all the food that's fit to print The Education Issue - Slow Food

Dear Members,
I confess: I like when things are a
mess. More precisely, I am attracted
to things that are complex, ambiguous,
challenging. Maybe that’s why I
like studying food. When it comes to
food, the story is always messy, especially
when you’re trying to get at the
truth.
Take the New York Times’s recent
report on mercury levels in tuna
From Erika
(January 23, 2008). I’m always hopeful
when food issues jump from the
Dining section to the front page, not
only because more people read about them there, but also because the story
is more likely to integrate political, economic and ecological dimensions,
rather than recipes or wine pairings. But in this case, no word count or headline
could do justice to the topic, because the truth is, a real discussion of
tuna can’t just be about what quantity is safe to eat according to the EPA.
What about the imminent collapse of worldwide tuna populations,
endemic pollution of the oceans (and all the plants and animals in it, especially
those high on the food chain like tuna), seafood’s paradoxically robust
reputation as a health food, deep-sea sport fishing, the ubiquitous tuna
melt? What about the longevity of the Japanese, who eat more bluefin tuna
than anyone worldwide, or the dying tradition of the mattanza, the centuriesold
hunt for bluefin off the coast of Sicily?
Messy indeed. Fortunately, food writers are not alone in studying the
most complicated food questions any more: now farmers and food producers,
college students and professors, white-tablecloth chefs and lunch ladies,
environmentalists and capitalists are all getting into the game, trying to
understand how to connect the dots. A few of them are profiled in this issue,
along with their efforts to use education—in all its forms—to demystify
what is at once universal and inscrutable: what we put on our plates and in
our bellies everyday.
Studying food is undeniably a complex and interdisciplinary act. When
we figure out how to put the true and messy story of food on every newspaper’s
front page, every single day, we’ll be that much closer to knowing who
we are, from what we eat.
Buon appetito!
Erika Lesser
The snail | spring 2008
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