The Future of Food at the James Beard Foundation
Earlier this week I was lucky enough to attend the 2015 Future of Food Conference that the James Beard Foundation puts on in New York. I was uncertain whether to go for a variety of reasons. I am so glad I did, though. If you are interested, here’s the Future of Food 2015.
Not only was the meeting run with great aplomb, but I learned a huge amount (pages and pages of notes). The program was fast-paced and varied, there were no dud presentations, and I had the chance to hear, set eyes on, and sometimes meet lots of knowledgeable people from a great variety of backgrounds. Not to mention many who are actually changing the way we eat.
Where else was I likely to encounter Betti Wiggins, Director of Food Services for the Detroit Public Schools for whom the adjective “redoubtable” seems a little pallid;
Ellen Stofan, Chief Data Scientist for NASA who described setting up systems to get climate data to farmers worldwide (and hopefully smooth out price spikes in crops);
or Tom Vilsack who was incisive about different kinds of farming and different political interests in US food;
or Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator at MOMA who gave a (to me) unexpectedly gripping presentation on links between design and food? And those were just those who gave the longer presentations.
It was not, it need hardly be said, THE future of food but one take on possible directions for food. And those of you who know me will not be surprised that I did not share all the presumptions of many participants and speakers.
My chief takeaway was confirmation that American food is changing at an extraordinarily rapid rate. It’s clear that a vast numbers of Americans, particularly urban, middle-class Americans, perhaps mainly on the coasts, want more “fresh and natural” foods, which boils down to more fruits and vegetables.
And I was struck, not moving in these circles, by the considerable heft behind this shift, with networks of foundations with overlapping officers, venture capitalists, media people, chefs, etc.
The change, rhetoric notwithstanding, is not a return to anything that humans have ever eaten. It’s as novel and as important as the shift to a diet rich in white flour, white sugar, fat and meat in the period from 1880-1980.
And it’s not a change to local, or to fresh, or to natural in any simple sense. Like the earlier change, it’s dependent on technology and infrastructure, indeed even more so.
The quantities of fresh and natural in today’s cities of millions of people are huge. José Andrés, the well-known chef, is going to open fast food restaurants specializing in vegetables. That’s 20,000 lbs of vegetables for a week per restaurant according to my notes.
So supplying cities requires cold chains (energy-intensive refrigerated warehouses, trucks, processing facilities). It requires the latest in modern packaging (someone, please, write the story of packaging since World War II). And if meals are to be on the table in twenty minutes (and the Good Housekeeping people at the meeting were insistent readers want this), a lot of preparation or processing has to be done before products hit the grocery store. It requires certification and safety standards for new products, and insurance policies. And all this is just the beginning.
Other things I’ve been thinking about.
1. Will many of the agendas of the “food movement” be picked up for reasons other than the stated one, or have effects other than intended?
For example, Tom Vilsack said that one the Department of Agriculture was supporting small organic farms because their high profit/ size ratio made them accessible to new farmers (among whom he gave a prominent place to veterans).
Similarly, it seems that school gardens and urban farming have less to do with feeding cities than about opportunities to learn something about growing plants.
I’m not being cynical here. Part of politics is getting people to sign on for a variety of reasons and actions always have unintended consequences.
(BTW, my prediction: someone is going to make a good bit of money if they set up an organization to run school gardens. Lots appear to be being established, often with large greenhouses in cooler parts of the country. Since neither teachers nor parents nor school administrators, let alone students, have any idea about how to run such gardens, here’s an opening).
2. Why is so little attention paid to other parts of the world? Food, whether as raw materials or as processed food or as restaurants is a major US export, not just something for home consumption.
In all fairness, Howard Shapiro of Mars, did show this image of the consortium of groups working to sequence the genome (no, that’s not making GMO crops) of the 101 most important crops in Africa and to make the information available without charge. And to point out that aflatoxin (naturally-occurring fungi) in crops and food continue to cause health problems for over 5 billion people.
