Where’s The Beef
Where’s the Beef?
I was privileged to speak this week at the 2016 Chef Culinary Conference at UMass in Amherst. The conference is a fabulous gathering of experts in food science, nutrition, public health, and the environment- as well as the art, and business, of food service. The audience is mostly chefs overseeing university dining programs, with the potential to influence the diets, and thus health, of many tens of thousands of students.
I spoke on one of my recurrent themes: knowing what to eat, but refusing to swallow it. The theme of the conference this year was “food is medicine, food is love,” and thus my wife, Catherine S. Katz, PhD, founder of Cuisinicity.com, fit in beautifully. Catherine’s freely available recipe offerings, inspired by her Mediterranean upbringing, her love of both our family and good food, and the delight she takes in nourishing the one with the other- come with the tag line: love the food that loves you back. I acknowledge my bias in noting that her talk, and cooking demonstration, were a highlight for me- but I heard much the same from many who lack my bias.
A reality check about protein, what happens to it in the body, how much more we all get daily than most of us need, and its availability in plant sources by my good friend, the witty, knowledgeable, and always insightful Christopher Gardner from Stanford University was another highlight. So, too, were presentations on the timely, practical implications of the stellar Menus of Change program by Greg Drescher of the Culinary Institute of America, and the shock waves of change being generated by the Compass Group, responsible for feeding some 8.5 million people in the U.S. daily, as told by Christine Seitz. And yet another was a coffee table conversation with the inimitable Chef Alice Waters, who shared a bounty of experience-based wisdom that was as provocative as it was gentle.
The message, reinforced by nearly every participant, was: more plants, less meat.
To be clear, this is a culinary conference. We academics with nutrition expertise were just visiting. The prevailing devotion among the assembled, and the bar to clear, was culinary excellence and satisfied customers. The mix included chefs from successful, high-end restaurants. Devotion to good food was simply not negotiable.
But that message was embraced by all just the same. All assembled acknowledged the overwhelming evidence of human health benefit from diets placing greater emphasis on vegetables, whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, and fruit. But the greater sense of urgency clearly issued from concerns about the health of the planet. That the environmental impact of meat-centric diets was unsustainable, and untenable, was the common call to action.
This was by no means a gathering of vegans, or vegetarians, although there were a few in the mix. Mostly, these were people who had enjoyed being omnivores their whole lives, and who were pledged to make food enjoyable for others. Most were committed to keeping meat in the culinary mix, even while reducing its prominence. The goal for all concerned was food we can continue to love, but that loves us, and the planet back. It’s a new day.
There are, inevitably, those who prefer old days, good for them if not the rest of us. There are those who refute established fact about the environmental impact of foods, and the weight of evidence regarding human health effects. They are, of course, selling something. They are selling meat, and overcooked tales about it.
But so what? We aren’t actually naïve enough to believe that Coca Cola would be the best place to get objective information about the weight, health, happiness, or environmental effects of soda consumption, are we? No more so is the beef industry and its allies (or, more bluntly, propagandists) with regard to their wares.
Participants in the UMass conference clearly understand and embrace this. They have joined ranks to create a recipe with all the right ingredients: culinary delight, human health benefit, environmental stewardship, sustainability, ethical treatment of our fellow creatures, and business opportunity. It’s a recipe for our world in our time. For those paying attention to the ever warmer, thirstier, more crowded planet they see- meat is ceding the center of the plate. Where’s the beef? Moved to the margins, by the diverse hands of a growing, global congregation, and ever more chefs.
-fin Dr. David L. Katz;www.davidkatzmd.com; author, Disease Proof; founder, True Health Initiative
