Gastro-goddess Alice Waters has spent the past three decades charting a path to reacquaint Americans with locally grown food. This course may seem strange in a country of abundance that has at its roots an agrarian society. But time and science has removed most Americans from the farm thus increasing the distance from field to plate.
Today the ascendancy of American cuisine as a preeminent international cuisine is overshadowed with an all-American dilemma: obesity. Seventeen percent of American students are overweight. That’s one in every six kids. As shocking as that statistic is, the rise and cost of type two diabetes (the type associated with diet and lifestyle choices) is a concern as well. Seven percent of the American population — both children and adults — is thought to have diabetes. In 2002 the medical and indirect expenditures attributable to diabetes were estimated at $132 billion.
Yet in a country where cuisine has moved to the forefront, our children’s relationship with food has largely been determined through the factors of convenience and price — in other words, crappy meals.
Alice Waters wants children to have a healthy relationship with food. She’ll be in Charlotte Sept. 26 and 27, through the sponsorship of Slow Food Charlotte (whose mandate is to educate the community about food: its taste, its production and the “joy of eating”) and Charlotte Shout, to discuss the relationship between children and food and the programs she has helped to create. Waters is an international governor of Slow Food.
Although renowned as a chef and restaurateur of the famed Chez Panisse Restaurant and Café in Berkeley, Calif., and author or co-author of nine books, including the recently published The Art of Simple Food: Notes and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution (Clarkson Potter, $35), Waters’ passion (she was once a Montessori school teacher) is reacquainting children with fresh, locally grown food.
In 1994, Waters and the principal of the neighboring Martin Luther King Middle School began the conversation of creating an “edible” garden at that school. The goal of this garden would address the community’s concerns of hunger and health. Soon, plants flourished and the school’s antiquated cafeteria kitchen was refurbished into a kitchen classroom.
A decade later the students at King are involved in all aspects of food production, from planting the seeds and harvesting the crops to preparing and serving the food, eating with teachers and then finally returning the scraps back to the garden. Among the curriculum’s core components are teaching such values as “beauty, diversity, craftsmanship, tenderness, expression, responsibility, tolerance, commitment, integrity, curiosity, wonder, patience, simplicity, friendship, orderliness, pleasure of work, inter-connectiveness, and hope.” Plus, the students get to eat their work.
The benefits of a program such as Waters’ Edible Garden are apparent. A study conducted by Harvard Medical School comparing King’s students with students at a similar middle school found that grades were higher at King and students were “more ecologically savvy.”
Last year the Edible Schoolyard sprouted its first satellite at the Samuel J. Green Charter School in New Orleans. The U.S. government has responded to the need to increase local foods in school cafeterias. One such program is the “Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Pilot Program” created by the 2002 Farm Bill, which is available to selected schools in seven states including North Carolina.
Waters has been at the lead to return Americans to the family dinner table. But if the family cannot come together, then certainly Americans can teach the next generation how to value a communal meal and learn the value of eating basic, unprocessed fresh food.
None of the schools in the CMS system have an edible garden project. Part of this is due to the strict regulations of the Mecklenburg Health Department. According to Cindy Hobbs, director of Child Nutrition Services for CMS, all foods served to children in the CMS systems must come from approved sources. She added that few schools have the land necessary to produce an amount of food needed to feed the entire school population, and that the growing season is much shorter in Charlotte than in California.
A few CMS schools do have gardens, but these gardens are part of habitat programs. Steve Houser, the talent development teacher at Providence Spring Elementary School, described their garden as an “outdoor learning area that includes a wildlife preserve on 12 acres of meadows, an upland forest, boulders, and streams … a habitat for butterflies, and we encourage birds. Next to our school building are gardens of different types: a sensory garden, flower gardens, and a vegetable garden.” He would like to have an “edible” garden, but is aware of the health department’s concerns.
Another school garden can be found at Oakhurst Elementary School. This garden is a replacement for a habitat garden that existed before the school renovation. Many of the funds obtained by the PTA (from grants) have been used to rebuy tools lost during construction and replace other infrastructure. According to Celeste Chambers of the Oakhurst PTA, the garden is ornamental, focuses on native plants and functions primarily as a natural habitat and outdoor learning center. But the newly formed Oakhurst Neighborhood Association is planning a community garden on a lot adjacent to the school. The association will maintain the garden throughout the summer and allow the Oakhurst teachers to use their garden as a learning tool.
Waters’ next step in relating the vital relationship of food is making lunch an academic subject. Well, maybe not exactly, but she has launched the School Lunch Initiative in Berkeley, a school district of 10,000, where teachers and students prepare meals using local ingredients from sustainable farms. Funding for this edible education comes from the school district, the Chez Panisse Foundation and the Center for Ecoliteracy. Berkeley’s School Lunch Initiative will serve as a blueprint for other school districts across the United States.
Questions? Ask Alice: Waters is scheduled to speak at Queens University, Dana Auditorium, at 8 p.m. Sept. 27. For more information, visit www.slowfoodcharlotte.org.
This article appears in Sep 26 – Oct 2, 2007.
