What began as a whisper in the world of fine dining last week, ended with a clamour on Friday when it became known that James Beard award winning Swiss chef Daniel Humm, a vegan advocate, was parting ways with the famous Claridge’s hotel at the end of the year over its rejection of his vision for an all-vegan menu.
When Chef Humm launched the Mayfair, London restaurant Davies and Brook in 2019 with business partner Will Guidara, his signature dishes still included lavender roasted duck and celery root in pig’s bladder. In Manhattan, at his three Michelin stars restaurant Eleven Madison Park, diners were likely eating those dishes as part of the US$335 per person, seven-course, tasting menu.
When COVID-19 struck and his restaurants closed, Mr Humm threw himself head first into helping out; cooking and distributing free meals to New Yorkers who had lost access to soup kitchens. It was possibly being on the frontline, so to speak, that fully woke him up to food insecurity and how unsustainable food systems are. Eleven Madison Park reopened in January this year as completely vegan and while Chef Humm was widely criticised for the transformation, the wait-list to eat there recently exceeded 15,000 people.
Claridge’s, with its seeming determination not to eschew dishes like caviar and foie gras, may have obliterated its own path to twenty-first cen-tury sustainability, keeping its moneyed guests in the past as well. Given the challenges facing this planet, the faster people become acclimated to the concept of eating to live and let live, the better off we will all be. However, the signs are there that this is unlikely to occur in the near future.
For one thing, although governments around the world have begun to place more emphasis on and give more support to agriculture, food security targets are still lagging. COVID-19 has had a monumental impact on the moves to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals’ global food security target, but it is not com-pletely to blame for this failure. The profit-driven approach to agriculture, which for years has placed nutrition on the backburner, has also succeeded in adding to the damage of the planet. It is circuitous and will remain so because unfor-tunately people are still rejecting the roles they need to play to set things straight.
Nothing has made this more pellucid than this month’s COP26 climate summit, which unfortu-nately failed to address food and food systems. Though it would have been hypocritical to put those items on the agenda when the conference’s menu included meat, fish and dairy, foods that have a high carbon footprint. The irony is that this conference brought together in one place some of the most powerful men and women in the world and presented them with facts outlining how we, collectively as humans, are destroying our own habitat by the way we choose to live. Some of the people most at risk were also able to highlight the clear and present dangers inherent in continuing on the current path; youths upped their pleas against the onset of a gloomy future.
To be clear, no world leader attending the COP26 was hearing any of this for the first time. It had all been preached already — even before the Paris Agreement at the COP21 in that city, which was signed by some 193 countries in 2016. Yet, there was push back on language though agreements were reached, particularly on keeping the key tempera-ture limit of 1.5 celsius.
Sadly missing was the fact that the need to miti-gate climate change also encompasses sustainable agriculture, food processing, packaging, consump-tion and waste disposal. Children know this, so yes, world leaders are also cognisant. This is not a problem to be addressed in the distant future. If everyone does not rein in their excesses now, there will be no future. Of course there is a larger world population to feed today, but a huge part of the problem also has to do with food preferences and the lucrativeness of fulfilling these at a premium.
Today, there are very few places in the world where food seasonality is still recognised and as part of its takeover, big agriculture has been forcing itself on nature: cutting back and burning forests, endangering plant and animal species and damaging the ecosystem; unleashing tonnes of methane into the atmosphere and overfishing the rivers and oceans. Extreme weather shocks are how nature has fought back. It has long been obvious that it is not going to get any better until there is a different approach.
Governments have a duty to put in place policies which reflect the way forward in terms of sustain-ability, productivity and resiliency. Consumers also have their roles to play, which include, but are not limited to adjusting tastes (especially among the wealthy). The maxim should be — don’t demand/ order/purchase/eat it just because you can afford it. There has to be responsibility in consumption.
A new Hulu documentary, “The Next Thing You Eat”, forces viewers to think about these things, while also offering a glimpse into the future of food. It is eye-opening, to say the least. Major food brands, retailers, chefs and influencers have the power to bring about meaningful change that is better for the environment and in the end will redound to the benefit of us all.
