Become a sustaining member of the
Commonwealth Club for just $10 a month. Join today. Welcome everyone to today's
Commonwealth Club program. I am so delighted to be here. And my name is Deborah Alvarez Rodriguez. I'm the executive director of La Cocina,
which is a food entrepreneurship program here in San Francisco
that's incubated over 130 food businesses, four that are led by immigrant
women and bipoc women. So it is wonderful to be here and I think
we're going to have an incredible time. So thank you so much. Let me just say a couple of words. I want to just say a couple of words about La Cocina and
and why it's so connects to what Chef Waters is all about. Because everything we do
is about community building, collaboration and finding pathways to economic freedom,
liberation and opportunity. So it's so wonderful to be
here and in kindred spirits. Let me you know, I remember the very first time
I ever went to she police. I was thinking about that. I remember it so vividly. I remember how beautiful the food looked. And I remembered
how incredibly tasty it was. And at that moment,
it brought me back to my two year old self as I was putting out the napkins
in my mother's Puerto Rican restaurant in Brooklyn, New York. And so I thought, my goodness,
what a full circle moment this is for me here today
and for all of us. So thank you very much. I want to share with you a little bit. I am as I said,
I'm the Eddie at La Cocina. But most importantly,
I'm so proud to be a member of the Board of Governors of the Commonwealth Club. This is my first year here and it is an extraordinary organization
that I'm sure you will all agree with. And I also want to say a particular
welcome to all of our members here at the Commonwealth Club members. Thank you for your continued support
as we start returning to in-person
gatherings here at the in San Francisco. So thank you. Now, it is my pleasure. And it is a profound and deep pleasure
to introduce you to Alice Waters. Alice Waters, the legendary chef, restaurateur and founder of Chez Panisse
and the author of What We Are What We Eat a Slow Food Manifesto. We Are What We Eat A Slow Food Manifesto. Chef Waters is a celebrated, long time
sustainable food activist and humanitarian. She is well known for pioneering California cuisine
and the farm to table movement here. She also founded, as many of you know,
the Edible Schoolyard Garden and Kitchen Program at the Martin
Luther King Jr Middle School right here in Berkeley,
California, where the students there have a real experiential experience
of planting, harvesting and preparing fresh, fresh food
and fresh ingredients. It's a remarkable
it's a remarkable program, an organization that is really quite global,
not just local. Ms.. WATERS You know, I still remember I so vividly remember that first meal, as I said, and that and what I understood at
that moment was that it was an act of eating at Chez
Panisse, was an act of love and activism. So with that, I'd like to turn it over to our the guest of honor, chef. Chef Waters, it is truly an honor
and a pleasure to be here with you today. And we also have a fantastic moderator,
William Rosensweig, who's faculty co-chair of the Berkeley
Haas Center for Responsible Business, faculty director
of the Sustainable Food Initiative, and an expert in social entrepreneurship
and food systems education. Thank you. Well, thank you for having us here today. I'm Will Rosensweig. I'm delighted. We are delighted to be together
with Alice in conversation to celebrate the publication
of her newest book, We Are What We Eat. Alice and I have had the pleasure
of co-hosting a very popular course at UC Berkeley the last seven years called
Edible Education. It's open to students all across campus,
and it's been videotaped
for the last seven, eight years. The class has actually existed
for about 12 years. It was initiated
with Michael Pollan's leadership. And it remains really a a fundamental offering at UC Berkeley that attracts
students from all across campus. And they learn about values,
they learn about systems, and they learn about how to take action. And so a core pillar of the course
is really about values. And this book is Alice's
Manifesto on values. And values are what we care about. It's the mindset that we bring to how we see the world
and how we participate in the world. And now more than ever,
with the climate crisis and the health disparities
that that have come so into light during the pandemic, we see that food is really at the center
of everything. So. Alice, for you know,
I also wanted to welcome before I forget, it's hard for me to see in the audience,
but we have a there we are. We have a special group of students
who have traveled all the way from New York, part of the Food Education
Fund Entrepreneurship Program, which we just started yesterday
at UC Berkeley. And it was such a pleasure to get to know
them and to have them here with us. And so I hope you're going to write
some really good questions for for Alice today. So for those people that really haven't
had a chance, Alice, to know about how your values
have been formed and inspired. Could you start
maybe bring us back to your days at UC Berkeley
and how those shaped your view? Fellow frogs at UC Berkeley in 1964. I think that says everything I came there from. I transferred from Santa Barbara because I heard something
