Shut Up & Eat?

by Jen Maiser

Amy Stewart's commentary on NPR's All Things Considered this week was a topic of conversation among ELC blog authors this week.  While Ms. Stewart believes that we should all "shut up and eat," I hardly think that many of us will be following her directive anytime soon.  Michael Pollan often speaks about the magic of voting with our forks.  Unlike major, huge, unsurmountable issues that our world faces, food issues are something that we all decide on many times a day.  I personally choose to put my hard-earned money in the hands of local farmers and local cheesemakers and local artisans over international conglomerates and mega-corporations. 

Ms. Stewart suggests that instead of focusing on where our food comes from, we should try taking public transportation or turning down the thermostat.  Most of us who are conscious enough to focus on where our food comes from don't turn off that consciousness when it comes to these sort of things -- we tend to tread lightly on the earth in many ways.

While I suspect that Ms. Stewart was trying to be sensationalist and contrarian about some of the pedantic, minutia-oriented conversations that can occur around food (and that many of us tire of at some point), I don't think that an overarching declaration against eating local is the answer.

Below, you'll find some opinions from other ELC authors around the nation.  Check them out -- I think they're fantastic.

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from Liz (Maine):

No doubt local eating is old news where you live in California, the land of plenty. But it is an absolute triumph that the rest of America is finally paying attention to what goes on its dinner plate. Please don't begrudge us Mainers or Michiganders or Minnesotans for finally catching on to what you savvy Californians have known all along: that fresher foods taste better. What's more is that we're finding we can produce our food just as well, if not better than your fine state, cutting out the factory farms, middlemen, and days of travel on the way.

I don't often dole out advice, Amy, but it seems like you need to either find some non-foodie friends or start talking up some new cause. If it goes well, the rest of us should be buzzing about it in 2013. Until then, I will continue to celebrate the foods of my state with my friends and family. Don't worry, I'll make sure not to invite you to the dinner party.

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from Jennifer BB (Syracuse, NY):

Bringing the place of food into proper perspective is one of the biggest challenges we face as a society. But to decry what is essentially a clarion call to a better relationship with food is misguided. If she wants to rant against the self-righteous air that some of the locavore conversation can take then I would support her there -- but that doesn't require killing the entire conversation.

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from Jeanne (Marin County, CA):

Thanks for letting us all know that we've been all been staring out our fuzzy Frog Hollow peachy navels for too long.

Did someone take care of ensuring every region and state across our country has access to a local farm system that ensures food security and that enviromental impact is being managed.  All done?   All those folks working on the Farm Bill can just pack up their notebooks and laptops and go home--school kids everywhere are no longer lacking for quality food. Terrific.  Oh and let us know how that whole connection of disease to what we eat thing worked out.

I do wish this was as simple as you suggest.  But we don't live in silos and we are all connected to each other, to the food we eat and the enviroment that we live in. It's messy. It's not easy.  Often times we need to look at the entire buffet to see what everyone is or in this case isn't eating on their plates.  And could you do something about Iraq, the polar bears, and Britney?  I'm super tired about hearing about them, too.

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from Expat Chef (Kansas City, MO)

(an excerpt from this post)

Does it truly make sense to just shut up and eat 30 million pounds of tainted meat? To idly push our grocery carts along the aisles filled with cheap processed foods that won’t break the bank account but bankrupt our nation nutritionally and environmentally? Wow, that’s a lot to swallow, Ms. Stewart.

I suppose if this approach makes sense, then I should also just quit thinking about global warming every time I hop into my SUV to drive a mile to the grocery store to buy peanut butter contaminated with Salmonella. After all, I am tired of hearing all the alarming news about global warming. It’s everywhere. Why can’t I just keep the pedal to the metal without all that bothersome stress and anxiety?

Though, you are correct, Ms. Stewart, all this thinking sure does put a lot of stress and anxiety on that lettuce leaf of yours. But that may no longer be a worry. If we just don’t talk about the new Federal regulations for lettuce growers, you won’t be able to purchase lettuce from sustainable local sources anyway.

However, Ms. Stewart, if you’d like to shut up about local food, hey, I’m all for it.

Comments

[Kim]

I will restrain from making a comment about someone who, herself wrote an entire book on the business of flowers, but finds other people's causes "mundane" and tiresome.

Certainly I think there are many ways to make the world better. I think eating locally is one of those ways, and I happen to find it more fun to be involved in tomatoes rather than transportation. However, there are people who find transportation way more exciting, and I thank them and count on them for spending their time and energy obsessing about better ways to get around.

