Ever dreamed of eating your way across the country? This summer, Diane Hatz did just that on the Eat Well Guided Tour of America. Convinced there was more to the sustainable-food movement than met the eye (i.e., it ain’t just happening on the coasts), Hatz and her colleagues from Sustainable Table partnered with several other organizations to organize a 25-city tour that stretched from West Hollywood, Calif., to New York’s Hudson Valley. Hopping aboard a biofueled bus, the group set out to discover the true tastes of American eaters.
Diane Hatz.
Ambitious, yes, but that’s hardly a surprise. This is the same group behind both the popular Meatrix series and the Eat Well Guide, a national online directory of farms and restaurants providing fresh, local food. They know from big.
Now that she’s back at her desk in the Big Apple, we checked in with Hatz, a former music industry exec, to find out how she made the switch to food, what advice she has for getting through the grocery store, and what other projects she’s got up her sleeve. Send her a question of your own by midnight PDT on Tuesday — she’ll answer the best burning queries later this week.
Tell us a little about yourself — your background, how you came to Sustainable Table, what excites you about these issues.
I’m originally from the suburbs in northern Delaware, where I grew up always having a garden in the back yard and fruit trees around the house, and my parents would buy half a cow from the local butcher and freeze the cuts. My family would also go down to the Delaware beach every weekend in the summer, where we’d catch our own fish, crabs, and clams. When I was young, I never thought about where my food came from because even though I didn’t grow up on a farm, a lot of the food I ate was grown or caught by someone in the family. I remember even going down to the local park to pick berries.
Second Helpings
I actually came to the sustainable food movement by accident. I had worked for about 10 years in the music industry, much of it in a corporate music company, and in my early 30s I knew I had to get out. I’d lost my passion for music, mainly because of how corporate the business was and how little passion and actual creativity I saw in it. I brushed up my resume and sent it out to a little blind ad in The New York Times … my first resume went to GRACE [now the parent organization of Sustainable Table], and when I was offered the job, I thought working in a nonprofit might be interesting. Around that time, I’d also discovered an organic mango, which tasted so unbelievably good that I started becoming interested in organic food.
One day in about 2001, I got an email from a consumer asking me about genetic engineering. I searched around other sites to try to find the answer, and I realized that every website assumed the visitor already knew what genetic engineering was, and it really frustrated me. I figured if I was frustrated, there were probably a lot of consumers out there equally as frustrated because they weren’t able to get information about how their food was being produced and where it came from. So, I had the privilege of founding Sustainable Table.
You asked what excites me about these issues — I was so excited and pleased [on the Eat Well tour] to see that there’s more going on than even I realized! We all know that wonderful things are being done on the West Coast and in the Northeast, but do you know what’s happening in Wyoming? Montana? Missouri? Everywhere we went, we found people excited, passionate, and enthusiastic about local, sustainable food, and it has reenergized me and given me so much hope for us and our food system … I’d challenge everyone reading this to look around in their area. I’d be surprised if you couldn’t find an organic, sustainable, or biodynamic farm, restaurant, or store near you. They’re popping up everywhere.
From your perspective, what’s the one thing people should be aware of when they shop for food?
The main thing I think people should be aware of is how the food was raised or grown. Find out if added hormones or constant daily doses of antibiotics were used. Ask about what animals were fed. Find out if chemical fertilizers or pesticides were used. Sustainable Table has a series of handouts called Questions to Ask — you can print these out or download them onto your iPod or PDA.
Find out where the food comes from — and if you want something you don’t see, ask for it! Consumers need to understand that we have all the power. We’re the ones who are going to change the food system, but we need to speak up.
When it comes to agribiz, are there big companies that are trying to improve their practices? Are there others you’d recommend avoiding?
I’ve read that all the big companies know that consumers want more local, sustainable food, and they are reacting to the demand. Most of the smaller health-food-type companies have already been bought out by large conglomerations, and these large companies are sitting in their boardrooms trying to figure out how they can continue to make huge profits while becoming more “green” (which is not necessarily sustainable).
It’s not really for me to pick out any particular companies to avoid, but one thing I would suggest is that people try to buy food as unprocessed as possible. The more processed a food, the less nutrients it’s going to have. If you really want to avoid something, try staying away from high-fructose corn syrup or some derivative of corn syrup. (If you want to learn about the problems with corn, check out the movie King Corn.)
