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While out for a run this morning, I listened to a panel discussion from the Commonwealth Club about the current state of the Food culture in America. On the panel were a bunch of important Food people, including Alice Waters (renowned chef/founder of Chez Panisse, author, and champion of local, sustainable food sources) and Anya Fernald (Executive Director of Slow Food Nation), and it was moderated by Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation).

I’ll preface these comments by noting that I generally agree with most of the tenets of the entire Slow Food movement, particularly since I started eating more green things and learning about the environmental impact of eating meat. I’m lucky enough to have the option (financially) to shop at places like Whole Foods and I do think it’s a good thing.

That being said, I couldn’t help but chuckle, scoff, and even get annoyed by some of the answers and responses by the panel to a few very fundamental (and logical) questions. For example, the first question of the Q&A section of the discussion was, ‘Is it fair to force chain restaurants to post nutritional information on menus when small, local restaurants (i.e. Chez Panisse) would be exempted (per some ongoing potential legislation in California)?’ and was taken by Schlosser himself. This was a question that I myself had while I was running. While I agree that a lot of these chain restaurants should make clear that a Jumbo Jack is in practice ACTUALLY jumbo to your belt size, is it fair to set a double-standard just because they serve unhealthy food? If we’re talking about accountability, shouldn’t all food service establishments be accountable? Logical question, I thought.

Schlosser’s response was somewhere between righteous and dismissive. Oh, and completely illogical. It went something along the lines of, “Well, chain restaurants don’t make the food on-site, while places like Chez Panisse are buying fresh ingredients and cooking the food daily.” And then everybody clapped. No, seriously. it sounded like most of the crowd applauded an answer like that. Nevermind that the answer was essentially orthogonal to the question (which was, ‘Why should there be a double-standard? Why is the fact that a restaurant ships its food pre-cooked from God-only-knows-where grounds to enforce unique regulations on them?’). By the way, if someone has a legitimate answer to that question, I am actually interested to hear it.

A couple of questions later, Fernald was asked, ‘Is the Slow Food movement elitist? It generally costs more (in money and time) to eat local, sustainable ingredients. Is this really for folks who aren’t rich white people?’ I’ll get to (in my mind) the proper way to answer that question in a few minutes, but I was literally floored (had to stop my run to make sure I was hearing right) by Fernald’s response. She approached the question with a three-pronged answer, along the lines of:

1. The cost thing is perception and is built by the huge marketing budgets of fast food companies.
2. Sometimes Slow Food can cost as little as fast food.
3. People spend hundreds of dollars a year on things like their cell phones. We (they) all need to get used to the idea of paying a little bit more and spending a LOT more time preparing our food.

Let me start by giving some advice to anyone who’s ever in an argument. If your first point is that it’s the enemy’s fault, you’re screwed. If your second and third points then dispute your first point, you are insane. And, if your key point is making a plea to your potential audience that a technology they use 10′s or 100′s of times per day costs a lot and should be discarded for something they currently do not value at all (local food), you’re completely crazy.

These are arguments that work on people who, a) have the money/time to afford that optionality, and b) are skeptical enough to recognize the nuance of TV advertising campaigns. In other words, they are not for the vast majority of this country.

A parallel but completely unrelated movement, the renewable energy industry, has been tackling these same types of questions (‘How do you create a model where your target audience recognizes transparent value?’) in a much more approachable fashion:

It’s better for the environment and it’s more affordable.

Is the technology there yet? Probably not. But they are at least approaching the messaging with a reasonable value proposition. Eric Schmidt went on the same radio program a few weeks ago (audio) with a simple message for other businesses: ‘We’ve moved to renewable energy on our campus and it’s economically cheaper. It costs less. Period.’

Now that is a message that resonates with its target audience.

For business executives thinking about this issue, cost is the ultimate arbiter. It is completely accountable, bears no double standard for ‘trying hard,’ and makes no excuses for itself. And, most of all, it doesn’t ask for people to sacrifice their time for something that costs more and lacks transparent value.

So the question is, then, what message should the Slow Food movement be using? Clearly I don’t think it should be, ‘We cost a little more and take a lot more time, but taste better!’ Try giving that message to a single mother who works two jobs, thinks a Big Mac tastes just fine, and likes the fact that Jack In The Box has a $0.99 menu. Seriously, go try.

No, the message has to be more similar to Alice Waters’ comments on the panel: local, sustainable agriculture is healthier and it’s fun/valuable/didactic to cook – kids will even eat chard if they’re involved in the cooking process. Now try giving that same single mother the message of:

Your children will get Diabetes, heart problems, a host of other medical issues, and probably die earlier if you keep feeding them fast food. Here are the numbers to prove it. Oh, and by the way, this shit (slow food) can taste good.

Now that is a value proposition that is clear and unassuming. No nuance required.

It’s simple. When a competitor competes on price, you can either complain about it or you can deliver the goods on greater value for the cost. You do that by emphasizing the value they get, not by pleading for more of their time.

Slow Food: it tastes good and it won’t kill you like fast food will.

Ship it.

I’ve gotten some random pings from folks lately asking:

• What happened to that crazy lifestyle eating change you were on? Are you still doing that?
• Have any New Year’s Resolutions?

Good questions both. One quick note, I usually do 5 New Year’s Resolutions every year, but I don’t call them that because it sounds like they’re afterthoughts and the word ‘resolution’ now has a loaded connotation of ‘IMPENDING COMPLETE FAILURE COMING MOMENTARILY’.

Instead, I usually call them ‘simplifying principles’ because they’re things I’d really like to actively focus on this year and they’re meant to simplify my life, not add some additional thing I won’t remember to do. Before I get to those…

The Eating Thing

If you’ll remember, last year I attempted (mostly successfully) to undo 26 years of awful eating habits and prepare myself for the distinct eventuality that the next 30 years of my life are going to consist of: 1) working a lot, and 2) a gradually slowing metabolism. Let’s be very clear about this: I know of (maybe) five Asian males over the age of 35 who are not noticeably overweight. That’s it. If you’re Asian and your Dad is not overweight, then I’ll take your word for it and add him to the list, though he’s probably already one of the five.

With that backdrop, and because I often like to pit myself in games of will power against myself, I spent some time reading up on “What does eating healthy really MEAN?” last year and then attempted to live by that for 12 months. The results were largely good and I think the number of meals I strayed was probably less than 30.

This year I’ve made one slight adjustment to the approach, which I don’t think will make a material difference in practice, but I think will make an enormous difference in my personal mental state when driving by an In-n-Out. And that leads me to the five simplifying principles (of course non-work-related):

1. Eat healthy (as defined in 2008), with the exception that for every week in which I work out 3+ times, I get one free meal to eat whatever I want. Hopefully for all parties involved, that will be 52 weeks.
2. Write a short story. This was originally “Write more,” but in the name of setting actionable, measurable principles. Regardless, “Write more” is baked into this.
3. Read and thoughtfully review at least 12 books
4. Visit at least one new foreign country
5. Launch a couple (at least 2) useful, interesting sites

I would have added a sixth and a seventh (“Tailgate at least 10 times” and “Lower the beer to other beverages ratio”), but a) they seemed to work directly against one another, b) the seventh is pretty much covered by my #1, and c) I just really wasn’t ready to commit to seven different principles.

Let’s all have a solid 2009, people.