Conversely, other countries are facing similar issues. Most half-way wealthy countries, for example, offer school lunches. Wouldn’t it be a natural thing to do to treat this as a series of social experiments from which we can learn, even if ideas had to be adapted to local circumstances? Or is this happening and I just haven’t heard about it?
3. Is it true that “if it tastes good, children will eat it,” a slogan that cropped up time and again. Apart from, say, a widely spread taste for sugar, surely most tastes are acquired?
4. Just how large a part of the diet should vegetables be? They may offer micronutrients, they don’t offer calories. I am quite happy to accept that children, say, should be eating more? But how many more?
And why is it so important that they be “fresh?” Surely it would be easier for most families/schools/institutions if canned and frozen vegetables could be part of that increase. Not all vegetables can well, but some do. And many freeze well. They’re already widely available, easy to use, and familiar.
5. What is meant by “we should return to a more plant-based diet?” Plant-based diet relied heavily on grains, legumes, and roots. Greenery was seasonal and difficult to transport.
6. Is the equation “good food”=”healthy food”=”fresh, natural food” helpful? There are many aspects to good food (affordable, storable, relatively easy to prepare, familiar, prestigious, ordained by religion, etc. etc.).
7. How does genuine concern and the desire to do good avoid paternalism and condescension? Several times, not often but a little more often than I was comfortable with, I heard “how can we make/get them to do something or other (eat better, farm better)?” The we-them talk, where “we” have the answer and “they” (often a “they” who have been struggling with the problem for decades) have not yet seen the light always makes me nervous.
great post, rachel. sounds exciting. piping in from “other parts of the world”:
here in the “developing world”, we have instant food that is relatively fresh– food stalls (here called “carinderias”, very common establishments, largely absent from govt data).i myself walk over with my “fiambrera” when i am too lazy to cook. it doesn’t seem as though employment/daily rhythms and domestic set ups are changing anytime soon, so it would be good to focus on such local establishments that provide cheap food and convenience, freshness, employment to small business owners.
maybe we in the developing world should be asking what can make these small, informal entrepreneurs more competitive, and what can improve service and food delivery to them. they informally feed a huge part of our urban population (lots of vegetables available as cooked meals for under $1– even as typhoons rage!). they are definitely resilient and dynamic.
Bea, your comment touches something that is just inching into my consciousness. In Mexico, much the same is true. So why do large cities in developed (since you use the term) countries lose this? I think it’s much more complicated than just hurling blame at large corporations. Large government and safety/licensing rules have much to do with it too. And how does poverty change? People who could feed their families reasonably well in earlier times now find it challenging. A mystery to me.
We’ve touched on one of the reasons before: government’s role in food safety. They often find these little stalls and trucks difficult to regulate. Also govt codes favor brick/mortar building. Add in storekeepers lobbying their city councils to rid their city of these “pests” and these small food vendors get squeeze out.
I read a very good article about LA’s war on food carts (dating back 100 years or more) on Reason.com:
“Drop That Snack! L.A.’s long war against working-class people eating tamales, tacos, Cheetos, and other tasty food”
https://reason.com/archives/2015/07/13/drop-that-snack
I recommend it.
“To paraphrase H.L. Mencken: L.A.’s official food policy seems to operate on the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happily eating.”
Thanks, Norm. Yes, there’s always this trade-off. People want more food safety, regulations get put in place, then small operators are squeezed.
you are right about regulation, zoning, whatnot.
sadly, in highly regulated urban areas (financial districts) you see convenience stores easing out carinderias or itinerant meal-sellers. i’ve been observing this rapid transformation quite closely. convenience stores are functioning like small fast food joints. they make up the fastest growing sector of our retail industry, being accessible to people who have low spending power (lots of sachets etc).
the represented agrobiodiversity in the meals of these convenience stores is very low (usually fried meat), and they satisfy the minimum requirement of filipinos for a meal (savory thing + rice). they are nutritionally quite sad, and provide much less interesting food than a carinderia, which has a changing menu daily.
but convenience stores are attractive tenants, are quicker, cleaner, cooler, and also sell an array of other things like ice cream (the best selling category). but i believe most people would still choose a carinderia over a convenience store, if they could. i will ask some people informally today. carinderias defy economics and are able to offer “freshness” at a low price. commissary-wise, it would be a disaster. there is hardly scalability, but usually ample income for one family.
about the poverty– that is true.. thanks for giving me something to think about this morning. a few anecdotes come to mind.
