I’m hesitant to step in the middle of any debate over Alice Waters’ contributions to food policy. But suffice it to say that, as she moves more and more aggressively into politics, she is taking some hits. Ezra Klein sums up the Alice Waters paradox this way:
Good food—the sort Waters features at her restaurant—is
considered a luxury of the rich rather than a social justice issue. As
Waters frequently argues, no one is worse served by our current food
policy than a low-income family using food stamps to purchase rotted
produce at the marked-up convenience store. Her vision is classically
populist: It democratizes the concrete advantages—health, pleasure,
nutrition—that our current food system gives mainly to the wealthy.
But her language is suffused with the values and the symbols of, well,
the sort of people who already eat at Waters’ restaurant. Thus, in
promoting an agenda that benefits poor people with little access to
fresh food, Waters tends to communicate mainly with rich people
interested in fine dining.
She’s been fighting the elitist tag for some time—as well as a reputation for being a bit, well, overbearing. According to a recent article in Gourmet, she overwhelmed even former President Clinton years ago with her passion over a White House vegetable garden. After receiving a letter from the Clintons suggesting that a front-lawn vegetable garden wasn’t in keeping with the formal landscaping of the White House, Waters couldn’t restrain herself:
[S]he fired off another letter. Apologizing for “being so insistent,” she begged to differ, reminding him that “L’Enfant’s original plan for the capital city was inspired by the layout of Versailles, and at Versailles the royal kitchen garden is itself a national monument: historically accurate, productive, and breathtakingly beautiful throughout the year.”
It was the end of their correspondence.
Ouch. And the Obamas, while unfailingly polite in person, have so far resisted Waters’ attempts to be pulled into their circle of informal advisors. Having nothing to do with Waters, it’s well-known that hobnobbing with aesthetes can be dangerous to your electoral prospects and the fact remains that Waters is, at heart, just that.
Waters’ current tribulations may thus be a result of the fact that, aside from her abundant gifts as a chef, she seems to have an ample ability to rub people the wrong way. The same qualities that contributed to her success in the professional kitchen—her rigorousness, her passion, her attention to detail, her unwillingness to suffer fools gladly—are clearly not serving her well at the moment.
That’s a shame. Because her contributions are significant—from her approach at Chez Panisse, to her pioneering school garden projects known as the Edible Schoolyard, to her partial responsibility for turning an empty lot that was once in the shadow of a freeway into one of the country’s greatest open-air local Farmers’ Markets—and threaten to be drowned out by her detractors. Even her work to improve school lunches, dismissed by some as too expensive and elitist, are finding echoes in statements by USDA chief Tom Vilsack, who intends to use the National School Lunch and Food Stamps programs as a means to get Americans to eat more fresh and locally-sourced fruit and vegetables.
Anthony Bourdain recently suggested that “there’s something very Khmer Rouge” about Waters’ approach to food. While that is a fair analogy for the atmosphere in any high-end restaurant kitchen, even presumably Anthony Bourdain’s, it’s not actually a fair description of Waters’ take on policy. She does not, as Bourdain speculates, want to “to send out special squads to close all the McDonald’s.”
The simple fact is that she “annoys the living sh*t out of” Bourdain. Sadly, he does not appear to be alone. And this becomes an issue for food policy generally to the extent that the message gets entangled with the messenger. If nothing else, the contentious role Waters continues to play makes clear that the progressive food movement is a work in progress and that its “leadership” is very much up for grabs.
No to Obama’s agrichemical industry man, yes to Bed-Stuy Farm
Obama energy speech contained few policy specifics, but shaped forward-looking narrative
Comments
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Pangolin Posted 12:24 am
04 Mar 2009
Alice Waters has volunteers convinced that the way to spend their time is to bring fruits and vegetables into classrooms and introduce them to kids at the peak of their quality. Kids will eat carrots, kale and broccoli when it's fresh and well presented and refuse it if it's just a little bit peaked. Put salad bars in high schools and kids will clean them out but only if the ingredients are good quality.
Anybody who doesn't think it isn't a national priority to put apples and persimmons in mouths instead of twinkies hasn't looked at a health insurance bill recently. Your tax bill is directly related to the national consumption of Mac'N'cheese in favor of chickpeas. A moron like Bourdain who spends his time eating the best of food but denying the importance of that same food to the health of his countrymen is a jerk.
There's no free market in food in the US. Every food item that you don't pick from your own yard is subsidized or taxed in some way. What's wrong with picking the good food over the garbage?
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Bart Anderson Posted 4:00 am
04 Mar 2009
It was the same story with M.L. King, organic farmers, women's rights, anti-Apartheid.
It is a sign that Alice Waters is doing something right.
From a tactical point of view, the opposition has decided they can't attack the idea of sustainable food directly, so they launch personal attacks on leaders of the movement.
The idea is to spread FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), and unfortunately Tom W. is helping.
If you look carefully at Tom's post, there is no substantial criticism, nothing real. It's the sort of make-believe criticism directed at Obama.
Alice Waters is extraordinarily successful and has been committed to the cause of sustainable healthy food for longer than most of us have been alive.
And Tom's big news is ... some people don't like what she is saying.
I dunno, looks like concern trolling to me. A recently declassified World War II manual on sabotage recommends such techniques to derail any effective action: "Advocate 'caution.' Be 'reasonable' and urge your fellow-conferees to be 'reasonable' and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on... Be worried about the propriety of any decision
Bart
Energy Bulletin
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dlehmann Posted 4:18 am
04 Mar 2009
In a way, that's understandable. These people are struggling to run programs that stay in the black and they're looking at a federal reimbursement that's less than $3.
But there is enormous resistance to change. The association's lobbyist told the conference that there will be "lots of interest organizations lobbying to seek more than 1 billion for child nutrition and tell the president how to spend it. There will be people who want esoteric changes to these programs -- what I call the yuppies." That statement, and others specifically mentioning Alice Waters, received lots of applause from the audience.
I'll be blogging throughout the week about the SNA conference and about today's senate hearing on child nutrition at http://www.schoolfoodpolicy.com.
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