Interview: Heather Sperling, Food Writer

V: Heather, welcome to Verdantic. Thanks for contributing to my blog—I really appreciate this.
HS: Happy to help—it's actually quite appropriate as Earth Day so happens to be my birthday AND I've been posting for PlanetGreen.com AND I love the color green.

V: Perfect. Before we begin, can you tell us a bit about yourself?
HS: Sure, I was an editor of the food website StarChefs.com for over 2 years before moving to Chicago, where I currently write for a number of magazines and websites, including the Discovery Channel's green do-it-yourself website, PlanetGreen.com. I've always been enamored with food and drink, and I think that the green movement is THE movement of our age, so naturally I get quite excited when the two overlap—which, thankfully, happens quite a lot.

V: How has green movement and sustainability affected trends the food industry?
HS: Sustainability has become, without a doubt, one of the biggest trends in the industry. As far as food is concerned, the green movement is very much a grassroots movement, and chefs, restaurateurs, business owners, and food media have played essential parts in spreading the word and setting the example. Writers like Michael Pollan, chefs like Dan Barber and Alice Waters—they set trends through their restaurants and their writing, and help draw the public's attention to the big issues in sustainable eating. Of course, these are only three names in an astoundingly large network of people and organizations who are making the promotion of sustainable food their mission in life. As public awareness has grown, public expectations have grown—and in the food industry this means that diners and consumers are savvier than ever, and expect more from producers, markets, and restaurants. A few years ago, we started hearing about the merits of grass-fed beef and organic milk; today a sustainably minded diner could think: "Sure, your arugula was grown on the roof of your restaurant and you cured this lamb bacon yourself, with no nitrates involved. That's great. But are you composting? Recycling? Serving fair-trade coffee and using eco-friendly cleaning supplies in the kitchen?" In the food world, the ante keeps getting upped.

V: What are some the most innovative concepts and trends that involve sustainable eating and sustainable food?
HS: The Blue Ocean Institute, an organization devoted to sustainable seafood, has a pretty amazing program called FishPhone. You text the name of a fish to a certain number, and you get a text message back with info about whether the fish is a sustainable choice, and if not, what good alternatives are out there. I've never done it, but I love that it exists. And it's a great example of the sustainability movement harnessing fairly innovative technology to make essential information easily accessible. A handful of high-end restaurants across the country (The French Laundry and Per Se) are putting in new water filtration systems that make still and sparkling water in-house. They're eliminate the carbon footprint of their water, while still being able to offer the bottled water that diners want and expect. And I love that restaurants are starting to compost. I was in Seattle a few months ago and over half of the 40-odd restaurants I visited told me that they're composting. Granted, Seattle has always been an uber-green city. But composting—especially in a restaurant—is a bit of a pain, and that's a huge percentage that are making the effort.

V: What is the future of the dining experience, in terms of trends?
HS: That's a big question, man. You mean in terms of sustainability and green stuff, right?

V: You’re totally right. Let’s keep it green.
HS: Sustainability is going to continue to be huge in the restaurant world. Restaurants will keep touting the local and/or sustainable products on their plates, and more chains will follow Chipotle's lead and start serving sustainably raised ingredients. Ordering whole animals and cooking head-to-tail (i.e. using every part of the animal) is a growing trend in restaurant kitchens, and in line with that sustainably minded, artisan approach we're seeing things like homemade charcuterie (made from the trimmings) popping up across the country. In a way, this part of the future of the dining experience is actually quite historical. Ordering a whole pig, breaking it down in-house, curing the jowl to make guanciale, using the fat back for seasoning, turning the head into headcheese—these acts borrow from culinary traditions that are hundreds of years old. Today they're gaining momentum, and are certainly part of the future of many American restaurants.

V: In what ways might energy and transportation affect our food?
HS: In the past year, we watched the prices of eggs, flour, and milk rise as the price of gas rose. The average cost of a slice of New York pizza rose by some crazy amount, and my favorite morning glory muffin at the greenmarket went up 50 cents. This is one basic way that transportation affects our food: when transportation costs fluctuate, food costs fluctuate too. And of course there's the issue of the carbon footprint. Industrial food production has a wildly huge carbon footprint, from factories that process food to the energy that goes into massive cow feedlots (which produce insane amounts of methane gas, by the way. Cow farts are astoundingly bad for the atmosphere).

V: How feasible is the locavore diet and urban farming movement?
HS: It's certainly possible to exist off a diet of predominantly local foods, though some places— like San Francisco and New York—certainly make it easier than others. But it can absolutely be done, especially if you make reasonable exceptions and allow yourself California olive oil or non-local citrus. There are many that would say this is anathema to the true locavore spirit, but I say it's just realistic. There's a good amount of info, support, and interest out there. For her book "Animal Vegetable Miracle" Barbara Kingsolver, and her family, spent a year eating only local foods. The Eat Local Challenge is a network of people and blogs who participated in a challenge to go locavore for a period of time in 2008. As for urban farming, I think it's excellent and essential on a social level—especially when it takes the form of school gardens or community-focused gardens. The Obamas' decision to grow food at the White House is certainly an exciting development. Hell, even people growing a few herbs in a container on a stoop is a step in the right direction, because it means that we're increasingly aware of the quality of our food, and where it comes from. I recently read that 43 million Americans plan to grow vegetables at home this year—7 million more than in 2008. That's huge!

V: What can the FDA or USDA do to help shape sustainable and organic foods?
HS: The USDA has set standards for organic certification (through an organization called the National Organic Standards Board), but they're widely considered to be faulty--or at least less stringent than they could or should be. "Organic" began as a counter-culture movement (counter to industrial agriculture) and grew rapidly in popularity in the last decade. When the government stepped in and regulated "organic," many of the existing practitioners and followers felt that the official standards were too lax, with too many loopholes. But ultimately the government regulation is an undeniably positive first step, and has done wonders for spurring consumer consciousness of organics. There is currently no FDA/UDSA certification for sustainability, but there are a number of NGOs that are totally focused on the subject. There are some great independent organizations dealing with sustainable seafood (which is nearly impossible to classify as organic, because most seafood is wild-caught, and even if its farm-raised, often the feed is made of wild-caught fish), like the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program, the Seafood Choices Alliance, and the Blue Ocean Institute. The Cool Foods Campaign is devoted to spreading the word about the relationship between food and global warming and promoting eco-friendly, low-carbon-footprint foods. The Green Restaurant Association helps restaurants operate in a more sustainable way. Their certification process has been criticized as being too easy as well, but it's a start! The FDA and USDA have some hefty issues on their plates, what with the recent food safety debacles and the increasing problems with industrial agriculture. For now I think it's going to continue to be NGOs, chefs, writers and activists who really spread the word about sustainability. I should also mention that there are third party sustainable certification: Protected Harvest and Food Alliance are two major organizations that are providing sustainability certification to producers, stores, and restaurants.

V: Thanks again for your help. This content and your expertise are a great addition to my blog.
HS: The blog looks good, and I love that you reference that the A's happened to win the World Series in 1989 before launching into a remembrance of the Exxon Valdez spill. Nice personal touch.

V: Thanks for reading. Happy birthday on Earth Day!