The Epitome of Faulty American Dining

In the last decade a movement called “Farm to Table” has disseminated across America and planted its roots in the fine dining sphere. “Farm to Table” is a tagline for restaurants that attempt to source their ingredients from local farms or vendors. This is an undoubtedly more sustainable mechanism of feeding people because it funds and credits the fishers and farmers who do all the work, and additionally provides a more healthy diet to the consumer.

So what is the problem with farm to table? These hot buzzwords including organic, fresh, artisan, local, etc. have begun to circulate frequently through advertising, signage and the general media. There is nothing wrong with this as long as the product is true to its menu title. However, it is often not.

On Climate Action Day, my father Evan Mallett was invited to do a cooking class. He helped the students prepare cod and lamb dishes while preaching about the importance of sourcing our food from local outlets. My parents have worked hard for nine years to cultivate a restaurant establishment that does just this. By living true to the vow of valuing real and well propagated ingredients in his cooking, the popularity of food locality has seen a sharp increase, especially in the Portsmouth area where the restaurant is located. He is someone who has truly met the quota of ingredient quality that the restaurant advertises, yet it has come to my attention through my father’s lesson that this is actually vastly uncommon.

The title of “local” or “organic” has become more sought out by restauranteurs and fine diners, but the truth is that not all locations (cities in particular) have developed enough to accommodate a sustainable farming landscape as easily as more rural destinations. This creates a problem because restaurants want to market themselves in this highly modernized fashion framed around consumer health, but the farming establishments either do not have a magnitude of crop to offer, or the crop is priced too high for restaurants to risk purchasing.

This has resulted in the outbreak of restaurants falsely advertising themselves as “organic” or “local,” while the food on the plate does not fit its promised origins. It is a crime beyond what the USDA condemns, a widespread web of deceits that enraptures the aesthetic taste of customers, but is just a blatant trick.

A study was done in December of 2015 where a restaurateur visited a handful of dining destinations in the greater Tampa Bay area that marketed themselves under a variety of these taglines. For example, a popular spot in town was called Boca. It claimed on its exterior that it sourced USDA certified organic ingredients from local purveyors. The restaurateur proceeded to collect information about the farm they were getting those ingredients from, which he later discovered had never done business with Boca. He continued to travel across the city and unearthed a handful of similar scenarios.

He published his report which was promptly picked up by the New York Times, and entitled the project “Farm to Fable,” appropriately.

False labelling is a hot button issue which has been debated since the rise in concern about the presence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in many manufactured food products. Power will be in the people’s hands when we understand the food that we are eating, and the current state of American dining does not support this. It is essential that this conversation now extends further than GMOs. People should always be mindful of the soil where their food has grown, as it greatly determines its authenticity.

How can the customer ensure the reality of their food’s origins? It is simple: ask questions. Inquire with your server and make them feel uncomfortable until you have gained suitable information about where it came from.

The truth is, good food is hard to find. We wish there was more of it to go around, but it may well be that the price of groceries from the farmers market is simply not docile to the average budget. This raises the question, can the fiscal state of the world ever support the distribution of real, down to earth cuisine without underpaying its suppliers? If it can, it’s about time McDonald’s takes a hike. But if it cannot, we need to stop faking its availability.

I do not suggest that the farm to table movement be abolished in order to solve these distributed lies. I of all people see clearly the importance of reestablishing a more sound food system that supports all steps of delivering food to the customer’s plate. It is important that we know what we are feeding our bodies, and if you are what you eat, then we are lies too. It is a shame when a good name is abused, because it devalues how crucial it was when it was true.