Thanks so much for this, Bea. I now have a new word in my vocabulary and a new understanding of this part of the Filipino food economy.
Great thoughts as always Rachel. Your last point struck me as right on the mark. These shibboleths held by the cognoscenti do not serve them well and further alienate people who make rational choices based on their needs and desires at the moment.
A food note from my part of the world, the west coast of Mexico, as Hurricane Patricia wends its way closer.
While standing in line at our little local grocery store, packed with anxious shoppers stocking up before the store closed, I observed what items were mostly being purchased: plastic bags of eggs (no egg cartons here), bags of beans (the uncooked type of peruano and azafrán), packages of Maseca, and sugar. Those were the main foods going out the door. Despite the store being well stocked in vegetables and fruit, they were not well represented at the check-out counter.
I don’t mean to draw any parallels, just make a report of the food scene here today, so remote from the US scene as presented at the James Beard Foundation. Two different worlds.
Thank you for your thought provoking article.
~ Kathleen
Actually, like Bea’s comment, a useful reminder that the US food movement is an outpost.
Rachel, I think this comes back to one of your consistent themes. These fresh produced foods are luxuries. That does not make them bad, but we should appreciate them for what they are. I totally agree with you that some vegetables and fruits are really good canned or frozen. Certainly not all (like when I was a kid), but many. Also we tend to forget the hugely important row crops like wheat, canola, rice, barley etc that matters a great deal to our comfortable diets. I wish more Americans would eat fruits and vegetables in any form, but that isn’t the whole story
Exactly, Steve. They are luxuries and maybe they can take health to a whole new level. We will see. In any case, I love having them available.
And agreed with your second point. And as you would be the first to point out, truck farming and row crops have always been grown, merchandized, and processed differently. That, I think, was partly Vilsack’s point. Though maybe these methods are converging to supply the increased demand for fruits and vegetables. You’d know better than I.
Such fascinating questions and observations. There are a lot of terms that seem especially fraught with symbolism and cultural values that I’m hearing lately – you mentioned a few (“fresh”, “plant-based”, “healthy”, “natural”, “good.”) Another one that I’m encountering a lot, and which I’m curious if you heard at the conference, is “whole.”
I find the concept of “whole” food particularly fascinating, as it seems to imply less processing and therefore less dependence on technology, yet, as you point out, there is a massive agricultural/distribution/storage system at work to provide these “whole” foods to more people.
I suppose one explanation could be that a food’s “wholeness” depends on where the technology is applied – to the outside of the food (to harvest, distribute, and store it) or to the inside of food (to cook/mill/preserve/enrich/combine it in some way.) But a lot of technology seems to be at work on the insides of even apparently “whole” foods, whether it’s a GMO or the product of generations of selective breeding, the beneficiary of pesticides or fertilizer or intensive agriculture or hydroponic technology. Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but I find the idea that there are “whole” foods and less “whole” foods truly curious and not as self-evident as it would seem.
I’m interested in the long-term and population health possibilities of fruits and vegetables (though, like you, even as a dietitian, I’ve been bemused by the continual insistence on “fresh”)…and I also see that the ability to subsist on large quantities of calorie-poor food is actually a pretty recent innovation and only practical for people in particular circumstances.
Thanks so much for this long and thoughtful reply, Michelle. “Whole” was not the word of choice at this conference, but I couldn’t agree more that it is out there. And you are not splitting hairs. There is no clear-cut distinction between whole and less whole foods. The purported distinction, I think, depends on a very particular definition of natural.
I’m also interested in what you think will be the long-term health possibilities of fruits and vegetables. Do you see the possibility of a big increase in health?