“Top Chefs” Want Obama To Tell Americans What To Eat
Rick Bayless, the chef of that restaurant, Topolobampo, says Obama’s comfortable demeanor at the table — slumped contentedly in his chair, clearly there to enjoy himself — bodes well for the nation’s food policy. While former President George W. Bush rarely visited restaurants and didn’t often talk about what he ate, Obama dines out frequently and enjoys exploring different foods.
“He’s the kind of diner who wants to taste all sorts of things,” Bayless says. “What I’m hoping is that he’s going to recognize that we need to do what we can in our country to encourage real food for everyone.”
Phrases like “real food” and “farm-to-table” may sound like elitist jargon tossed around at upscale restaurants. But the country’s top chefs, several of whom traveled to Washington for Obama’s inauguration this week, hope that Obama’s flair for good food will encourage people to expand their horizons when it comes to what they eat.
These chefs tout locally grown, environmentally friendly and — most importantly — nutritious food. They urge diners, even those who may never be able to afford to eat at their restaurants, to grow their own vegetables, shop at farmer’s markets and pay attention to where their food comes from.
Dan Barber, chef at New York’s popular Blue Hill restaurant and a frequent critic of the country’s food policy, says a few small gestures from the president and first lady Michelle Obama could accomplish what many of the chefs have been working toward for years.
“I recognize that I’m an elitist guy,” says Barber, who cooked a $500-a-plate meal for incoming Obama aides and other guests at a small charity fundraiser the night before the inauguration. “Increasingly raise awareness, but don’t do it through chefs like me. ... My advice would be more of a symbolic nature, and to not underestimate what can be done through the White House.”
I don’t have a problem with healthy eating. I don’t have a problem with urging people to make better decisions with their diets. But I also long for the day when what we ate was nobody’s business but ours, and certainly not a matter of public policy.
But with policymakers around the country already gearing up to make being fat the new smoking, and passing food bans and excise taxes on healthy foods and beverages, we are closing in on a day when one of our most basic freedoms - deciding what we eat - is no longer a freedom at all.
It sounds absurd, I know, but I’m sure there was a day when the idea of forcing tobacco companies to subsidize efforts to get people to stop using their own products seemed absurd too. And yet here we are.
I don’t think there is any form of tyranny more pervasive than this impulse that seems buried deep in human nature to force our neighbors to stop doing things we disapprove of for their own good.
