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Fast Food Values  by
Alice Waters
Keynote address at the Food for Thought Festival
Madison, Wisconsin
September 2002
Most of you probably saw the food issue of the New Yorker a few weeks ago. It was a little like a good cocktail
party -- sparkling conversation, fascinating people, delicious tidbits passed around by good-looking waiters. It's always fun to read about chefs and their exploits and behind-the-scenes stories like the one about the health inspectors. Calvin Trillin's piece was full of his trademark drollery. There were charming little essays about first tastes. And there was a marvelous profile of Diana Kennedy. But something was missing. A farmer I see every week at the Farmer's Market said it best: This was a foodie issue, not a food issue. It skimmed the surface, but it didn't get down to the bone, because there weren't enough stories about the people who actually produce the food we eat. In fact, except for the story about the cheese nun, there wasn't a single story about a farmer or a farmworker in the entire magazine, and except for Diana Kennedy, everybody more or less ignored the biggest question about our food supply: What are the social and environmental consequences of industrial farming?
That's why I'm so happy to be here celebrating with some decidedly non-industrial farmers. I'm pretty sure that these farmers know quite a bit more than the New Yorker does about what good food really is, and what it's worth. And they know something else the magazine skimmed over: The choices each one of us makes about food have consequences that are a lot more serious than changing fashions in Manhattan restaurants. The choices we make about food matter at every level. We may think selfishly that they're about our own good nutrition and our own personal pleasure, but they're really about the health of our entire society-in fact, they're about the health of human culture itself.
A cynic is supposed to be somebody who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. By that definition, I think we've turned into a nation of cynics, at least as far as our food supply goes. I guess we have values, all right, but what are they? After Eric Schlosser wrote Fast Food Nation, I started thinking…. The culture of fast food is everywhere. We're swallowed up by it. Drive through the suburbs of any American city and what do you see? Mile after mile of franchises. It's hard not to feel that we're the victims of a giant conspiracy. In fact, industrial farming and fast food operate hand-in-glove, very much like a vast conspiracy. Together they suppress variety, limit our choices, and manipulate our desires by getting us hooked on sugar and salt.
And what is it that our children learn from fast food? What lessons do they absorb by osmosis when they eat a happy meal? What are the values that fast food inculcates in them? What information do they take in unconsciously? I decided to sit down and make a list.
In no particular order, here are some of the most important fast food values:
Number one, of course, is that food is cheap and abundant and that abundance is permanent. I'm not saying that food shouldn't be affordable and available, but the fact is, the way we're going, to give you just one example, California's Central Valley is going to lose its fertility within the next twenty or thirty years! Farmers know that living soil is precious and must be cared for and replenished, and, I'm sorry, but that isn't cheap. We all know that fast food is cheap only because we haven't yet paid the real cost of farm subsidies, Middle Eastern oil, and depleted soil. And we're only beginning to wake up to the health consequences of cheap food. A national diet heavy with processed foods and meat is leading to obesity and diabetes at record levels.
Fast food value number two: Resources are infinite, so it's perfectly okay to waste. "There's always plenty more where that came from." This glorification of disposability is reflected everywhere in our culture. But the farmers who are here today know that if you have to dispose of something yourself, you're a lot more likely to think twice about whether or not you really need it.
Number three: Eating is primarily about fueling up in as little time as possible: You drive in, order, pick it up, eat it in the car, and dump it in the garbage can. Food is supposed to be fast and available pretty much twenty-four hours a day. And yet we all know, or should know, that any thing worth doing takes time.
Number four: Meat, French fries, and Cokes are actually good for you. And they should taste exactly the same everywhere. Of course, by this logic, diversity is totally undesirable. But any nutritionist will tell you that what's really good for you in any diet is variety.
Number five: It doesn't matter where the food actually comes from, or how fresh it is.
The seasons are of no particular consequence. The place you're in is of no particular consequence. But the seasons connect us to nature; they punctuate the passage the time and they teach us about the impermanence of life-something that we haven't wanted to look at in our society.
Number six: Advertising confers value. Publicity is a virtue. Therefore, celebrity is the most virtuous thing of all. And yet the ultimate sign of worth is when something doesn't need any advertising at all-when everyone just gets it somehow. Can we have forgotten that modesty is a virtue?
Number seven: Work is to be avoided at all costs: There are more important things to do. Preparation is drudgery, anyway, and other people are better at it than you are. Cleaning up is drudgery, too. There are more important things to do. But the really important and deep thing about life is that you have to do things! Work is not to be avoided at all costs. We have been told that work is here, and pleasure is there; but in fact, the real pleasure is in doing. Work can feed our imaginations and educate our senses. And if you want somebody else to do that for you, you miss out on the real juice of life. Even the hard physical work we're so eager to delegate to others can change us for the better. And if you believe that work has value, then you begin to see why making an effort to make a meal at home is a desirable thing.
That's why it's so terrible to me when people slave away their whole lives in order to take a vacation on a cruise ship somewhere: They miss out on the pleasure that could be there every day if only they paid attention to what they ate. Because the one thing we all have to do every day is eat. And the rituals of cooking and eating together constitute, in the words of Francine du Plessix Gray, our "primal rite of socialization, the core curriculum in the school of civilized discourse. The family meal… is a set of protocols that curb our natural savagery and our animal greed, and cultivate a capacity for sharing and thoughtfulness."
Well, I could go on about fast food values, but I think you get the point. By driving us away from the table, these values fly in the face of thousands of years of human experience. And the really frightening thing about them is that they permeate our entire culture. You don't even have to set foot in a Mcdonald's to be indoctrinated.
So what about anti-fast food values? Is there a future for values that tell us that real food costs more money? That real food should be available to all of us, rich and poor? That cooking and eating are not drudgery? That concentrating on something is okay? That everything is woven together? How can we pass on to our children the magic of hospitality and generosity? How can we teach our children the values that transform our lives and the world around us? Because only slow food can teach us the things that really matter-care, beauty, concentration, discernment, sensuality-all the best that humans are capable of-but only if we take the time to think about what we're eating.
As the famous French gastronome said, "The destiny of nations depends on the manner in which they are fed. Tell me what kind of food you eat and I will tell you what kind of man you are." I spotted a bumper sticker just last week that said, "If you are what you eat, I'm fast, cheap, and easy." Is this really who we want to be? I don't think so.
The farmers we're celebrating today can teach us another way of being. And our task is to apply their lessons to every single facet of our lives. It's not enough to shop at the farmer's market every week. It's a start, but it's not enough. We have to bring the lessons of sustainable farming into the schools. The public school system is our last best hope for teaching real democratic values, values that can withstand the insidious voices of those who would have us believe that life is all about personal fulfillment and personal consumption.
Life is more than that. Change the food in the schools and we can influence how children think.
Change the curriculum and teach them how to garden and how to cook and we can show that growing food and cooking and eating together give lasting richness, meaning, and beauty to our lives.
To do this will take the kind of dedication embodied by today's farmers. Thomas Jefferson had a vision of a nation of independent farmers, but it was Hamilton's vision of a nation of factories that won out. But maybe it's not too late to rethink our national purpose, after all. Because gatherings like ours today show us that the ideals and the authenticity we've been craving in our lives still exists. We can still have it. It's not lost. It's right here under our noses.
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