It's Easy Being Green

If you’re not an avid 60 Minutes watcher or missed Sunday night’s episode, you missed a great interview and profile of Alice Waters, the so-called mother of the slow food movement.  Shamefully, I have a couple of books with forwards by Alice Waters but didn’t know who she was until last night.

Alice is a staunch advocate of local farmer’s markets and stands strong in support of sustainable agriculture.  Her L.A. based restaurants, including the world reknowned Chez Panisse, utilize price fixed menus that change daily as farm fresh produce becomes available and goes out of season.  She’s also spearheaded the planting of a vegetable garden outside San Francisco’s city hall, a new classroom program that gets kids outside into a garden teaching them how to grow their own fresh and sustainable food and how to cook it and recently a call to plant a victory garden outside the White House.  You too can sign the petition to the Obamas by clicking that link.

If you didn’t get to see the story, I recommend you click this link and watch it now:

Alice Waters’ Crusade for Better Food

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Who knew a book investigating what exactly goes into each and every one of our meals would end up a best seller, illustrating the apparently mainstream idea that a lot of what we eat isn’t good for us. I’m talking about Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. His book investigated what goes into each and every one of our meals from a value meal at the local fast food joint to a home-cooked dinner with ingredients purchased from the natural food store.

Now Pollan has written a follow up called In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. This new book delves into scientific explanations of the diets and nutritional values of many traditional societies. Pollan’s goal is to develop a common-sense alternative to eating what he calls “edible food-like substances” that our mass produced for us on a daily basis. His conclusions is that we should continue eating but in moderation of course and add a lot of vegetation to our daily diet.

You might remember Pollan also wrote The Botany of Desire, examining whether plants use humans just as humans use plants.

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