was going on in Berkeley. And in fact, it worked. And then I heard Mario Savio speak and I said, he's speaking for me. And I became very politically activated, shall we say. When I think back to my family, I had a very conservative father and a very radical mother. And in fact, she was a communist and in college and demonstrating around the seamstress union
and supporting it. I didn't know that really until they ultimately came
and moved to Berkeley. And so my father was a very big help with shape and ease at the beginning. But Berkeley really changed everything for me, and I felt like we not only addressed the war in Vietnam
and free speech, but we really talked about civil rights. And I really connected with all of that. And after I graduated,
I decided to go to France and maybe even know that story because I wrote a book
about it, my memoir. But I felt like I had never really eat before. I had my first experience in a restaurant in France. I was supposedly going to school
at the Sorbonne and the course for French civilization. I can't even speak French, but because I never went to class. That's part of it. But I really took a course in French civilization, and it of course began with food, but it also began with the way people live their lives at that time. And 65, they were the kids would come home from school
to have lunch with their parents. They'd have 2 hours to have lunch. People waited in line to get a bag. And I thought,
What are they waiting in line for? Bread. And then I've waited in line. And that taste, that
taste of a hot baguette really won me over. But there was also something else
going on. And that line is that people were talking to each other and the kids
and there were old people. But, you know, maybe 20 minutes
that difference worth spending that time. And of course, the beauty of Paris was irresistible. And I just came back from that trip and said, I want to live like the French. And I knew it had to do with food first. And I really looked to see, you know, how I could find that taste and wish that there were a farmer's market
that I could go to, because that was the way that I walked through the Latin Quarter,
right past that market every day. So all these beautiful fruits
and vegetables. But I also I forgot to say
that I had a wild strawberry, a French double at a restaurant. And I, I tasted that. And it just was nothing like I had ever tasted before. And I said, Where? Do I get it? And they said
you had to go up in the woods. It's wild. You have to pick it right now. And I never occurred to me that the people did that and brought them to the market and only had this one
little moment in time. I love that story
because it really illustrates, you know, Joseph Campbell's
archetypal call. You got the call just yet? Yes. But you weren't going to school to learn about food. Right. And we were talking yesterday with the students here,
and they're all going into college. And one of the discussions we had
yesterday was, what should I major in? You know, what should I declare? And we were talking about
how school wants you so early to declare your intention and your sac, your narrow silo. But I just love that. Well, talk a little bit
about what you were studying and how that came full circle. You were around. It was very interesting
during the free speech movement because anyone who was part of that only wanted to take classes when there were professors who were part of the free speech movement. And I decided to take
Beethoven's symphonies because that teacher
was somebody very important to me. I probably never would have done that. And I just had my mind opened up
and I took a film course. I took all of these just a mix. And when I got back from France,
they asked me, What is your major? And I said, Well, I don't know. I took all these courses
and they said, Well, it sounds like it
kind of fits into a field, made sure you started sort of 1750 to 1850. And they gave me that. And then, of course, at that time,
just a little side story is that nobody went to pick up diplomas. So I didn't know whether I graduated
or not. And later on, they wanted to give me an award
at the university. Now, I think they had a print up for me. Don't tell anybody. But it was so important to have that big cultural experience of meeting people
that are very different from yourself. And later I went back to Europe
and I traveled in Turkey. I can't believe that
I just was with a friend and we got a little car from London. We drove to Turkey
and we camped out every place we went. And I never worried about, you know, something happening to me. I just was so pleased. One time we were camped in Turkey,
and we woke up in the morning and there was a little bowl of warm
milk under the flap of the tent. And I said, We have to find this person who would love to see this. And we went down the road and there was this young kid
who was in charge of the gas station. And I said, Did you leave this? He said, Yeah, I did leave the milk. Would you like some tea? No, sure. Probably. And he said, I live in town, but I run the gas station and he got Pinecone sent. He had one of those old gas kind of containers
that he put on that fire. He made a little pinecone fire, and it made worth of water for a team. And I experienced this kind of hospitality that was so wonderful. Nobody ever asking anything in return from me just gave me whatever they had. And I was actually studying Montessori
