Food For Thought
Monday, September 21st, 2009
First, a program note: Today’s post, next Monday’s, and maybe even the offerings on the next two Wednesdays, will be relatively short and…well, not insubstantial, but perhaps a little less weighty than usual.
That’s because the News Guy has been and will be spending the time and effort weightiness requires on: (a) reporting some complicated and especially weighty stories planned for the next two Fridays; and (b) responding to a higher authority.
For today, though, let’s spend a few minutes pondering the Vermont localvore (sometimes spelled ‘locavore’) scene, which is clearly becoming more mainstream, almost by the day. (Though not so mainstream that the spell-check program of this relatively new computer recognizes the word spelled either way; we’ll have to speak sternly to it).
Just last week, the celebrated TV chef Emeril Lagasse came to the Northeast Kingdom to cook with the locally grown cheese, soy, and vegetables, taping it for his show, Emeril Green, On the Planet Green Network, affiliated with the Discovery Channel.
At least so said the report on WCAX-TV (Channel 3), than which one can get no more mainstream in Vermont. Channel 3’s report quoted Legasse saying, “The abundance of incredible products here is so exciting, people should be really, really proud about what’s happening around here because it’s really a serious movement.”
How “serious,” (which no longer means “serious,” but “significant” or “long-lasting”) remains to be seen. That it is a movement is no longer debatable. And if it began, as movements often do, inside a small subculture (the “granola-heads” to be both brief and offensively stereotypical), it isn’t any longer. Not only have First Lady Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey signed on, but there are increasing signs that getting into the localvore dodge seems to be good business.
Just check the “Green Mountain” section of Sunday’s Burlington Free-Press (as mainstream as Channel 3), devoted largely to the “eat local” movement. It isn’t just the articles, either. Some of the ads urge customers to buy from stores and restaurants that sell locally grown food.
Sounds like a way to make money. In America, that’s mainstream.
Needless to say, not everyone is on board. Led by the chain restaurant industry and agri-business, a counter-movement has sprung up, largely among those who insist that most Americans don’t care where their food comes from and prefer the sweet, the fried, and the fatty.
And the inexpensive. According to the skeptics, locally-grown food, especially if it’s also organically-grown food (often but not always part of the package) costs more than mass-produced food grown with the help of herbicides, pesticides, and petroleum-based fertilizer. They say all this “buy local” stuff will turn out to be a fad. The businesses that rely on it will go broke while the chain and fast-food restaurants thrive and customers continue to flock to the processed foods sections of the supermarkets.
There’s even an anti-localvore book: Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, (Little, Brown) by James E. McWilliams.
Fortunately, we have an in-state experiment that may provide some hint of how this experiment will turn out. The pub on the first floor of the University of Vermont’s Davis Center, Brennan’s ,has transformed itself from a standard chain-food joint into a restaurant specializing in food grown organically, naturally, and locally.
The big attractions are probably still beer and (sometimes) live entertainment. But now instead of standardized fried chicken and Texas toast (whatever that may be) from World of Wings (WOW, but not to be confused with the homing pigeon association of the same name), a new Orleans-based franchise company, students can get, for instance, a breakfast of two cage-free eggs, organic scallions and sour cream, all produced in Vermont, and all for $5.75.
According to a front-page story in last week’s VermontCynic, the student newspaper, the impetus for the change came from the students. In response to an email, Pat Brown, the Director of Student Life, said, the “menu items and products now reflect what students asked for – a local sourcing of food products.”
As to the price, that $5.75 breakfast seems like a good bargain, but the Cynic story quoted one student who preferred last year’s “greasy college food,” and said this year’s fare “costs more.”
Brown said the menu was so “radically different” that comparing prices was difficult, but added that he thought, “the prices are in the same general range as last year depending on what one orders.”
But is the place making money? It seemed crowded enough one day last week, but Brown said it was “way too early to tell.” Like most UVM restaurants, Brennan’s is part of University Dining Services (UDS), which, Brown wrote, “provides food service to campus and is permitted by contract to net a small amount, but the overall goal is to provide high quality and reasonably priced food service to the campus. The traffic has seemed to reflect what we saw last year.”
But UDS is not autonomous. It is part of Sodexo, very much a profit-making corporation. As such, it isn’t likely to want to maintain an operation that doesn’t earn much. On the other hand, it doesn’t want the kind of bad publicity that would come from displeasing the student body. And Brown indicated that UDS, which he said “has been exceptional in working with local foods and many of the farms and orchards in the area,” appears to have a genuine commitment to buy as much Vermont product as possible.
Were it not for one little difficulty, we could end this post right here. Alas, UDS has decided to promote Brennan’s on its web site by proclaiming that the restaurant has “a new look with a sustainable menu that is literally ‘shaking’ up campus.”
Uh, folks, you work for a university. Meaning you really ought to speak English. An earthquake would “literally” “shake up” (or “’shake’ up”) campus. So might an artillery attack or a mortar barrage. Maybe even the entire student body jumping up and down at the same time.
But a menu? No, not “literally.”
