Food Pioneer

Today, most grocery stores carry a variety of organic foods. Restaurant menus tout dishes that contain local ingredients. And many towns have their own farmer’s markets. But these food trends were unheard of in 1971, when chef Alice Waters opened the restaurant Chez Panisse in a little house in Berkeley, California. It served only fresh, seasonal food from local farms. At the time, Waters had no idea that the restaurant’s model would serve as the basis for a culinary revolution, today known as the farm-to-table movement.

Over the past 40 years, Waters has inspired hundreds of chefs to use locally sourced ingredients and encouraged a wider audience to eat organic. She has also worked to bring these ideas into U.S. schools with her Edible Schoolyard Project. This nonprofit organization helps schools set up “garden classrooms” where students grow, harvest, cook, and eat their own food. Along the way, they learn what it means to eat more healthfully and how doing so can help the environment. Science World spoke with Waters to find out more.

In the 1970s, the big food craze was frozen microwavable dinners. The packaged meals had things like rubbery turkey, gummy mashed potatoes, and gray mushy peas.

I spent some time studying abroad in France while I was enrolled as a college student at the University of California, Berkeley. There, I got used to eating fresh foods. One of my favorite things was bread hot from the oven smeared with apricot jam made with fruit from a nearby farm. I wanted people to eat like that when I got back home instead of eating processed foods.

In 1997, a Berkeley newspaper interviewed me about food culture. In the article, I was quoted complaining about the food program at a local school, named Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. It seemed like nobody cared about the meals being served to the students. The principal called me up, but he wasn’t mad. He asked me to help.

The school had an acre of empty land, and as I walked it, I got an idea. I thought it could have a garden that would also serve as a classroom. Kids could learn about the biology of plants by actually growing them. They could eat the foods of other countries while they’re learning about the history of those places. The principal agreed to try it out, and that’s how the project began. Today, the Edible Schoolyard Project has grown to include more than 5,500 kitchen and garden programs worldwide.

There are vegetable gardens that change with the season, olive trees, and an ancient oak where everyone gathers at the beginning of class. There are chickens and ducks that lay every color of egg. There’s a kitchen classroom with stovetops, sinks, and a dishwashing area. We also have a wood-burning oven where the students learn to roast vegetables and bake pizza. It always smells like good things cooking—kids never want to miss these classes, which are integrated into the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade science and history curriculums.