education in London at the time, which became really the way that I think about teaching. And it's very important right now because Montessori wanted to create a pedagogy for teaching children that were, in her mind send sovereignly to private. They lived in the slums of Naples
and in poor places in India. And she said, How are we going to teach these children? And she created this way of teaching by learning. By doing. And the education of the senses. Our senses are pathways into our minds. So she wanted these students to be able to see and to hear, to taste, to smell. And she created games for little children to play. That opened up those senses, matching up smells and canisters. And I got very engaged with this and came back to Berkeley and taught Montessori school for 3 to 6 year olds. And another important part of her education was about beauty. She wanted all of the equipment
to be enticing for the students to to be very, very I can't even describe. She had special materials made in Holland
that you needed to purchase that were made by hand
and not painted specially so that the children
would fall in love with learning. And I use that same principle for shape and heat. I wanted
everybody who came in to the restaurant to feel really good. I wanted there to be flowers. I wanted the music not to be too loud. I funded the Roma. Typical. I even sometimes if you know, children spoke about this, have we burned rosemary and walked around the dining room and upstairs and out front
so that when people came to the tour, they would say, Ooh, this feels good. But but the important point that I'm rambling on here
that I wanted to make is that we are living in a world where we are sense, morally deprived as a nation. I mean, as a world, really, where we're not touching anymore or icons and we aren't really engaged
with food in that way. And it's the reason that I wrote
the manifesto was because I've one. I wanted to know how we lost our democracy, how we lost our connection with each other in such a short period of time. I'm talking about from the end of World War Two until now. What happened. And I came up with the theory that we changed the way we ate and it changed our values. Well, in the book, you talk about how big
of an impression that Carlo Petrini, the founder of the Slow Food
Movement, had on you. And I think hearing
how these early experiences in your life shaped your values,
your preferences, your view of the world, and how you managed to manifest that. Just again, for the students benefit,
I think it's really interesting to see how you combine these passions of teaching
and learning with food and hospitality and care and brought those together . So in the book, you first identify the fast food values, the values of our fast food culture. And I will just name them off
really quickly. Convenience, uniformity, availability. Trust in advertising. We did a whole class on that one.
Cheapness. One of your favorites,
more is better and speed. And I have to tell you,
because this morning I thought, oh, this is going to just roll
her eyes at this. But I saw an ad for a new company
called Nuro. Has anybody seen this neuro neuro? Is this little robotic car about the size of a little red wagon? And it's got a R2D2 kind of hood on it and it drives up and down neighborhoods delivering food to peoples. So it it it it has all of this it has the entire fast food culture on a robotic platform. Convenience, uniformity, availability,
trust in advertising, cheapness. More is better speed. And it masks. Right. It masks all of the issues
that you care about. Who grew it? How was it grown? How did it get to you? Who was paid what to get it to you? So one of the things we talk a lot about in edible education is we help
the students develop this superpower to pierce through the veils of opacity that have been created
in our in our food system to develop the superpower of transparency
and the slow food values that you outlined here
in contrast to the fast food values. And then maybe we can go in and elaborate. But you just talked about beauty. Of course, that's number one. Biodiversity, seasonality. Stewardship. Pleasure in work. Simplicity and interconnectedness. But I think they are all wrapped up in one
that you and I love to talk about. And maybe it's deliciousness, right? You you you have a special way
of bringing people over to your side. How do you win people over? Well, I wish I could feed you all these ideas, because I do think
that it's very important to really connect around a table. And I always want there to be something on that table that's beautiful and edible because it really I see that when people taste that in the conversation, that it almost opens their minds to what we're talking about. And it's so difficult to be in school, in your seats and to to not have that that interaction. I wish all the time during the pandemic that we had had classes outside. Why didn't we take the kids to the beach? We're just words. And there's a whole movement actually around teaching that's
