Question
Daniela Tovar
With your experience in culinary, and amid today’s social, tech and cultural shifts, what values should we, as culinarians, always carry with us?
Answer
That's such a deep question, and I just finished sending an email last night to a friend of mine, a really good friend of mine, who is a powerhouse in the plant-based movement. And one thing that I shared is that we have to remove the elitism that is associated with being plant-powered, plant-based, whatever you want to call it. That we have to come to a meeting ground and start somewhere in the middle rather than thinking that this is the norm. We have to find a norm in this plant-based world as culinarians. Because Patrick, who's my producer, he and I were chatting beforehand about how the-- I'm going to use the word invasion, how the invasion of the GLP-1 has really impacted the way that people choose to eat. And if you go to a grocery store, you'll see on the front label where it will say, "GLP-1 friendly." And somebody who might not be a label reader, because when you're on a GLP-1, you have to consume a certain amount of protein, you might see that and say, "Yippie-okay-ay, look at this," but not be cognizant about the ingredients. So I think you have to get back to basics, think more locally. And not everyone can afford to go to a farmers market, but at my grocery store, there's a Metro rack of vegetables that might be bruised, and I myself buy them because I know that I'll get some extra vitamin C from the peppers I might buy. But I think that we have to make this type of plant-based eating more normal and not the extreme. So I just want to say one more thing to that, Daniella. Nowadays, you can go to a conventional restaurant, and you might go with five of your best friends, and you're the only vegan. But I know that I can go to some restaurants that's going to have plant-based options that I can eat without getting sick from eating them or whatever. So I think that we have to find that commonality and merge those beliefs together. And I know for myself, I've been plant-based for 17 years, and I have seen this huge, gigantic shift where it was from eating dino kale and stripping it and doing this and that, where now you can buy it frozen and see lots of additives in it. So keeping it normal, not making it elite. Those are my values, but I think it's really important.
