Alice Waters and Eric Schlosser

Last night I saw Alice Waters on a panel of speakers moderated by Eric Schlosser. It was a packed event in an old and overly ornate room at the Fairmont to kick off the How We Eat speakers series, presented by the Commonwealth Club. All of which is a precursor to the Labor Day event in San Francisco, Slow Food Nation.

In addition to Alice the panel members were the Executive Director of Slow Food Nation, Anya Fernald, Executive Director for the Center of Public Health Advocacy, Harold Goldstein, and the President and Director of Medical Research at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Bertram Lubin. All strong, knowledgeable speakers.

The primary focus of the evening was how do we feed our children and make real food versus manufactured food available to communities on the edge. Each panelist held a piece of the puzzle towards creating a healthy food system.

Ms. Fernald's answer was making food a higher priority in our lives by spending more time and allocating more resources towards it.

Mr. Goldstein's response was to get politically involved, to incite policy to insure real food and corporate responsibility.

Mr. Lubin's answer was to begin addressing the issue of a healthy diet at the prenatal stage with education as well as allocating our health care dollars to prevention to decrease illness liability.

Eric Schlosser got in some good lines. He's entertainingly quick on his feet and wickedly smart.

But the best line of the evening, of course, came from Alice. It was in response to a question along the lines of, how can we best eat well. She replied loosely, "take some olive oil and a little salt and go into the garden." In that moment, she won me over. I can eat anything with a little olive oil and a good sea salt.

The discussion left a flavor of hope that we are waking up to the health risks of manufactured foods to ourselves, our children and the planet. And that we all have the ability three times a day to make changes towards a healthier system. But there's work to do to accomplish that.

Grab some olive and head to the garden (or the refrigerator produce drawer). And eat well.

The evening was recorded and will be available via audio stream or radio broadcast. I'll include a link when it is.

Edit: Here's a link with video and transcript of the talk!