num_pages: 208
description: From chef and food activist Alice Waters an impassioned plea for a radical reconsideration of the way each and every one of us cooks and eatsIn We Are What We Eat  Alice Waters urges us to take up the mantle of slow food culture the philosophy at the core of her lifes work. When Waters first opened Chez Panisse in 1971 she did so with the intention of feeding people good food during a time of political turmoil. Customers responded to the locally sourced organic ingredients to the dishes made by hand and to the welcoming hospitality that infused the small spacehuman qualities that were disappearing from a country increasingly seduced by takeout frozen dinners and prepackaged ingredients. Waters came to see that the phenomenon of fast food culture which prioritized cheapness availability and speed was not only ruining our health but also dehumanizing the ways we live and relate to one another. Over years of working with regional farmers Waters and her partners learned how geography and seasonal fluctuations affect the ingredients on the menu as well as about the dangers of pesticides the plight of fieldworkers and the social economic and environmental threats posed by industrial farming and food distribution. So many of the serious problems we face in the world todayfrom illness to social unrest to economic disparity and environmental degradationare all at their core connected to food. Fortunately there is an antidote. Waters argues that by eating in a slow food way each of uslike the community around her restaurantcan be empowered to prioritize and nurture a different kind of culture one that champions values such as biodiversity seasonality stewardship and pleasure in work. This is a declaration of action against fast food values and a working theory about what we can do to change the course. As Waters makes clear every decision we make about what we put in our mouths affects not only our bodies but also the world at largeour families our communities and our environment. We have the power to choose what we eat and we have the potential for individual and global transformationsimply by shifting our relationship to food. All it takes is a taste. 
language: English
title: We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto
publisher: Penguin Press