The fabulous Simran Sethi asked me and a bunch of other food types to comment about trust in the food system. She'll be speaking about this topic at the James Beard System on Our Plates Conference.
Here is what I wrote:
Trust is blind.
Trust is intimate.
I think we've forgotten this in the food system relationships chefs must forge with the producers, vendors, purveyors and farmers.
We must be highly aware that the customer comes to us with the utmost trust thatthey can put food that we cook, manipulate, into their bodies and all be well.
In a world where toxic Round-Up residue covers so much of our food in mass cultivated produce and most of our wheat, food effects our health on a daily basis. Sadly, our trust has fallen into the wrong hands.
The trust should lay in the cook who searches out the farmer, the baker, the vendor with the same values. Trust must be earned, cultivated.
The food/health epidemic has shown us that transparency is key to both taking care of ourselves, of the earth.