happening in nature in the woods. What's it called? The for school movement. It started in Germany about ten or 15 years ago, but it's global. And I was surprised that there were in Rome when I was in Rome, there were 150 families on the wait list to bring their children to experience school in the woods. And they just played in the woods. These were young children. And now they have an ocean school and they play on the pitch. But it's so beautiful to count the shells instead of the numbers in the classroom. And I know that in order to really address the serious issues of today and climate, being at the top is to fall in love with nature. Because once you do your, you know, because Will has the most beautiful garden
around it, serves an edible
garden and has a seasonal garden. And it just feeds you in a way that nothing else does really. It teaches you about relationships,
certainly. I actually I am the gardener. And one of the things
that is really a joy is I get to bring bushels of fruit
to class every week. The students enjoy it. Many of the students
have never had a freshly grown orange,
you know, picked right that morning. So we're very blessed here in the Bay Area to have seasons
that we can grow and produce food. But I think that what you're
talking about, this appreciation for, you know, embodied learning or sensory
focused learning is so important. I mean, I think there's a lot
of research showing that our our our our view of the world is changed most when we are experiencing it
through all of our senses, insects. And as you've talked about,
you know, feeding people ideas, also the act of feeding is really
establishing important levels of trust. I mean, having been in the food business
for many, many years, I always had a sense of a heightened responsibility for, you know, when you feed someone something, they're entrusting their life to you. Yes. And you have to take that very seriously. And it really to me,
that's what shaped a lot of my own thinking and experience in trying to be
a responsible business leader. And I think through the
the field of food, the world of food, we develop relationships
and interconnectedness that you talk about in the book in ways
that can change the way we think, the way we act,
and certainly what we eat. So maybe we could could we? I want to talk a little bit
about a few of these values, and then I'd really love to talk about, you know, one of our shared interests
is, is how are we going to take the learnings
and experiences that you've had at Chez Panisse and make them much more widely
available and appreciated? Well, I want to talk about
the Edible Schoolyard Project, because the the confirmation that I have felt since I started the project 26 years ago and that has really activated me is the school Martin Luther
King Junior Middle School in Berkeley. The principal called me up and just asked if I he knew I did something with gardens and he thought
maybe I can be like this school. Well, I went over there and it was school was on 17 acres of land. It was built in 1921, and it was for 500 students, but it had grown to a thousand students. And it was teaching English. I mean, it had 22 different languages. It was kind of a language school, too. And. He said, you know, it's all sort of fallen apart because we had to bring in, you know, those portable classrooms. And, you know, we couldn't
feed everybody in the cafeteria. So there's a snack bar down there. But these are teenagers,
sixth, seventh and eighth graders. And I took one look at it
and I said, I have the idea. It's we could make a garden over there. And maybe that portable building, there could be a kitchen classroom. Not to teach gardening or cooking per say, but to teach all of the academic subjects. So you could do science and math and art and just about anything
in the garden classroom. But at the same time, you're learning
that math. You are smelling the flowers and seeing calculating seeds and planting. And you're you're engage
with all of your senses. And then in the kitchen classroom, it's the same that you are cooking. But it might be that you're studying the history of the Middle East. And so you're making pita bread and crayons,
and maybe you're making hummus and maybe you've grown
some of the kale in the garden and you're using that in the kitchen
classroom. But you're learning the history of the Middle East at the same time. And I've watched these thousand students over 26 years. And I know absolutely that if they grow it and they cook it,
they all eat it. If they only grow it and 90% eat it. So it really, really validates
the whole idea of edible education and the fact that we built a network. And there are 6500 schools in which you open that just so people can see what 6500 schools look like and then work because it's in every state. Now, we did not start these schools. Yeah. Yeah. And they had set aside. Well, here's the 6500. But that's only 55. But these are these are human values that people want to teach to young people. And I have no idea what's going on. And then if these schools accept that it's about stewardship of the land, it's about equity, it's about building community, it's about nourishment. That's what it's about. And some of these schools
are beginning in kindergarten and some of them are in college. And so we did start
six schools around the country because I wanted to know with this work
in a hot place like New Orleans, would it work in a place like upstate New York where it would work in Brooklyn? And it did. And in Los Angeles. And every school is different culturally. But they and they teach differently. But they all have the same spirit
