THE LAST SUPPER

Former Obama-era White House chef Kass looks at the difficulties that lie ahead in putting food on the table.

Kass allows that he’s a more privileged eater than most: He buys his meat from an organic farm, with a whole chicken costing a whopping $40. “While I love that chicken and believe it tastes better and is better for the planet,” he concedes, “this is not a model that will work to feed the world today.” Given that big agriculture and big business “exert enormous influence over what and how Americans eat,” difficult choices confront the food system, and changing that system will require an overhaul of American culture to favor, for instance, consumption of less meat and more homegrown veggies. It will also require getting food companies to be proactive, including recognizing the central role of big agriculture in a growing cause for food crises: climate change. Positive models help, whether Walmart’s efforts to reduce E. coli in field vegetables or Michelle Obama’s White House food garden. Critical, too, by Kass’s account, is the work that chefs have done and can do to educate the dining public, as they once did with sea bass and swordfish to replenish natural stocks and are now doing with local farm- and garden-to-table menus. “People are more likely to adjust their food choices when they feel emotionally understood, supported, and engaged,” he observes, an aperçu that may not mean much to food stamp recipients or residents of famine-ridden lands in the developing world. For all that, there are some big-picture reforms in the works, including global carbon markets, regenerative agriculture, and climate-adapted seed stocks—and, as Kass notes, “this stuff already exists and is being used on real farms.”

There’s a lot to chew on here, some of it bitter. It’s a good call to action all the same.