The Commander in Chef
Until recently, Michelle Obama had carried out a seamless effort to get Americans to think about eating locally grown foods. By planting an organic vegetable garden at the White House and inviting schoolchildren to help sow the seeds (metaphor intended, surely), she made a bold statement: I’m going to eat in a healthful way and so should you. Consuming locally grown foods could mitigate problems like childhood obesity and the environmental harm caused by agribusiness. And Mrs. Obama — as a popular first lady with two children and roots in the working class — is the right person to lead the charge.
However, when The Washington Post asked Mrs. Obama for her favorite recipe, she replied, “You know, cooking isn’t one of my huge things.” And last month, when a boy who was visiting the White House asked her if she liked to cook, she replied: “I don’t miss cooking. I’m just fine with other people cooking.” Though delivered lightheartedly, and by someone with a very busy schedule, the message was unmistakable: everyday cooking is a chore.
Both times Mrs. Obama missed a great opportunity to get people talking about a crucial yet neglected aspect of the food discussion: cooking. Because terrific local ingredients aren’t much use if people are cooking less and less; cooking is to gardening what parenting is to childbirth. Research by the NPD Group showed that Americans ate takeout meals an average of 125 times a year in 2008, up from 72 a year in 1983. And a recent U.C.L.A. study of 32 working families found that the subjects viewed cooking from scratch as a kind of rarefied hobby.
This should come as no surprise. For most of the last century, Americans have been told repeatedly that cooking is a time-consuming drag. Companies like Kraft and General Foods promoted mix-and-eat macaroni and cheese, rice with mix-in flavor pouches and instant pudding. Pillsbury, the flour maker, became Pillsbury the biscuit, pie and cookie dough maker: baking just by turning on the oven. According to a 2008 NPD study, of all supper entrees “cooked” at home, just 58 percent were prepared with raw ingredients.
The twist, of course, is that convenience foods save neither money nor time. As Marion Nestle pointed out in her 2006 book “What to Eat,” prewashed romaine hearts cost at least $1.50 a pound more than romaine heads. And the 2006 U.C.L.A. study found that families saved little or no cooking time when they built their meals around frozen entrees and jarred pasta sauce.
As we lost our skills at the stove, we also lost something less tangible but no less important: the opportunity to spend time together in the kitchen, talking and cooking. Similarly, we gave up the chance to improve our children’s eating habits by example. Studies by Harvard Medical School and the University of Minnesota show that children in families that ate together consumed more fruits and vegetables, as well as less fat and fewer snacks.
Which is why Mrs. Obama might want to expand her food message to include cooking. Just as she highlighted American fashion by wearing the clothes of young designers, she could call attention to cooking by bringing America’s talented young chefs to the White House for a food summit meeting. Then she could turn them into a national task force, asking them to reach out in their communities and give free cooking lessons to the next generation of cooks and eaters. (Her involvement might also focus the energies of her husband’s cabinet — his secretaries of agriculture, education and health, say — to embrace the cause.)
Of course, a cooking summit meeting alone is not going to change long-established habits. Mrs. Obama needs to keep the pot boiling. She could, for instance, take one of the White House chefs on the road, working the morning and talk show circuit as the president and his staff do. She could discuss her initiative while the chef showed viewers how to cook produce harvested from the White House garden. They could demonstrate that to feed a family well, all you need to know how to do is boil water, roast and season, three speedy skills that can be applied to almost any food from potatoes to salmon. Getting people to buy local ingredients is a relatively simple matter of changing purchasing behavior; getting them to cook will require a role model who really seems to mean it.
And it wouldn’t be surprising if, with a little exposure to the kitchen, Mrs. Obama took to cooking herself. Her progress could be our progress. After all, great cooking involves a blend of curiosity, determination and style, all traits she possesses. And with those arms, she could out-whisk anyone.*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***
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