about them. And I believe that these students will all grow up being stewards of the land, learning how to cook for themselves, knowing what it is to live in a democracy and participate because they share the food at the table. And I don't know whether you remember your your middle school years, but I remember that
the boys were over there and the girls were over here
and that we never talked with each other. We never had that kind of conversation. And to see these teenagers or working to produce a meal together, to sit at a table and eat it is so exciting. And I'd love to invite you out for a visit because we're going to be open for review,
I think, in September. I love about this,
too, is the fact that it was really a self-organizing system. You know, it was inspired by a model. But all of these people took. Yes. Inspiration from from your model and then reinvented it, you know, locally. And it's so different
than the kind of mindset or model that we have in our culture
to want to scale the same thing to this scale differently. It just scaled itself. It replicated. Yeah. No, because nature doesn't scale. Nature replicates. So what you did was
you created a very organic hope. There's that word. Yeah, I knew I was going to get that
in regenerative, fully organic in someone, say organic. I always when I introduce Alice
in the first class, I always think of her as she's the she's been the standard
bearer of the organic movement and really held the space
for that type of agriculture. Maybe you could talk a little bit
about that, too, and your relationship to the farmers
and whether that's absolutely fun to talk about that
because I have a big plan and I think that the experience of the Edible Schoolyard and Chez Panisse over 50 years has prepared me to think in the biggest possible way. Because when Chez Panisse opened,
I thought that somehow we were going to have food
that tasted like it tested in France. I don't know what I was thinking, but I thought I would be able to find that when in fact I could find those ingredients. And there wasn't that whole farmer's market movement back then. And so we had a friend to new farmers and she said, I'll be a forger for you. I go out and find people
who would like to sell food directly to share pennies without a middleman. And I said, I'd love that. And this was Sybilla Kraus. It was very important
starting the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market. But she went out and she found people that were willing
to bring us all of their peaches. And I got Frog Harlow Farm during that season and I got a taste and I realized that I was at the doorsteps
of the organic farmers market. I mean, the organic movement
in the state of California that I'm was meeting
all of these amazing people and then I we were going directly to them and picking up the food
and bringing it to the restaurant. And so the farmer didn't have to sell us
wholesale. They sold us at the real cost of the food so that they could take care
of the farm workers and take care of all the the, you know, the farming issues
that are so important to the especially the organic farm. And ultimately, my father actually went with my mother. She and they decided to go to Davis and ask for all the farmers that were within one hour of shaping these so that we could find someone who we could work with on a regular basis. And they spent eight months going around. They came back with three people,
but they said there's only one that's crazy enough to work with sheep. And it's and that was Bob Canard. I don't know whether you know him,
but he is kind of an amazing farmer who was regenerative. From the very beginning, we didn't know what
that word meant, but he said, My carrots are 20% more nutritious
than anybody else's. And I left and they were tasty. But he said, the way that I am allowing the soil to be all that it can be is giving that carrot or the nutrition it needs to be the best
for your immune system, for everything that's happening,
and it can even repair your immune system. And so we fell in love with Barb and we brought back
all of our scraps to Barb, brought all the vegetables
back to Chez Panisse. And he has been there for 35 years. And now his son has taken over the business, his son, Russ. But it's been a real lesson to all of us at the restaurant. It brought his families
right through the kitchen door. And when we didn't eat something, he'd pull it out of his the scraps that we said,
why didn't she read that? And now he's sending us
weeds from his farm, Purslane Nettles,
and he says, Make something of this. And so we started making nettle pizza. And let me tell you the huge success. You know, he was my mentor to me. And I don't know if I ever know that. Yeah, he was my mentor. And at our garden, we have 18 of the olive trees that he grafted
that were this big. Let me tell you a story
which is really funny. When I worked at Odwalla
for a number of years and we had a very popular, fresh carrot juice drink and we couldn't get enough carrots. So we went to Bob. We leased a piece of land near his farm,
and he grew all of these carrots for us. And one day I took my team from Odwalla up to the farm,
and I remember this very vividly. I brought my daughter, who at the time was three years old,
