Personal politics of healthful eating

Ruth Reichl is road weary and heavy of heart. She’s just flown in from France, where she spent a week boosting the spirits of a friend just diagnosed with breast cancer.

But her energy is easily rekindled once she starts talking about food, the subject with which her name has become synonymous. Reichl, the former editor-in-chief of Gourmet food magazine and dining critic for The New York Times, has arrived to Seattle to deliver the keynote address at this year’s fundraising gala for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

“Cooking is much more than just a way to feed people,” she said in her keynote address. “It’s a community activity. It’s an act of generosity. It is my personal belief that it is impossible to be a great chef unless you have a very large soul.”

Putting their souls into the gala’s menu were local chefs Renée Erickson of Walrus & the Carpenter and Blaine Wetzel of Willows Inn, who teamed up to prepare a gourmet meal for the attendees.

Before the gala, Reichl shared her thoughts about the next generation of American chefs and the role politics plays in the pressing need for Americans to eat more healthfully.

How has cancer affected your life?

One of my friends was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. When we heard it, my friends put our heads together and tried to figure out what to do. We decided that we would take her to Paris for a week of eating. We had a wonderful time, mostly at “big deal” restaurants. But on our last night, when we were supposed to go out for a “big deal” meal, it was pouring rain, torrential rain, we couldn’s find a cab, and at the last minute we said, “Let’s forget about those reservations and just go around the corner to a little cafe.”

Well, everyone in the cafe that night was a refuge from the storm. As we huddled together, people began doing what happens in restaurants when wine starts being passed from table to table, and we started sharing food, and by the end of the evening, we had made a dozen new friends.

The rain had ended by the time we left the cafe, and as we walked back to our hotel, my friend said, “Thanks for this wonderful week. But more than anything, thank you for tonight, because I remembered all the reasons I want to be alive.” And that’s what great food, and a great meal, can do for us.

Do you see a connection between current trends in health-minded dining, such as the rising aversion to genetically modified foods, and the popularity of vegan, gluten-free, and “paleo” diets, and diseases such as cancer?

Ah, gluten-free ... suddenly our gluten intolerance has skyrocketed. When I went to Gourmet in 1999, gluten-free wasn’s even on anyone’s radar. I knew three people with gluten intolerance. We knew it was real, but it was rare. It took physicians a long time to find it. By the time I left 10 years later, we were getting hundreds of requests for gluten-free recipes. It happened that fast. I’m absolutely convinced it has something to do with environmental factors, probably the way they’ve hybridized flour to make it softer and softer.

Do chefs and food writers have a responsibility to espouse a healthy food lifestyle?

I think we all do. I think what’s happening with food supply and the environment is something that everybody in the world better be paying attention to or we’re not going to have a world anymore. Devastation of the ocean. Growing wealth of Third World nations. It’s all having this huge impact. Pollution, water. Should chefs be paying attention? Yes. But any more than anybody else? Probably not.

Who do you look to for healthful eating recommendations?

Peter Kaminsky just wrote this great book, Culinary Intelligence: The Art of Eating Healthy (and Really Well. But really, I don’s feel like I need to listen to anyone because I’ve been thinking about this stuff for so long. You know, I started being a restaurant critic in ’76, pushing 40 years, and if you’re eating food for that long, you really do think about, “How do I do this without killing myself?” Plus, me coming out of Berkeley, I started into the whole food thing in a very political way....

When I read “Diet for a Small Planet,” which was published in ’71 or ’72, it was really what Michael Pollan’s book has been for this generation, which is, “Oh my, I never thought about this before! What have I been eating all along?” I’m a cook, and I never thought of the fact that it takes 20 pounds of protein to make a pound of beef, and then you start looking into the practices of these places, so you start finding out the rest of it.

Are you just starting to see those ideals being put into practice on a wider scale?

Absolutely. It’s amazing to see all these things we were jumping up and down about 40 years ago. It was a fringe movement then, and now it’s gone mainstream.

Is eating healthfully a matter of economics? There’s greater affordability and accessibility of genetically modified and processed foods.

More so it’s a political issue. The price of the food we eat is totally based on the tax structure and the Farm Bill and what is subsidized. It is absurd that a hamburger is cheaper than a salad. And that is totally as a result of the tax policy. If we actually made the people who raise the pigs in confinement facilities pay the costs of pollution, and we didn’t subsidize the soy and corn industries, it wouldn’t be a class issue because vegetables would be cheap.

One of the ways we are starting to correct that is by teaching people how to cook. If you know how to cook, you can know how to cook rice and beans and vegetables, how to cook inexpensively. If you know how to balance proteins, then you don’t have to eat at the top of the food chain.

But if you don’t have time to cook because you have three jobs, if it’s a choice between clothing your children and buying good food, then it’s cheaper to eat fast food than real food.

As a dining critic, how do you feel about nutritional value labeling on restaurant menus? Will that force people to make better eating choices?

I think it’s a good thing. But it’s only a good thing if it happens universally. It’s not fair if you do it in one place and not another. I think if someone looks at a muffin and suddenly realizes it has more calories than a burger, they’ll rethink that muffin. Five hundred calories and 18 grams of fat? I think [nutritional labeling] is a good thing. With the industrialization of our food system, we’re eating hidden calories we don’t even know about and hidden fat. It’s good to have it right in your face. You can’t say you didn’t know.

What else would you change about our food system?

If I ruled the world and could do one thing, I would outlaw soft drinks for everybody. They’re unnecessary, they rot your teeth, they’re expensive.

Even artisanal soft drinks?

All of them. It’s junk. It’s bad for you. And they are so powerful, those soft drink companies. They’re in the schools, they advertise everywhere. Nobody really wants to take them on. No magazine or newspaper will take them on.

Have you seen that book, What the World Eats? It's a wonderful photographic essay where they go to countries all over the world and photograph people and a week’s worth of their food. What you see is how ubiquitous soft drinks are. Places where there has been no penetration of anything else, people who have no money.... There’s this one family in the Philippines living in 211 square feet, a big family in this tiny little place, and the one thing that they insist on buying is a pack of Coke every week. It’s status.

Any plans to visit Portland soon?

I love Portland and hope to visit again soon. There’s so much young talent there. It’s mind-blowing. It’s such a great food community. Every time I go there I feel like there’s a new group of people. I judged Top Chef Masters last year, so I got to know Naomi Pomeroy last season: She’s such a force. So I’m really curious to see what she does next.

This article originally appeared in the May 28, 2012 edition of The Oregonian.