I have always had a very good relationship with food.
I am not sure why, but a lot of my approach is probably due to the central role that food has played in my family. Just the other day, I instinctively ate my son’s leftovers! It came to my mind my Grandma literally gathering with her finger the breadcrumbs on the tablecloth before clearing the table, which was always perfectly set for lunch and dinner.
I was reflecting on the central role food played in my grandparents’ lives who lived through the war. They’d tell me stories about starving as they had no food and how lucky we were not to have to experience that.
My Grandma succeeded in filling her 8 kids bellies with… next to nothing! She would prepare meals with whatever she could find out in the fields surrounding her house: wild chicory and snails. My Grandpa would go hunting and fishing as well as foraging for wild herbs and mushrooms. I remember going with my Grandma to the chicken farm across the street and bartering tomato preserve for eggs!
This childhood experience moulded me into who I am today. I grew up with the economic boom and my father used to force me to eat meat – a status for wealthy people – and that is probably why I did not eat meat for years when I went to live on my own: I hated it!
The way of living with “no waste” was born into my blood and still very strong in my everyday habits.
Throughout many work travels, I have been exposed to populations who constantly struggle to find food and it was natural to ask myself the question, “What we can do as professionals to create or support movements which care about others?”
Food is the strong link among all of us. The luckier, the richer, need to step in and accept the burden of caretakers, not only of the people who are in need but also of the earth we live on.
Sustainability might feel as something distant from our everyday life and we often think that our actions are not essential for a change. In a few words, we often feel we cannot make a difference. But it is not true: all changes, even small ones, can help. In fact, even though I believe that changes from the bottom cannot make the entire difference and that (the myth of) the green consumer is not the only solution to pollution, inequality, and exploitation of certain parts of the globe, I am convinced that every single step taken is one in the right direction.
I always asked myself, as a consumer and as a professional, what I could do to make a difference every day? Little, tiny steps in the right direction help me to live more truly my dream to be a good person and give a deeper sense to my life.
In my restaurant, before putting something on the menu, I focus on one or two ingredients that I have in my mind to work on and then the search starts. I do not choose my ingredient based on the sole location but on who produces it and how.
For the past decade, we have been instructed, almost brainwashed, that closeness is the key but for me it is not the only key to sustainability but one of them. I need to find out who produces it and how. Are pesticides used? Has there been any animal exploitation involved? Are workers earning a fair wage? The logistics are all part of what makes a product sustainable.
For this reason, the project I truly pushed through the Association I am president of, Ambasciatori del Gusto, is a good expression of what I am trying to express. For the past 7 or 8 years, I have been supporting Fabio Stivali, who uses the Trombolotto, an indigenous citrus of the Lazio region. Even people from Lazio barely know the Trombolotto! Supporting him means giving him a chance to survive – I “adopted” his product by buying it and keeping it on the menu constantly.
The only chance we have to defend our biodiversity is to give that particular producer a chance to keep on working, guaranteeing her/him an income. The market laws are brutal, they suffocate small producers as they cannot be competitive compared to products with bigger distribution. The “adopt a producer” campaign has had a lot of success and since the beginning, about a year ago, a lot of other chefs started to adopt small farmers and local producers. This means there is education of the consumer and support of the farmer at the same time.
I hope that everyone is inspired and thinks about what can be done to improve, each in his/her own field, sustainability and, indirectly, biodiversity.
With thanks to Cristina Bowerman. Chef Christina is the only female chef with 1 Michelin star in Rome, the Head Chef at Glass Hostaria in Trastevere, Roma and President of the Italian Association “Ambasciatori del Gusto”.