Consumers should look for whole foods like fruits, vegetables, and meat, and relearn the joy of cooking. You’re going to get more nutrients that way, and you’re going to get a better product. And once you start looking for unprocessed foods, go a step further and look for local, sustainable unprocessed foods — it really will taste better!
What about restaurants — any chains you’d hold up as role models?
With regard to restaurants to hold up as a model, I don’t know of any national chains, but while we were on the tour, we stopped in at Grilla Bites in Northern California. It’s a franchise operation that’s looking to go national — they source local, organic, sustainable food. Not only did they have an organic salad bar, they had sandwiches like a local bison burger and even products like local wine. Even though this is a fast-food-type restaurant, where you order at the counter and get your food quickly, it was the best fast food I’ve ever had! I also like that it’s a franchise so owners can actually own their business. I haven’t been to Vermont’s Farmer’s Diner yet, but they source as locally as possible, and I know they’re also looking to go national, so they’re another restaurant to look out for.
What can consumers do to support small farms more actively? And what resources do you recommend if the Eat Well Guide doesn’t turn up much in an area?
The best way to support a small farm actively is to join a community-supported agriculture program. With CSA, you purchase a share of a farmer’s crop at the beginning of the growing season. This gives them the resources to purchase seed and equipment. Each CSA member gets a share of the harvest, which is either picked up at the farm or dropped off at particular points, like a local church or community centers. CSAs have become extremely popular, and some now offer meat, fish, dairy products, and even flowers.
Another way to support small farms is to join a local sustainable agriculture or food group — if you go into the advance search feature on the Eat Well Guide, you can find local organizations to join. Two excellent programs are Slow Food and Food Routes’ Buy Fresh Buy Local campaign … And if none of that helps, I’d suggest looking in your phone book for a health-food store and giving them a call to see if they know of any CSA programs or farmers’ markets in the area. Local stores tend to be a wealth of information on sustainable food.
Do you see regional patterns in the sustainable-food movement? In this series, we looked at a county in Iowa that’s gone whole hog, so to speak, on the buy-local movement. Anomaly, or indication of a growing trend?
The buy local, sustainable movement is growing exponentially all across the country! I believe this is no longer a movement, trend, or fad. Sustainable food is here, and here to stay. The local aspect of sustainable food might be a little newer, but everywhere we went, in every part of the country, people were talking about how to source more local sustainable food and were asking the same questions: What do I do in the winter? How do I define local? What exactly is sustainable? What can I do to be more a part of this? I’ve only been off tour for just over a month, so I’m still trying to digest and pull together all the information we learned, and, hopefully, we can help answer some of these questions based on our experiences on the road.
Another pattern we saw … is that it’s not an “us and them” mentality. Organic food suffered (and to some degree still suffers) from an elitist image, but local, sustainable food is different. We went to PEAS Farm in Missoula, Mont., where they have a CSA program, but they also provide food to the local food bank … City Farm in Chicago employs residents in a low-income area and provides them a living wage — among the food they grow are heirloom tomatoes, which are sold to high-end restaurants around the city. The rest are given to food banks and food kitchens. City Slicker Farms in Oakland, Calif., is an urban farm where residents can buy the produce raised on a sliding scale — if you have no money, you don’t have to pay anything, no questions asked.
After seeing this across the country, I realized that my definition of sustainability, which includes building and maintaining community, also includes helping to provide food access for all. Sustainable food is not about just giving back to the planet but about giving to each other as well … And what I find so heartening is that not only are groups working together, but consumers are working with and supporting farms, restaurants, and farmers’ markets. There’s this sense of community that’s reinvigorating areas all over the country.
Our readers love to debate the merits of vegetarianism — do you or Sustainable Table have a stance on that?
Sustainable Table does not have a stance on vegetarianism. We’re specifically trying to reach consumers who eat meat, to educate them on problems with our food supply and offer them healthier options so they can choose what’s best for them. Personally, I’ve been a vegetarian for almost 20 years, but I promote local, sustainable meat for a living, and I don’t see any contradictions in that.
