It’s the Cooking, Stupid!

I recently interviewed Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg, co-authors of the book “Feed the People!: Why Industrial Food Is Good and How to Make It Even Better.” We agreed on some things—industrial food
production has fed the world, staving off what many thought was
going to be mass starvation by 2000, and that small local farms, by
themselves, are only part of a solution.

That doesn’t mean that I am not deeply passionate about family
farms, since I grew up on one, but America’s diet woes have resulted in 42 percent obesity. We need practical solutions and the two authors believe that reforming factory farming has to be taken seriously. Fair enough. But one curious aspect of their argument stood out—eating is something apart from farming and cooking. They have no love for
the Michael Pollans and Wendell Berrys of the world since the authors feel that romanticizing food production is unproductive. Eating is its own thing.

I disagree.

Seemingly impractical ideas have changed the world. The New Testament offered a radically different moral equation than the Old—
love thy neighbor was no easy sell during the reign of Tiberius. Darwin told us that man was not made in God’s image but was simply the end
product of millions of years of evolution. And, in my time, the Vietnam anti-war movement drove Lyndon Johnson from office and eventually
contributed to the end of that conflict.

Merging farming, cooking and eating into one philosophy may be, in the long run, more powerful than limiting the use of corn syrup in breakfast cereals or trying to shift subsidies away from corn and soybeans. All avenues of change are welcome but how we think about food and cooking, how we make decisions about what ends up on our plate, is essential.

Consumer activism based on a closely held belief system works. The 1960s Civil Rights Movement and labor reform are two shining examples. And using the pocketbook, consumer buying power, to further a cause can be powerful as well. If we didn’t buy junk food, nobody would make it. Cigarette consumption has dropped almost 80 percent in the last four decades, from 2,520 cigarettes per
capita per year to just 468. Yes, heavy taxation had a lot to do with
that but, at the end of the day, consumers initiated change.

Alice Waters and many like her never see just food on a plate;
it’s connected to farmers, to a philosophy of cooking, to the notion
that eating is an act that embodies everything present in the good
life. It’s not just a bowl of pasta; it’s also the conversation around the
table. You can’t force consumers to think of food in those terms but, slowly, step by step, there is a movement afoot to elevate eating into an act of belief and, in some cases, an act of protest.

Yes, the challenge is daunting. Gen Z, according to one study, prefers comfort foods such as pizza, pasta and burgers. Flavor is almost five
times more important than health. Sweet is almost ten times more appealing than savory. And convenience ranks higher than freshness or satisfaction. Health is framed as a lifestyle add-on, not a food-first discipline.

I remember walking down the street with my mother in the early sixties, having just bought “Meet the Beatles!” She commented, “In a few years, nobody will remember them.” Today, few of us can imagine the sixties without John, Paul, George and Ringo. Those songs were not just songs; they embodied a time, a place, an innocence, and they unleashed passions that were bottled up in the 1950s. Anyone who says that rock ’n’ roll is just music misses the entire point of the human spirit. Cue the
Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers.

Calvin once said to Hobbes, “In my book, food should be nutrition and entertainment.” Hobbes replied, “That’s why we tigers like our food surprised and running.” Today, food is entertainment and the excesses of the nose-to-tail movement may seem beyond the pale, chasing down dinner in the wild.

My job is not to tell you what to eat—Jamie Oliver notably failed with that approach—but I am here to make the case that eating without cooking is a life half-lived. The entertainment comes from the kitchen, not the supermarket or internet, just where it belongs.