Chef Says You Can Fight Climate Change If You Cook Like Your Mom (Really) Did

(CNN) – There is nothing that is dearer to us than our traditions related to food: what our mother cooks, what our grandmother fed us. That is why being told that what is on our plate is harming the planet can make us feel threatened in the soul.

Science and innovation bring us an enormous number of alternatives to meat, from the rise of Beyond and Impossible to dozens of startups They hope to replace the production of meat of animal origin that demands land and contaminates with proteins fermented in laboratories.

However, chef Camilla Marcus prefers to look to the past to find solutions. Modern diets are made up of “a surplus from the industrial revolution,” he says. “That is not how your mother cooked. This is not how historical cultures cooked. It was more about not wasting anything and being sustainable. Nothing was left on the plate, nothing was reconverted.”

Depending on your age and location, your mom may have depended on frozen meals in front of the TV, but that way of cooking – along with supermarkets that only sell the best factory-farmed cuts of meat and visually perfect produce – is the real deal. insult to the tradition of meals, argues Marcus.

“No one could afford or conceive of a perfectly packaged piece of steak. People didn’t buy things like that. They bought things from their neighbors. They bought from local stores,” he says.

What changes can be incorporated into meals to combat climate change?

After training at the International Culinary Center and working his way into some of the world’s top-rated restaurants, Marcus opened west-bourne in the Soho neighborhood of New York, hoping to be a model of a sustainable restaurant, aware of the Earth and that will not generate waste. “Our target was vegetarian as if by accident, but decidedly healthy,” he says. “I honestly think that we are not going to convince the public to be vegetarian or vegan. I would rather try to get someone to eat a couple of plant-based meals a week or a couple of days a week.”

Marcus’s mother, who grew up in Los Angeles, shopped at local stores: She brought natural snacks for the children from Mrs. Gooch’s (a market later acquired by Whole Foods), used washable napkins, and rinsed the bottles to return to the milkman.

It was only when she came to the East Coast to attend college and cooking school that she realized that her family was old-fashioned in the best of ways. “It was then that the light came on. I had a really unusual childhood and I didn’t realize that people didn’t think like that and didn’t think about how they store things, where they buy, how they cook, what they use, what they throw away,” he said. .

A new report by the European company Tesco and the conservation organization WWF argues that each year humanity wastes 2.5 billion tons of food.

So instead of evangelizing a mass migration to veganism, Marcus hopes that people will start taking small steps to make their diets more sustainable. Carnivores can look for organic grass-fed meat from the so-called “complete butcher” who is committed to generating minimal waste. And if you’re throwing away a lot of broccoli stalks because your kids only eat the top, find something you can do with them, like include them in a smoothie.

“I don’t think our eyes are bigger than our stomachs,” he said of the challenges facing the country. “I think we throw a lot. We don’t know what to do with it (…) and I think that, on the supply side, we throw a lot because we think that the public does not want it and that may or may not be true.”

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If shoppers and diners were happier buying bruised kale or not ordering it out of season, the industry and even legislators would follow suit, he says. However, there has to be more understanding and options first.

Marcus learned a lot on his own. After requiring that his west-bourne staff only use compostable or reusable items and eliminating virtually all food waste, his location was the first to be certified under the TRUE program.

But just when she learned that her restaurant had achieved an even higher sustainability certification, the COVID-19 closure put her off the market and the pandemic’s priorities made the focus no longer on sustainability. “As a person who cares about him climate change and our environment, it was really hard to see single-use plastics come back with some kind of revenge overnight, “he said.

She gave birth during confinement and, separated from her beloved staff, began connecting with other chefs to create the Coalition of Independent Restaurants. At a time when many restaurants face great financial difficulties and poorly designed payment protection programs for that industry, they are making lobby for a Restaurant Revitalization Act to help others avoid having to close their doors.

The change with millennials and Generation Z

Marcus is confident that as the world reopens, his West-Bourne model still has a chance of becoming the norm, as people go out to eat knowing that every bite they consume comes at a cost to the land, the air, the water and weather that is often not reflected in the bill.

“I think the millennials and Gen Z are thinking about it and thinking ‘you know what, I don’t know if I need a steak on the plate tonight. You know, it’s okay, ‘”says Marcus.

“It has obviously been a brutally painful period, but I think hopefully it has catalyzed a real systemic change,” he says.

That change could be to understand that eating well has to do with more than the food itself.

“You choose your favorite places to eat because they make you feel good and you like the atmosphere,” he said, not simply because the price is right and they always deliver on time.

The same could happen with ingredients, he says. Not necessarily (you have to choose) the prettiest or the cheapest – although Marcus argues that policies like subsidies need to change to make good food affordable for everyone – but the ones that make us and the community feel good. in general.

Chefs and restaurants have a role to play, as do the food industry and government, he says.

The importance of small changes

But just as the pandemic has shed new light on food producers and grocery store employees, as well as first responders, there may be new views on food and eating that will persist.

“We should ask ourselves, why is a 10-cent plastic knife equal to a fully compostable and biodegradable one?” Marcus said. “That’s where the challenge begins.”

Due to the massive impact the American food industry has on greenhouse gas emissions, big changes are needed.

But small changes can also have an impact. Marcus recounted, “I tell people to just decide not to use paper towels, just decide, commit to just that thing. I promise you can do it. It’s a lot easier than you think.”