Alice Waters' Crusade For Better Food

Lesley Stahl Profiles The Outspoken, And Sometimes Controversial California Food Activist

(CBS)  This story was first published on March 15, 2009. It was updated on June 10, 2009.

When it comes to food, Alice Waters is a legend. At age 65, she has done more to change how we Americans eat, cook and think about food than anyone since Julia Child.

Waters was only 27 years old in 1971 when she opened her French bistro Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., today considered one of the finest restaurants not just in the United States but in the world.

Waters has produced eight cookbooks, but she's more famous as the mother of a movement that preaches about fresh food grown in a way that's good for the environment. The movement, now called "slow food," is a healthy alternative to "fast food."

You might think this appeals only to the Prius-driving, latte-sipping upper crust, but Waters' ideas have gone mainstream, as 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl found out when this story first aired in March.

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It all started at Waters' culinary temple, Chez Panisse. She still shows up almost every day, as she has for the last 37 years, to oversee the cooking with her exquisite, infallible taste buds.

It's not just the cooking that has made her famous: it's the ingredients. She was one of the first to serve antibiotic and hormone free meats and insist on fresh, organic, locally-grown fruits and vegetables.

"You started a revolution in food. How we think about food. How we cook food. But do you think of yourself as a revolutionary?" Stahl asked Waters.

"I guess I do now, but when I started Chez Panisse I wasn't thinking of a philosophy about organic and sustainable. I just was looking for flavor," Waters replied.

It's flavor that comes from serving only seasonal food, one of her hallmarks; say "frozen" and Alice Waters shudders. Because all her food has to be fresh, she buys only from local ranchers, fishermen and farmers.

People who meet Waters are struck by how gentle and dreamy she seems to be, and they wonder how someone like that became so successful. Truth is, Alice Waters is a steamroller, relentlessly going after what she wants. And now she wants everyone to cook the way she does. And that has put her in the spotlight

"People have become aware that way that we've been eating is making us sick," she said.

She has become the leader of a movement to change how we eat. And she's getting traction. Now you can go to your neighborhood grocery store - even Wal-Mart - and buy organic. But in the process, she's become a target.

"People say Alice Waters is self-righteous and elitist. And these are words I've heard over and over," Stahl pointed out.

"I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist," Waters argued.

[zenmonkman]

Ah yes, the aristocratic flare of frying an egg in your personal hearth poured over freshly cut tomatoes, lettuce and olive oil ... yes, let the little people eat cake because expensive, small portioned food with little relevance to today's economic perspective is soooooo relevant ... Lesley you got this one wrong.

[bestwishesmarie]

she is an interesting woman, who has done much good, often with no thought of profit (in general). and i think it is great that she has held to her ideals and some compensation (financial) is starting to come.

[Diniz1980]

The thing is that fresh natural food should be considered standard/ normal for and the distinction should be made to identify the industrial GM hodgepodge for what it is, fake food. Better to cut back on super soft toilet paper and preety much everything else than to settle for that deadly rubbish, besides if you plant your own garden it is even better and costs a lot less than the industrial sludge.

[Diniz1980]

The thing is that fresh natural food should be considered standard/ normal for and the distinction should be made to identify the industrial GM hodgepodge for what it is, fake food. Better to cut back on super soft toilet paper and preety much everything else than to settle for that deadly rubbish.

[mjinaz]

Organic food is SO POTENT, and valuable (price included) that you tend to use it wisely, making up the difference by cutting back on other things you spend your money on. (My favorite analogy is the choice to eat a spinach salad instead of using iceburg lettuce. That's more POTENT).

You use less of it, in a way. There is a tendency to cut back on meat and eat a lot more produce. DO YOU KNOW THAT ORGANIC MEAT AND POULTRY IS ALWAYS "FREE RANGE" TOO. If you choose to eat meat and poultry, ORGANIC is more humane than the horrific mistreatment of many farm animals, including DAIRY COWS. Organic dairy products, poultry and meat is starting to appear in the regular grocery chains, and those prices are coming down.

Also, CUT BACK ON EATING OUT. If I'm out and about in my neighborhood, I drive home to fix something to eat and go back out. If I had to, I'd take my food to work, or find healthy options near where I would work.

The quality and flavor is amazing, AND you will
SAVE ON MEDICAL BILLS because of MUCH BETTER HEALTH, and not so easly become DISEASED.

It amazes me to watch many people waste their money, or splurg on so many other things, and then, some are, so extremely cheap about groceries.

If we, the public, would make those healthy choices and reject the junk food, the prices would come down.

And come on, about Alice Water's egg cooking over her firepit, that was HER kitchen. I hardly expected that she and Leslie Stahl were suggesting that everyone should get a firepit, and obviously most of us do not have a place to grow our own.

This was a beautiful story, and inspiring for people to open their minds to CHANGE for the better. Change takes a transition, and, although the story didn't go into it in much detail, apparently, Ms. Waters has been an advocate for this, regardless of whether you've heard of her, or not. Thank you to Whole Foods, Trader Joe's (ECONOMICAL PRICING), and even our regular grocery chains, who have positively affected this change. Find the health food stores with the BARGAINS. They're out there.