which was about 25 years ago, and she was standing in front of me. And Bob had the thing about Bob was
he had the most amazing compost pile you've ever seen,
and his compost was like gold. And my daughter was, you know,
she was being very patient and watching,
you know, him explain things. And he was standing
in front of the compost pile and she was standing in front of me
and she just took off and face planted into the compost pile. She was like drawn to it like a magnet. And it was just really interesting. I mean, it was
it was kind of a spiritual moment for all of us, but it's definitely tried to see people come post something. And it's it's a magic ingredient. And it really makes you appreciate
this cycle of farming that he has exemplified
and is now. I think I'm really excited. I spend a fair amount of my time
trying to educate young farmers and help them, you know, thrive in in in the ways
that, you know, you've exhibited. Yeah. With with Bob. So where do you want to take this? The great thing about all of this is that you're not only eating food
that tastes the best and that is the most nutritious, but it is pulling the carbon. Down and putting it in the ground where it belongs. Can you believe that we have a solution? To all his problems. And it's a delicious solution and we are not practicing it. I mean, getting to know the farmers
and the people, the grower food has been the greatest education for me to go out to meet my master motor. When you told me this morning,
you peaches, for getting ripe on the peach tree,
it gave you. I was jealous. I was hoping
it was going to bring me a peach. Thank you. But this is something
that is so important. And I guess I. Because time is of the essence
that I should tell you the big plan that I'm hoping will happen. And that is that our public school system adopts this way of supporting the people who are taking care of the land and teaching us the values that we need
to live on this planet together. What if the public school system. Purchased all its food locally, seasonally. From the regenerative, organic farmers, ranchers, fishers,
all of the people, the people who make the bread,
the tortillas, everything from those people
who are doing the right thing, we could change. Farming and education overnight. I mean, truly, because it's something I mean, we all go to school
or should we all eat? These are two universal things. And to think that we are feeding children food, that's making them sick. One in four children is going to have diabetes. And we're continuing to feed children fast food. But it is it's something that I mean, the economic stimulus. Of this idea is kind of unimaginable for every state in this union. Every state. And to think that only 60 years or so ago, that is how we end. I lived in New Jersey, you know, and we didn't have corn and tomatoes
except in the summer. We ate differently
at every time of the year. It's the way
we've been eating in the world since the beginning of civilization. Eating locally. Farming. Regenerative. Really, it's organically. And I have to say that that reason that I live my life by that's orchestrated by nature. Is so pleasurable to me now. People say, Oh,
we don't have any system in California, and we deeply do. We only have tomatoes. Maybe we have them a little
longer than New Jersey. And but it's a short period of time when it's there, it's there
and then they're gone. And then you move on to the next thing
and anticipate. I'm thinking about persimmons in the fall. I'm thinking about full food
and then the winter. The idea that California has everything
all the time. It's a myth. It's only in season. We're getting things that people think are coming from California
or they're going to Mexico. We're going to China, but we are not eating seasonally. And it's so beautiful to eat seasonally because she will never eat ripe food. And less. You just almost pick it off the tree and eat it. You know, one of the one of the challenges
that certainly a city of San Francisco is experiencing,
our campus at UC Berkeley, there's a lot of people
that aren't getting enough to eat. And we were talking yesterday,
there's about 20% of the students at UC Berkeley that are food insecure. And, you know,
the students are always asking you, you know, it's like,
why I how do I participate? You know,
organic seems to be so much more expensive than conventional food or packaged food. How do I how can I eat, you know,
the way you want to live your life? Alice, on my budget. I love that question. I think, again, it said,
since the beginning of civilization that meat and cheese have always been used as a condiment. They are not,
you know, maybe a special occasion. You have something with, you know, when you slaughter that pig, maybe you have that once a year
and you make things from it. But we don't know how to cook anymore. And that is the key to eating affordably. It really is. And it's also learning what things are extremely nourishing and affordable. And that for me
is always about seasonality. And I'm I'm changing my lettuce
with the season. And I'm curious, in the winter,
I think there's so beautiful, but in the spring I'm
thinking about the Little Rock and I'm going into the summer and I'm seeing the heads of little gems
and going into the fall, it's kind of the chicory, but this is when you are buying food in season, it's always less expensive. It's when you are buying food