Sustainable Table was created to offer people information and choices, and to leave the decisions up to each individual. People are at different levels: some might be comfortable with being vegan, while others might eat meat every day, three times a day. We can only do what we can do, and I don’t believe we have the right to tell anyone what to do — we can only provide information and perhaps encourage them to eat/live healthier (and if they’re going to eat meat, to try to eat sustainable, pasture-raised meat), but it’s really up to each one of us. Obviously, having said that, I absolutely do not agree with our industrial food system so I do have some limits!
You guys created The Meatrix — were you surprised at its success? Any plans for more fun along those lines?
Moopheus exposes the Meatrix.
Image: themeatrix.com
Sustainable Table created The Meatrix with Free Range Studios. For anyone who might not have heard of The Meatrix, they’re online flash animations that educate consumers about factory farming and our food supply. We used humor and entertainment to teach people about serious food issues. And, yes, we were pleasantly shocked by the movie’s success!
When the first one came out, we were told that if 10,000 people watched the film over three months, it would be considered a success. We had 10,000 people in the first few hours! And as the days went by, we went into the millions — our server crashed twice from all the traffic. We can’t count the amount of people who’ve seen the movie anymore, but we know it’s way over 20 million. We’ve translated it into 30 languages and have sent out thousands of DVDs to students and teachers all around the world (we still get dozens of requests each week for the film). And we’ve received thousands of emails since the launch of the original Meatrix in November 2003, and we’re always excited when we get an email that says the person or family has changed their eating habits because of the film.
With regard to a Meatrix III … we don’t have anything scheduled yet. I’m not ruling it out, but if we do create something, it won’t be an online viral film — it will be more of an interactive web experience. What exactly that will be, I’m not sure yet — we’re so busy right now with the other Meatrix films and the success of Sustainable Table and the Eat Well Guide that it might be a little while before anything happens. But we’ll definitely let you know if it does!
Let them eat pie.
Photos: iStockphoto
What’s your favorite meal?
Wow — that’s actually impossible to answer because I like so many different types of food. So I can’t say that I have a favorite meal, but I can say that food made from local, sustainable farms has a taste that industrial food doesn’t. Local, sustainable food even tastes better than industrial organic food shipped thousands of miles.
On our cross-country tour, we were hosted by groups in various cities who often put on events for us — our theme for the tour was “Pie Across America,” so most of our events revolved around pies (sweet, savory, and even pizza). I figure I sampled well over 200 pies on the tour … I’ve never eaten so well in my life, and I still love pie. So, if I had to answer you, right now I would say pie in any form from local, sustainable ingredients is my favorite meal, whether for breakfast, lunch, or dinner!
Second Helpings
Earlier this week, we spoke with sustainable-food advocate Diane Hatz, who was fresh off an eating tour of the United States. Today, Hatz answers reader questions on everything from seafood to the farm bill to the best pie she encountered on her travels — complete with links to the recipes.
What’s Sustainable Table’s take on tropical products that can’t be grown locally in the U.S. — coffee, tea, chocolate, etc.? Should we cut down on these? Is fair trade a sufficient guarantee of environmental and social responsibility?
It’s not really for Sustainable Table to tell people whether or not they should cut down on their consumption of coffee, tea, and other non-local products (though if you’re having 10 cups of coffee a day, you might want to think about it!). But if you are going to buy products like bananas or chocolate, we do urge people to look for the Fair Trade label — Equal Exchange and Rainforest Alliance are two good fair-trade associations. As far as I know, Fair Trade is a good guarantee of environmental and social responsibility. What does “sustainable” food even mean? That’s a great question! Sustainable food doesn’t have an actual literal definition, but we define it as food that is healthy for consumers and animals, does not harm the environment, is humane for workers, respects animals, provides a fair wage for the farmer, and supports and enhances rural communities. We’re increasingly receiving conflicting recommendations from various sources to eat more seafood, basically for health reasons. I don’t see any mention of seafood by your organization. What’s your take on “sustainable” seafood? For example, what are your recommendations on farmed vs. wild? I’m sorry to say, I’m as confused as you! I’m still waiting for a definition of sustainable seafood that I’m comfortable promoting, which is why we haven’t put up information on fish yet. If you ask me about farmed vs. wild, though, I would strongly urge you to eat wild. I’m on a gluten-free diet, and I’m wondering if you can suggest any resources for connecting with local restaurants when I travel. I’m wheat free and use HappyCow when I travel — it’s for vegetarians, but I find that vegetarian restaurants tend to be very receptive to people with food allergies and food problems. Other people I know use Healthy Highways, but you need to buy that book. Beyond shopping at the farmers’ market, joining CSAs, and patronizing restaurants that buy local, what can consumers do as citizens to support local farming and restore some sanity to the food system? Turn the farm bill into a food bill! The National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture does a lot of work with this — check out various actions you can take on their site. I’ve noticed a lot of manufactured organic foods (not fruits and vegetables) have higher amounts of fats in them. Do you know why? Can the fats not be removed and still be organic? Is there a list of healthy snacks that are organic? This gets a little out of my realm of expertise, but all fats aren’t bad. You should look at the amount of saturated fat, and even with saturated fat, we need a certain amount to remain healthy. And a low-fat processed food could be extremely high in sugar, which might have 0 grams of fat but is still converted into fat in your body — and it’s not a good fat. Have you ever noticed that people who struggle with their weight tend to eat the diet cookies and foods that are highly processed, low in fat, but have high amounts of sugar?
