Alison Negrin is a Bay area chef, artist, photographer, wife, mother, friend and my neighbor. After years of traveling and studying, Alison worked as a line-cook at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, and then moved to become the founding executive chef at Bridges in Danville, California. After many years in the food world, Alison has shifted her focus to healing with foods, and now works for a large Bay Area hospital system as executive chef. She is collaborating with HealthCare without Harm, Physicians for Social Responsibility and local growers to bring, healthy sustainable foods into the large community institutions. For an in depth article on her work inside the hospital community, check out this article.
In my post on Alison's Soup, I attribute my deeper understanding of what sustainability means to Alison and the soups she made for my family when I went through cancer treatment. I asked her if she'd mind some questions about food and sustainability for this post, and she graciously complied. Here's a little taste of that discussion:
HK: What is at the heart of sustainability for you?
Alison: Someone asked a panel of us recently and my answer was 'to sustain means to have something keep going'. To me, it means that whatever decisions we make, we make with the thought of, the words "not marring" come up for me, the thought of continuing through generations--like not leaving garbage, not using more than my share, and making it better, also.
HK: What about food and sustainability?
Alison: With food, it means we produce, purchase, consume, get rid of and use up food with that [not marring, and making it better] in mind. If we were to do it that way, we wouldn't use up all one variety or have something become extinct--we would eat in such a way that next season it will come back.
HK: Did you have any revelations or ephiphanies around food?
Alison: No, no big ephinanies. I have always been interested in simplicity. When I was young I traveled alot, but when I went into a country, I liked to travel in the countryside, not the urban areas, to see how they lived--close to nature. So when I was younger I lived in Denmark with a family that lived sustainably. They used an oven/fire for cooking and heat, the mom gardened, the uncle was a pig farmer so we ate pig a lot. They put up syrups and jams. It was the first time I saw how one could live like that.
HK: How did your career as a chef contribute to your idea of sustainability?
Alison: Chez Panisse was already using sustainability practices [before we talked about it that way]--small gardens, local food. It was the Bay Area restaurant model: search out local growers and meat producers. People would come in the back door with wild mushrooms. It was the generation of chefs that I came from. Some places were still looking for exotic truffles from Italy or special fish from Hawaii--local wasn't as much of a pheonomenon as it is now.
All the restuarants I worked at tried to model the local model--to support small farms practicing diversity in the way they grow things instead of this monoculture of corn and soybeans.
HK: What's your hope for this movement in restaurants and institutions?
Alison: If there's more demand for meat, vegetables and poultry raised sustainably by mainstream institutions like hospitals and schools--the larger companies like US Foods and Cysco are going to have to provide fresh, locally, sustainably grown food which would create the need for more and more growers.
We're always looking at how much, quantity, rather than quality. Maybe we just need to eat less of what's available that season--of a better quality.
HK: What about the question about items costing more at the farmer's market?
Alison: Alice [Waters] always said "I would gladly pay more." But, also, the more demand, and the more growers, the less that is an issue. And, from a sustainability standpoint, the non-local, non-sustainable food has higher externalized costs--the consumer doesn't pay, but the environment, or the workers, or the health system pays.
HK: How do you see things changing?
Alison: I was in a panel last year with colleagues and someone mentioned a coconut-crusted tilapia for patients, and there was laughter in the audience. Why does that still get laughs? Why not? Why would we be incredulous that patients, the elderly, and school kids get good, healthy, sustainable food?
A lot of it is nutirition education--as communities' schools provide healthier lunches like Alice's Edible Schoolyard or our local school lunch wellness program--we're pushing to get them [and hopsitals] to purchase meats and chicken free from hormones and "non-therapeutic" antibiotics.
It's easier to talk about now, we're not having to convince people so much. With Al Gore's movie, Michael Pollan's book, and have you read this wonderful essay by Wendell Berry? Chefs have wanted to cook in this way for a long time. More and more are getting involved in the community, saying "I can help, here."
HK: What do you recommend to people who want to eat more sustainably?
Alison: The simplest thing is to eat food without pesticides or hormones, closest to it's original form--support local growers.
HK: How'd you fall in love with food like this?
Alison: When I was a kid, I'd wake up in the morning and ask, "What's for dinner tomorrow?" I knew what was for dinner tonight, but I wanted to know what was for dinner tomorrow night. My mother, my grandmother both loved to cook. My Mom would hear about something like...a taco... and she would try to make it. They were adventurers. There was good food all around us. It started with them, my Mom and my Grandmother.
"That's the most important act for sustainability", she says. "Share it with kids."
Stumble It!