out of season that it becomes really expensive. I've just made a cookbook
which will come out next year. It's a school
with sort of school lunch book, and every picture is a meal that fits into the USDA premium
for every meal and and their meals
from all around the world. And have been tested and tested by teenagers at Martin Luther King
Jr Middle School. And what is that number? Do you remember? Is it like $2.70? It's even less than that. It's really an amazing. But I buy all the food retail organic for the book
and I could fit into the reimbursement. But just imagine really if the federal government were to have the
initiative to support the schools, have the schools support the farmers. I call it school supported agriculture, like community supported agriculture. You are knowing the people who are feeding you and you want them to have what they need. You want to eat everything that they grow. I'm sure there are questions that people have their I don't answer, but I am looking
to the University of California not just because I went there and I know, but potential it has for making something very important. Go out into the world, across the country,
really, and around the world, if they were to take this idea
of procurement. And local procurement. Just think of the economic stimulus for the state of California. We have a new initiative at Berkeley that kind of came out of our work
at Edible Education. One of my former students,
who is getting her master's of public
health, was in edible education and took another class of mine called Food
Innovation Studio. And she said, you know, well, I came to
Berkeley to study plant based nutrition and the plant, plant centric food system. And the reason that was important to her
is because that's one of the top ways that we can address climate change,
is to shift to plant centered diets. And and she said,
but I can't find any classes specifically
on that at UC Berkeley, of all places. And I challenged her. I said, Well, why? Why don't you for your project
in my class, make design the class of your dreams. So she did this. She worked so hard on it. And when, you know, a student is passionate about something,
what they can do is miraculous. So she created a course
which we call plant futures. We ran it in
January of 2021 during the pandemic. And because it was during the pandemic,
we had to put it online. Well, not only did 300 Berkeley students sign up for it, but we had 250 students from around the country
and world signed up for it and took it. And to make a long story short,
this one, this initiative that Samantha Derrick took
has turned into an initiative. Now, the plant futures initiative
I have my plant future is in irons, but like taking a, you know,
taking the lead from you. We already have 30 campuses
around the country that now have plant futures chapters led by students and faculty champions. And what they're working on and what we ran a program last semester was to work with the chef
and the procurement people at UC Berkeley to figure out
how to get more plants on the menu, how to get more local
seasonal plants on the menu. So to me, picking up on your idea
that you fed to us, getting the students to advocate for this, getting the students
to design is so much part of the change. Then I feel like if we don't do something dramatic to address the big issues that the students are going to demonstrate for be there. We need to make big change
and talk about it. I mean, I just thought, well, you know, why why can't the Bidens plant a garden
on the front lawn of the White House? Why the back? Why not plant food very tentatively and give it to people
who are hungry in Washington, D.C.? Why not? I remember
when Michelle Obama made her garden. I was in Rome then
and it was on the front page of the newspaper in Rome and everybody talked about her doing that. Why can't we have that good news? I've always wanted to plant a garden
that the crescent of the University of California
as you enter. Why not have an edible landscape? Why not grow food for students who are hungry
at the University of California? And there are 200, I believe, and 65,000 acres of land owned by the University of California. It was a land grant university. And maybe they could give some of the land to people who wanted to grow food
for the University of California. I mean, it's endless where this could go. And because the university could pay the real cost to all the people there were producing food
without the middleman. Everybody would rent a car and sell food to the U.S. system and a few C major powers K through 12 could follow. But it would all you know, all of the ideas of plant based are needed to to really make the. Food at schools, delicious and what it really needs to be. And fundamentally, the school has to start looking at food as a human right and part of the commonwealth as opposed to a profit center or. Yes. In this area. Right. So that it's a fundamental shift
in just their economic model would be required. But I so appreciate that you continue
to advocate for this and spark people
and Alice is for the students here. Alice is just a tremendous example
of someone who is persistent and she's unrelenting. She she also she's persistent. She doesn't give up
and she finds the people who have influence and power and she makes sure