If I was one of those folks who had Ms. Stewart over for dinner recently, I fear I would find her whole commentary pretty much a treatise on how boring I am! Whoever you are, I guess you'll have more room at your table now for someone interested in food and food choices!

[naomi]

Thank you, all of you. If anyone doesn't want to listen to me talk about local food and good cooking, it's up to them to go away.

[Sarah]

If we all just shut up and eat, obesity rates will rise even further, as will other food-related health problems.

I agree that I can get over-anxious about my food choices at times, but being conscious of what I put INTO MY BODY seems like something worth a little anxiety.

[Sean]

Ummm...You all are taking this much too seriously and seem to be missing her point. Continue being a locavore and being politically active. More power to you! But when you sit down and eat, well that's not the time for a pedantic lecture on food, the republicans, the war in Iraq, you name it. The dinner table should certainly be a place for exchanging ideas but do we have to sit and listen to one more person up on a soapbox? It taxes the digestion.

[Sean]

Ummm...You all are taking this much too seriously and seem to be missing her point. Continue being a locavore and being politically active. More power to you! But when you sit down and eat, well that's not the time for a pedantic lecture on food, the republicans, the war in Iraq, you name it. The dinner table should certainly be a place for exchanging ideas but do we have to sit and listen to one more person up on a soapbox? It taxes the digestion.

[Sasha]

So I try to eat local, am profoundly concerned about the effect of pesticides on my family, heck I am in graduate school studying the social role of food. I think it is critically important that we pay attention to the role of food in our lives. At the same time Amy Stewart is raising some very important issues that we need to deal with. Locavores are some of the worst kinds of snobs. The self-satisfaction that many foodies exude does almost nothing to deal with the real issues that we face as a society with respect to food. Eating local is not something that everyone can participate in. It takes time and knowledge which not everyone is lucky enough to have. When Amy Stewart is decrying the celebration of sage leaves she isn't calling into question the entire project of reforming our food system. No, she is lambasting those who spend hours looking for local broad beans and pasture raised goat while ignoring the homeless and the hungry across town. Shutting up and eating doesn't mean not thinking. It means ending the sanctimonious dinner party talk and getting on with the dirty work of changing this world. She's right that self-satisfied back patting isn't going to change anything except our sense of importance. On the other hand working to figure out how to get soda machines out of our schools, recess back into the school day, and grocery stores into non-white urban communities might actually lead to meaningful change.

[expatchef]

Sasha, who says we aren't doing all those things as well? Indeed, it is folks like us who are working on all of these issues, case in point all of our rallying to fix the farm bill which addressed many of these issues (school nutrition, better food for low income families). True, there are a few people who are in the mix for the trend and foodie-ism of it. I would argue that those people are not the authors on this site and not truly "in" the political side of the issue. There is, however, a huge, starry-eyed "crush" phase when you discover how good it all tastes. It's an easy cause to believe in and stay involved with since the reward is daily. It does take time and knowledge, but we are here to help with the sharing of that knowledge. Time? I work full time, have a child, and work on four blog sites, for no pay, to promote the changes you are discussing here. I don't watch TV, not missing much there, but I make time. Best to you, I offer a lot of information on the school food issues on my other site as well as other posts on all this dirty work.

[Stephanie]

Bravo, ELC writers! My response to Amy Stewart's over-the-top piece was, "Yeah, and I'm also sick of hearing about all that clean air crap!"

Sheesh.

I'm a foodie and a locavore-wannabe and I'm not sure what dinner parties/restaurants she's going to, but aside from the host/hostess telling people -- who are the ones who *want* to know and usually ask, by the way -- or listing on the menu where stuff came from, the deep, "sanctimonious" discussions of food are fairly non-existent.

Sasha, you might be giving Amy Stewart more credit that she deserves. Nothing in her piece recommended that foodies/locavores spend less time talking and more time doing for the public good.

My experience with the food people in San Francisco has been that they shop, cook, and eat, but they also volunteer at food banks and urban farms. They also raise money for the hungry and most of them have their chosen areas of giving, separate from food, that includes the environment, local issues, and animals.

I agree that serious action is better than shallow talk but that's not what Amy Stewart was advocating.

[kelly]

Amy who?

I guess she has a problem with the Amish then as they are locavores and give thanks for each morsel.

I'm with you Liz. Pass the fiddleheads!