Can Americans Eat Locally?
190 Restaurants in 26 States Challenged to Use Only Ingredients from Within a
150-mile Radius
September 26, 2005 — By Bon Appétit Management Company
Palo Alto, CA — Yahoo! Corporation Executive Chef Robert Hart had a dilemma – a
few thousand hungry diners and the threat of no sandwich bread.
“I was stuck without a local source for yeast. So I found local apple cider,
fermented it and made my own sourdough starter,” said Hart. “This is not just an
esoteric exercise – I want to make a terrific meal with what’s available right
here in our backyard.”
Hart is one of 190 chefs participating in the September 29 “Eat Local
Challenge.” Palo Alto-based Bon Appétit Management Company, the national food
service provider which runs all of the restaurants, launched the challenge to
raise awareness about where the food on our plates comes from.
On Eat Local Challenge day, 150,000 diners at corporate, university and museum
restaurants from Seattle to Washington, D.C. can choose to eat a 100 percent
locally grown meal, made entirely of ingredients from within 150 miles of the
kitchen where they are served.
Since Chef Hart couldn’t find a local source for yeast, he would have to make
his own. More broadly, while home cooks can visit farmers’ markets and seek out
producers, what about chefs that cook thousands of meals a day?
The challenge, according to Bon Appétit, goes to the heart of the American diet.
Bon Appétit has been a proponent of sustainably sourced foods since 1999, when
the CEO issued a mandate to buy extensively from local farmers and artisans.
“The average item on an American dinner plate travels 1,500 to 2,000 miles,
leading to loss of flavor in our food and affecting our farmers’ ability to grow
a diversity of crops,” said Fedele Bauccio, CEO of Bon Appétit. “At the height
of harvest season, local foods are now at their peak of flavor. We can all keep
our producers in business by buying from them, ensuring that our local food
supply remains strong.”
His chefs are taking the Eat Local Challenge seriously. In Portland, Oregon, one
chef decided to find a source for local salt. There was none, so he took his
kids to the beach, gathered sea water, boiled it down and made his own salt.
Another chef found himself driving down a country lane in hot pursuit of a wheat
combine to find a source for local wheat.
The Eat Local Challenge highlights the issue of ‘food miles’— the distance food
travels from the farm to the dining table — that environmentalists have
described as the single most damaging factor to food quality and the
environment.
“Our long-distance food habit devours tremendous amounts of oil, reduces food
quality by necessitating the use of chemical preservatives and makes us
vulnerable to accidental or malicious disruptions to the food supply,” said
Brian Halweil, senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, an independent
research organization in Washington, D.C., and author of Eat Here:
Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket. “As a national food
service company, Bon Appétit feeds thousands of people every day. When they take
a stand on eating locally, they send the message to other food companies that
freshness and food safety are top priorities.”
For more about the Eat Local Challenge visit
www.eatlocalchallenge.org.
About Bon Appétit Management Company
Founded in 1987 in San Francisco, Bon Appétit Management Company is an onsite
restaurant company offering full food service management with more than 190
restaurants and cafés in corporations, universities and specialty venues in 26
states. Clients include Yahoo!, the Getty Center and American University. Bon
Appétit is raising awareness of its sustainable sourcing practices through joint
programs with Environmental Defense, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch
and other organizations. To learn more, visit
www.bamco.com/pressroom.
Contact
Michael Strauss
Strauss Communications
michael@strauscom.com
(415) 777-1170 x303