What effect do you see Farm Aid having, now that it’s more than 20 years on, and will such a festival continue to be relevant (or even necessary) 20 years hence? First — hello, Kurt! (Kurt hosted us for dinner when we were on tour in Iowa City. His restaurant, Devotay, is a must-do dinner experience when you’re in the area!)
Where did you have the best pie on your cross-country trip? It was a four-way tie! I had a blueberry pie from The Solstice Café in Corvallis, Ore. — the blueberries aren’t cooked, they’re mixed in a berry sauce and then put into the baked pie crust. It was topped with lemon zest and homemade whipped topping and was a taste sensation — the blueberries popped summer when we ate the pie! (Here’s a photo and recipe. I also had a tart cherry pie from Ypsilanti, Mich. — unfortunately I don’t have a recipe, but I didn’t even know Michigan grew cherries, and the pie was amazing. The third pie was an Oyster Mushroom Pie from Jackson, Wyo. (oyster mushrooms, not oysters!) — it was a meal in a pie! Photo and recipe are also found on our tour blog. And the fourth pie was a Very Berry Pie from Marilyn’s Bakery in Hobart, Ind. This was berry pie heaven! The tricky part with this pie is that Barbara, the piemaker (Marilyn’s daughter) knows how to adjust sugar amounts with the sweetness of the berry being used (some crops are sweeter than others), so you might have to play around with this a little if you want to try the recipe.Earlier this week, we spoke with sustainable-food advocate Diane Hatz, who was fresh off an eating tour of the United States. Today, Hatz answers reader questions on everything from seafood to the farm bill to the best pie she encountered on her travels — complete with links to the recipes.
What’s Sustainable Table’s take on tropical products that can’t be grown locally in the U.S. — coffee, tea, chocolate, etc.? Should we cut down on these? Is fair trade a sufficient guarantee of environmental and social responsibility?
Diane Hatz.
It’s not really for Sustainable Table to tell people whether or not they should cut down on their consumption of coffee, tea, and other non-local products (though if you’re having 10 cups of coffee a day, you might want to think about it!). But if you are going to buy products like bananas or chocolate, we do urge people to look for the Fair Trade label — Equal Exchange and Rainforest Alliance are two good fair-trade associations. As far as I know, Fair Trade is a good guarantee of environmental and social responsibility.
What does “sustainable” food even mean?
That’s a great question! Sustainable food doesn’t have an actual literal definition, but we define it as food that is healthy for consumers and animals, does not harm the environment, is humane for workers, respects animals, provides a fair wage for the farmer, and supports and enhances rural communities.
We’re increasingly receiving conflicting recommendations from various sources to eat more seafood, basically for health reasons. I don’t see any mention of seafood by your organization. What’s your take on “sustainable” seafood? For example, what are your recommendations on farmed vs. wild?
I’m sorry to say, I’m as confused as you! I’m still waiting for a definition of sustainable seafood that I’m comfortable promoting, which is why we haven’t put up information on fish yet. If you ask me about farmed vs. wild, though, I would strongly urge you to eat wild.