Keep making the HEALTHY CHOICES, and THE PRICES WILL COME DOWN as well as your medical expenses, from care to prescriptions.

I'm tired of overly analytical stories comparing healthy foods vs. junk food, and thought it was great to focus on the POSITIVE expose' of the inspiring Alice Waters.

Next, I'd like to see tobacco farming transition to more herbals for economical fresh spices, and for herbal health supplements, more natural toiletries, etc.

IT'S AN EASIER TRANSITION THAN YOU THINK WHEN YOU CARE TO SWITCH YOUR PRIORITIES IN YOUR SPENDING (on other things).

[FLangheinrich]

Alice Waters is clearly a "let them eat cake" kind of a person. I have a six figure income but won't pay $4 a pound for pathetic little grapes like she was helping to sell. I have been to her exceptional restaurant but it is clearly not the food for the masses she says she wants to feed us. She is really arguing that we should let millions die so that we can all grow less food in a way acceptable to her. Also, how much hydrocarbon volume did she send into the air to cook those two eggs? Finally, it's nice that the White House will have an organic garden, but bet that the peasants will be doing most of the work.

[organic4all]

Apparently alot of people didn't understand this story. Unless we all get on the same page as a nation and demand organic foods we will never have a mass opportunity to eat organically. What this nation is doing to our food supply is appalling. Instead of dumping on Alice Waters do a little research online. Find out the meaning of GMO foods, find out what happens when cows are given antibiotics and hormones. This type of behavior is putting farms out of business. American food has turned into big business. When I was growing up I don't remember food ever getting recalled. People dying from eating beef, peanut butter or spinach. Please research online and educate yourself before throwing stones at Alice Waters. By the way, I'm a conservative woman with these opinions, just in case anyone is judging.

[spyknot]

Please reconsider your statement that Alice Walker has done more to change the way we eat than anyone, ...

Dr. Vandana Shiva, former nuclear physicist, environmentalist, ecologist, author, speaker, and winner of the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize), has done more.

[noragene]

Leslie, come on, you were looking at Alice like she was a freak, like she was the only person in the world who actually cooked, and the only person in America who did not have a mircrowave oven! I work a 40 hour week and travel to and from work about an hour a day, and manage to go home, feed the dogs, put the horses up and feed them, feed the wild deer, water the garden and then cook dinner for my husband and myself, with fresh veggies that are mostly organic or grown locally. It is the price you pay for being healthy, give up your big S.U.V's and start eating right to save this planet or the planet will evict us from inhabiting it. Everyone should start out making small changes to their eating habits and go from there, I'm telling you it will work.
Good Luck!

[Paul Roden]

Bravo, Alice Waters and "60 Minutes". If we eat fresh fruit,vegetables, meat, chicken and pork in season, ther is less need for chemicals to grow and transport them. Think of all the people we could put to work regionally as well in preserved open space in our cities and towns, growing, transporting and selling healthy food with less of a carbon foot print. This is a win-win program for our health, our wealth and our environment. We need more success stories like this one. The West Coast has Alice Waters, but on the East Coast, in Philadelphia, PA we have Judy Wick, of the White Dog Cafe, a nice counterpart to Alice Waters.

[jrancona]

The goal isn't to get schools to grow all of their own food - there's neither the time nor the space for that to be practical. One of the goal is to properly orient kids to make good choices about food and get them acquainted with preparing food.

The other goal is educate everyone - which, judging from the comments is clearly needed.

If you stop and think - what does Alice Waters have to gain by making organic food more popular? Presumably both her and her clientele aren't effected by the cost and pushing organics to the mass market diminishes any perceived "exclusivity". Clearly her advocacy is not for her own personal gain but rather for basic social justice.

as for the comment about Mr. Norman Borlaug. Great work in it's time but the evidence is pretty well documented that a lot of those techniques - genetic manipulation and synthetic fertilizers have adverse effects. Pretty easy to dismiss the links to cancer when you're in bed with the chemical companies.

[tiredofdullards]

I wonder why Leslie thought that dicing some tomatoes and veggies and cooking in olive oil was so esoteric. People eat every day, so its not such a wild idea that everyone should know something about cooking. Lots of people have scrapped their microwaves, too.

[droll90]

Broadcasting this piece of nonsense once was bad enough, but why twice? Nothing of significance was added. How about a segment from someone with a different view, like Norman Borlaug? From now on I'm turning on Dateline on Sunday evening.
Leslie called her a steamroller--and a pudgy one at that I might add!

