«Real nutrition starts in the ground, in healthy soil, with bugs and all,» said executive chef and slow-food trailblazer Alice Waters in her keynote speech at the 15th annual Women’s Wellness Day organized by UCI’s Integrative Medicine.» Food is central to making our lives better.» A Delicious Revolution is how she boils down her message after four decades of food activism. Her talk detailed her personal awakening to the power of tastiness, moved into locavore/slow-food territory with her renowned Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, then settled into the Edible Schoolyard Project, now worldwide.
«Fast food makes us sick and unhappy. We’re hard-wired for something better.» said the VP of Slow Food International. «Slow food values already reside inside us, waiting to be stimulated, by an appeal to the senses—we never dictate to kids what to eat. But you can watch children when they take a warm egg from the hen house or watch water touching parched earth, it looks like falling in love.» In her warm and charming way, Waters has declared war. «Today, a child’s senses are closed down, due to poverty, the dominance of the fast-food culture.» The answer according to the onetime Montessori teacher, «Plant taste memories in unsuspecting children that will stay with them their whole lives.»
*Photo by T Taylor Photography