that they get to eat a meal with her. So she they so she can make sure
they hear the whole story during her. But just in the last 10 minutes, I want to get to some of the questions
and I'm going to combine a couple of them. But one person asked
where the name sharpness came from. And then what is your favorite dish
at Chez Panisse? What's your favorite meal? How does it make you feel? And then I'll lump one other question into
that is how do we support slow food culture in places where fast
food culture is most prominent? Yes, great questions about the word pennies is it's the name of a character
in the films of Marcel Penhall. I have a great love for film and my good friend
at the beginning of Shape Pennies was Tom Luddy, who started the Telluride Film Festival,
read about it at the same time, and he took me to see The Pan, Your trilogy, which is a beautiful story about the south of France in the thirties and forties, which is when Pioneer
was making that films, and they were all about camaraderie and and a lot about people leaving the land and coming into the cities and being lost without their connection to food and friends and nature. And I loved them so much that I thought,
well, I have to name the restaurant
after one of the characters and I named my daughter
Fanny after won it. The character
characters too, for pennies was a beautiful word and it means bread of niece. It refers to a little pancake
that they make and things. But I didn't know that at that time
and I just liked the sound of it. So it. And what's your favorite meal when? Well, I don't have a favorite,
I have to say right now it's apricot gal chip and don't miss it. And the apricots are in season right now
and I am just such a seasonal person. I can't think outside this moment in time where I'm longing for tomato,
but I haven't tested a great word yet. But when they come eating breakfast,
lunch and dinner, that was that question. How should someone promote slow food culture
in a fast food culture society? How about eating together with family and friends by asking where everything came from or looking? I always go because we're lucky to have a farmer's markets
all around the city and in Berkeley and I go to the farmer's market first. I always go there and I think it's you know, one of the amazing things that happened happened is happened around Pret and you may know this story, but Steve Sullivan was going to UC Berkeley
and he was a busboy, a shape and his way back in the beginning and he heard me
complaining about bread and it said , I'm going to do something about this. And he read my favorite. Read books,
and he started making baguettes for us in his dorm room. And then he'd bring them and I'd say, Ooh, this too crusty or serve that. And then he finally
brought a fantastic one. I said, Okay, you can make them first
shape and use. And he would come early in the morning
and use all the elements. Then I finally said, Get your own bakery. And if you do, I'll
buy every thing you make. And one of
the questions is, where do you recommend you can get a good baguette in the it? Well, it's definitely what did that. But a bad acting bread company. Yeah. Expanded and they got connected
with a whole group of people who cared about bread around the country
and where the flour was coming from. And it's it's there has been a real bread revolution over the last 20 years
across this country. And I do think that bread is one of those,
you know, service you eat once you have a loaf of bread. You go back and it's a way to open your mind
to all food. And I love that about it. And if you know that little bakery
in every town my sister was living in upstate Michigan and her husband has said, you know, I don't want to live in and, you know,
I don't want her fried anymore. I want to make bread. And he came and learned from Acme
and he took the idea and a friend to Bread Bakery there in Michigan. But it's that you know way that he see
and that pleasurable. Can you imagine having work that you love and this is something that will and I connect with a lot because businesses should be built around a set of values and no one should be ever forced to work competitively and an Amazon warehouse without windows, without any place to sit and have lunch. I mean, what are we doing all day long to spend 2 hours commuting? Well, let me tell you, anybody who wants to grow
food and we store we originally bought a lot of food who from people
who grew it in their backyards. We had somebody who grew French
breakfast radishes and we would trade meals so cheap pennies, but it's so gratifying. And that whole victory garden movement
that was started to grow enough food to feed, you know, ourselves, for
we were sending so much to Europe during World War Two, turned out to be a movement that has so much value went for it. And all of the pamphlets
that the government printed are still there for how to grow
a vegetable garden when it's freezing. Well, Alice,
it's always a pleasure to bask in your your values and your worldview
and your wonderful ideas about how to make the world
better for everyone. And thank you for being with us in person. And those of you that are with us online,
please visit the Commonwealth Club Board website for more information
or a taping of this program. And thank you so much for being with us
today. Yes, thank you. Thank. Thank you.