[1averageguy]

Just a quick follow up to rusty's post - though that may work (schools growing their own "organic" food) for feeding the students for some schools, it most likely wouldn't for most schools in the US. First - organic farming can be very labor intensive - where are the students going to get that kind of time during an already very busy school day and life? Second - where would the schools get the land? Many schools in suburban/urban areas have limited space as it is, and some have hardly any open space available. Third - and this is related to number 2 - do you know how much land and how much it would take to feed all students in a school every day? Not the space, time, or practicality to it. Schools would be better off getting "fresh" or "fresh/frozen" food from any wholesale source that is cheap with a minimum standard of quality - and "organic" not being a requirement - , and push healthy choices in their selections, whether it be "organic" or not. The health issues among children are more related to general food choices ("junk food" vs "good/wholesome" food choices) and lack of exercise rather than organic vs non-organic. And as an Extension Director had posted earlier somewhere in all the comments, Extension nationallly has been teaching kids about food production and healthy eating for many years. 15 years ago I was in the schools as an Extension agent teaching kids about healthy food choices and food preperations (where they ....wow....actually prepared and tried new foods and liked them - and...surprise...it wasn't organic!) AND proper food HANDLING techniques (cause I hate to break the scoop, but "organic" , if not handled properly, has potential to be harmful also!) ..... so - it isn't anything new. .

[jrancona]

Wake up folks! You've been drinking the coolade for so long you've forgot that it's synthetic!

Instead of criticizing Alice Waters ( and many others) for advocating the benefits organic and "clean, un processed foods" as being elitist you should be screaming at the food industry and the FDA for permitting and promoting the sale of low grade food.

It's true that the ambition was to increase food production however the reality is that many of those measures have had significant adverse effects on us, the general population that consumes that food. In the US, beef is pumped up on hormones - the results of which can be seen in girls developing into women at age 13. The use of antibiotics is so prevalent that when we have to take them for an ailment we and what we're treating have both become resistant to the antibiotics effect. Pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers all reduce the nutritional content of fruits and vegetables as well as bring about a host of reactions including allergies, asthma, attention deficit syndrome, and a variety of cognitive disfunctions.

Research conducted in the past few years has shown the advantages of organic and natural produce and meats including higher nutritional content.

Why do you think we're the most obese nation on earth? as a population we eat junk

In Europe, where hormones not used in beef production and where corn isn't the major feed many of the health problems we face here in the US occur at a much lower rate - diabetes, cholesterol and fat related issues.

Again, wake up! What we think is the great American food pantry is really low grade dog food. Don't get mad at the people who are trying to make things better for everyone and hold the large agribusinesses accountable for their quest for profitability.

- a 3rd generation supermarket owner



- and many others including many independent nutritional scientists advocate which is simply eating wholesome, unprocessed foods

[rustyH20]

I loved the segment on Alice Waters and wanted to comment on Lesley Stahl's remark about it not being feasible to have organic food in schools. Wouldn't it save money if the schools grew their own food? The gym class could plant and tend a large garden (gardening is great exercise), the Home Ec class could prepare the food and serve it in the cafeteria. They could start during the growing season and can and freeze (for class credit) what couldn't be eaten immediately. Maybe they could even sell some of their bounty at a local farmer's market to buy seeds for the next year. Not only would the students eat healthier foods, they would hand down their knowledge to the next generation. To paraphrase an old saying: "Give a man vegetables and he'll eat healthy for a day. Teach a man to garden and he'll eat healthy for a lifetime." Isn't it time we got back to basics?

[hopeac]

This morning I had breakfast a la Alice Waters. An egg frittata made with last night's roasted asparagus and well, fake, tomatoes. My toast was from the grocery store too, although it was whole grain. It was good, and I only barely thought of the kids running off to school at 6:30AM with pop-tarts in hand!

[sparaxis]

Alice Waters is a multi-millionaire. It is EASY for her to eat all of the right stuff. It is easy for Alice Waters to grow her own vegetables, she has the employees, the land and the income to eat healthy. She and Michelle Obama can easily have healthy food...they can afford it. The rest of us live in the real world!

Start talking about something that could help real people.

[contraryjim]

Pretentious ecologic BS - It is a great marketing strategy. Didn't PT Barnum have a saying...about a sucker born every minute. Even changed the meaning of the word - organic. Oil (petroleum) is organic in it's true sense & it can be fresh and natural.

[ordQ]

Damn it, I'm tired of these rich, pampered, white ladies trying to tell people whats best for them....if Alice is so into people eatting healty, I wonder is she ever opens the doors of her restaraunt, or lowers the prices on her menu to accommodate poor folk in her city? Did anyone else notice the total lack of colored people, except for the students that work in the garden? I mean even during the Slow Food Fest., there were hardly any people of color. Also, what major American city doesn't have a homeless population, where were they during this Fest.? Alice does not recognize or care about the difficlties of citizens to feed, clothe and house themselves and their families.

I live in Downtown L.A., and see poor people growing their food, in East L.A. and Compton because they have too. Except when government decides that teh land cold be put to better use and find ways to take the garden away from citizens.

Alice, if you care so much, how about using some of the money you get from your rich customers to buy plots of land in poor communities, and help start low-cost community gardens, which could provide employment oppotunitied while providing average people the opportunity to eat healthy.

I agree with the commentor that stated that this is just another attempt of the media promoting a lifestyle that just isn't feaseable for most people.