season. Buying grapes, for example, is more difficult than buying a mattress! Waters discusses in great detail that she believes having everything available all the time regardless of seasonality is one of the most evil (my word not hers) aspects of the fast-food mentality. I did join a local farm cooperative once and found out quickly that I was getting too much produce at one time and too much stuff I didn’t really like, causing a lot of angst and waste. Note: Recently, I also started composting using Curbside Compost, a great service that picks up organic matter weekly and transforms it into compost, garden soil, and mulch. It’s not cheap but I’ve taken pounds of material out of my trash stream and benefitted by buying their mulch which is beautiful.

Back to We Are What We Eat

I have digressed from the book review. The problem I had with the book is that Waters doesn’t offer a practical solution to the problems. Organic farms are not going to feed the world anytime soon. I understand what she is espousing and I empathize with her passion but I’m frustrated with the lack of vision about how to get there. Maybe what I’m doing is the right way to approach it? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. What steps have you taken that bring you closer to your food sources? Maybe we can discover a path together!

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