Alice Waters' Crusade For Better Food

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

(CBS)  Even as a little girl, Waters says she had a keen sense of taste. But what turned her into a cook was going to France in 1965 and eating simple and healthy country food. She had her epiphany.

Back at Berkeley, she was an activist involved in movements: anti-war, free speech, women's rights. But what she really loved was cooking, and feeding her friends. And she still does.

One day last August, she took 60 Minutes to a Mexican food stall in San Francisco where friends of hers were making slow food to go with organic corn and lots of spices.

You realize two things when you travel around with Alice Waters: one is that deep down she loves it when people eat, and two, it is that you can't resist her.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, a Waters disciple, told Stahl, "She has, I think, done more to change our eating habits for the better than anyone in the United States of America."

He agreed that obesity is a huge issue now. "We consume lousy food. This is killing us. I mean it really is. We have a drinking and eating problem in this country, not just in San Francisco. And this whole movement to me is the antidote for that."

Waters talked Newsom into letting her organize a "slow food" festival outside City Hall last September. Growing the slow food movement is one of her passions: she was ecstatic that 85,000 people showed up.

She walked Stahl through the taste pavilions, introducing her to her acolytes: organic cheese merchants and bakers.

The centerpiece of the event was a sprawling, urban victory garden - a real vegetable garden in front of City Hall. Waters called it "the ultimate symbolism."

The garden, Waters' idea, was planted to encourage people to grow their own.

She brought Stahl over to one of her favorite local farmers, John Lagier, who uses only eco-friendly, or as Waters would say, "sustainable" methods. That day he was showing off his specialty grapes, Bronx seedless, which he was selling at $4 a pound.

There's the rub. A common complaint about organic food is that it's expensive.

"We make decisions everyday about what we're going to eat," Waters said. "And some people want to buy Nike shoes - two pairs, and other people want to eat Bronx grapes, and nourish themselves. I pay a little extra, but this is what I want to do."

[unlvdating]

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[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!