Alice Waters' “Slow Food” Pitch Goes National

"Slow Food" matron fights uphill battle to change America's ways

Alice Waters, founder of Berkeley's famed Chez Panisse restaurant, appeared last night on 60 Minutes with Leslie Stahl to discuss her devotion to "slow food."

The "slow food" movement is presented as an alternative to the fast food culture that dominates in America.

"People have become aware that the way that we've been eating is making us sick," she told camera crews at a press event surround the installation of a garden outside San Francisco's City Hall last year.

While eating only fresh, organically-grown, locally-sourced ingredients is a fantastic ideal, it remains just that -- an ideal. And for many, an unattainable one.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, a former restaurateur himself, praised Waters for changing the way America eats.

After all, how many of us will be able to replace the microwave oven in our kitchen with a roaring fireplace like the one Waters has?

Yet for all the credit Waters gets as a "revolutionary," her ideas aren't exactly original.

After all, she readily admits she was originally inspired by a trip to France where decent food is the norm and not the exception.

While here in the Bay Area it hasn't been hard to convince people to be more like the French, good luck convincing the rest of America.

Jackson West has scrambled sustainably raised eggs from East Palo Alto in his microwave, so there.

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