Snack and Diane
An interview with sustainable-food advocate Diane Hatz
Farmed fish are raised in mainly factory farm operations and create a lot of pollution in the surrounding area and cause a lot of problems for wild fish in the area. (A lot of fish farms are pens stuck in the middle of a lake. They dump antibiotics and pesticides in the fish pens to ward off disease from having so many fish so close together.) And when you’re looking for wild fish, you should look for line-caught wild fish. Using fishing nets causes a lot of problems, including the huge amount of bycatch (other fish caught at the same time that aren’t used) which causes huge amounts of waste and problems with other sea creatures — turtles and dolphins — that can get caught in the nets and drown. There’s also a problem with mercury and pollutants in fish, so you might want to do a little research on where the fish was caught.
I’m on a gluten-free diet, and I’m wondering if you can suggest any resources for connecting with local restaurants when I travel.
I’m wheat free and use HappyCow when I travel — it’s for vegetarians, but I find that vegetarian restaurants tend to be very receptive to people with food allergies and food problems. Other people I know use Healthy Highways, but you need to buy that book.
Beyond shopping at the farmers’ market, joining CSAs, and patronizing restaurants that buy local, what can consumers do as citizens to support local farming and restore some sanity to the food system?
Turn the farm bill into a food bill! The National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture does a lot of work with this — check out various actions you can take on their site.
I’ve noticed a lot of manufactured organic foods (not fruits and vegetables) have higher amounts of fats in them. Do you know why? Can the fats not be removed and still be organic? Is there a list of healthy snacks that are organic?
This gets a little out of my realm of expertise, but all fats aren’t bad. You should look at the amount of saturated fat, and even with saturated fat, we need a certain amount to remain healthy. And a low-fat processed food could be extremely high in sugar, which might have 0 grams of fat but is still converted into fat in your body — and it’s not a good fat. Have you ever noticed that people who struggle with their weight tend to eat the diet cookies and foods that are highly processed, low in fat, but have high amounts of sugar?
I would suggest you cut back on the amount of processed food you eat and combine it with whole foods, like fruits and vegetables. And if you’re going to eat fats, have healthy fats from whole foods: butter (yes, butter!), avocado, olive oil, local sustainable cheese. Eating whole fat foods will make you feel full quicker. The trick is to know the right kind of fats — and when to stop!
What effect do you see Farm Aid having, now that it’s more than 20 years on, and will such a festival continue to be relevant (or even necessary) 20 years hence?
First — hello, Kurt! (Kurt hosted us for dinner when we were on tour in Iowa City. His restaurant, Devotay, is a must-do dinner experience when you’re in the area!)
I would like to think that a Farm Aid concert won’t be necessary 20 years from now, but unfortunately, it might be — but I’d like to think we’ll be having it to raise money to support sustainable food initiatives and to help farmers transition from conventional to sustainable. I think Farm Aid is very effective, and most people probably don’t see or understand all that they do. The money that they raise goes directly to farmers and farm and food organizations who are doing great work to promote small family farms and sustainable food. So even though some people might think of Farm Aid as a concert happening once a year, it’s actually an organization that helps support a lot of local, grassroots groups around the country. And the real change in food is coming from these small, grassroots groups — that’s something we found while crossing the country on the Eat Well Guided Tour.
Make shroom for pie.
Photos: sustainabletable.org
Where did you have the best pie on your cross-country trip?
It was a four-way tie! I had a blueberry pie from The Solstice Café in Corvallis, Ore. — the blueberries aren’t cooked, they’re mixed in a berry sauce and then put into the baked pie crust. It was topped with lemon zest and homemade whipped topping and was a taste sensation — the blueberries popped summer when we ate the pie! (Here’s a photo and recipe. I also had a tart cherry pie from Ypsilanti, Mich. — unfortunately I don’t have a recipe, but I didn’t even know Michigan grew cherries, and the pie was amazing. The third pie was an Oyster Mushroom Pie from Jackson, Wyo. (oyster mushrooms, not oysters!) — it was a meal in a pie! Photo and recipe are also found on our tour blog. And the fourth pie was a Very Berry Pie from Marilyn’s Bakery in Hobart, Ind. This was berry pie heaven! The tricky part with this pie is that Barbara, the piemaker (Marilyn’s daughter) knows how to adjust sugar amounts with the sweetness of the berry being used (some crops are sweeter than others), so you might have to play around with this a little if you want to try the recipe.
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