Transcriber: Jenny Lam-Chowdhury Reviewer: Elisabeth Buffard
Hi!
I'm Julia Ehrhardt and I'm not a genius.
I haven't invented anything, designed anything,
or ever run anything that's ever won anything.
I've never watched a TED talk
and I don't use PowerPoint when I give lectures.
So, some of you are probably thinking right about now,
"Hey, 911, got to report a TED emergency,
we gotta get our speaker into this century
before she hurts herself or others."
Fear not, it's going to be OK.
If I could get through the first 30 years of my life without PowerPoint,
you can get through the next 18 minutes without it.
I'm just going to stand here and I'm going to read from my notes.
The 'T' in TED stands for technology
and today I'm going to talk to you about
one of the world's oldest technologies,
and that technology is cooking,
more specifically, is cooking from scratch.
I cook from scratch all the time.
I love to do it and I'm sure many of you out there do too.
But I'm also sure that there are many more of you out there
who really aren't comfortable cooking food that don't come in cans,
or that you don't find in the freezer section of the supermarket,
or that you don't make in the microwave.
There's a difference between cooking something and reheating it.
As you've probably guessed in the short time I've been talking,
not only don't I have any PowerPoint slides
but I don't own a microwave oven.
But I have a bag --
and my bag contains a cutting board;
I've also got a stainless steel pot in here
with a partially frozen free range chicken;
I've got some organic lentils and some organic brown rice;
I have a pepper mill, I have a wooden spoon,
and I have a very sharp chef's knife;
I've got some salt, I've got some carrots,
I've got a meat thermometer,
and I have a measuring cup, and I've got an onion.
If I gave you all of this stuff that used to be in my bag and it's now on the floor,
how many of you would have the technological prowess
to make something good to eat with it?
That's not enough! (Laughter)
That's not enough to satisfy my taste,
so here is my TED idea that I think it's worth spreading --
Learn to cook from scratch! (Applause)
I went to a supermarket to buy these carrots
and when I was there,
I saw shelves and shelves of what journalist Michael Pollan calls
edible food-like substances.
Products that we can't picture growing or living in nature or existing in a raw state
but that are invented by corporations.
These products contain chemical concoctions that most of us can't pronounce.
They have too much sugar, fat and salt,
and they're really not all that much nutritious.
Yet, we eat these edible food-like substances because they taste good
-- because of all that added fat, sugar and salt.
We find them everywhere we look,
including places that never sold food when I was growing up
-- gas stations, bookstores and pharmacies,
they're a very convenient way to fuel ourselves when we got a hectic pace of life,
we don't enough time to plan meals, shop for food, buy it, put it away,
take it out again, defrost it, chop it,
cook it, and then eat it together.
We've got too much other stuff to do.
So, we tend to regard calories that come in delivery boxes,
or microwave packaging, or take out windows as food,
and we cook from scratch less and less.
This creates a vicious cycle.
As more and more of us become convinced that we don't have enough time to cook,
an idea that companies that produce and sell convenience foods spread around,
so that they can take it to the bank,
we do even less and less of it.
And so in the words of Raj Patel,
"We don't choose our food, our food chooses us."
Consequently, all of that technological expertise that cooking represents,
that we have accumulated over centuries,
and all of the nutritional wisdom, and ritual, and community,
and culture that cooking gives to us
is rapidly disappearing from our lives,
and I don't think that's a good thing.
I think we're here on earth to survive and take care of each other,
and we can't do that if we don't cook from scratch.
When you cook from scratch, you're paying attention to what you're eating;
you're choosing your food and you're processing it
-- not the other way around.
When you cook from scratch you aren't going to be able to cook
with a lot of ingredients that are presently found
in a lot of the food that we see in the grocery store,
because you're not going to be able to buy it.
Substances like high fructose corn syrup --
What aisle is the high fructose corn syrup in a grocery store?
Soya lecithin, locust bean gum,
the salt solution that poultry processors inject into our Thanksgiving turkeys --
I don't know about your grocery store,
but the place that I shop doesn't sell individual containers of polysorbate 80
-- and that's a pretty good sign that I shouldn't be eating it.
When you were a toddler, adults told you all the time,
"Get that out of your mouth! That's not food!",
the same is true with edible food-like substances.
When you cook from scratch you're gonna want to know exactly what you're eating,
so learn to cook from scratch!
When you cook, you also gonna want to know where your ingredients come from.
"They came from the supermarket!" is really not an adequate answer to this question.
I know where and how this chicken and this onion were raised
but I don't know anything about the lentils or the rice and the carrots,
and that's a matter of concern to me,
because I want to cook good food; I want to eat good food.
I don't want to cook or eat a cow, a pig or a lamb
that have been fed antibiotics.
I don't want to cook or eat chicken that has eaten other chickens!
I don't want to cook a fish, or eat a fish, that has never swam in a river or ocean.
I want the dead animals, that's where the meat is
-- it's the flesh of dead animals that I cook and eat,
to come from an environment
that their life counterparts would find familiar,
to have eaten what they were evolutionary intended to eat,
and to be drug free.
Why should an animal have to take medicine,
so that it can live long enough to survive until it's slaughtered?
That doesn't make a lot of sense to me!
I don't want the milk and the cheese I cook with to contain hormones,
and I don't want the fruits and vegetables that I cook with
to be sprayed with multi-syllabic chemicals
that could not be found in my high school chemistry lab.
Why?
Because I grew up in New Jersey
and my great grandparents were dairy farmers there.
They had a dairy farm outside of Newark, New Jersey
-- some of you may have been to the airport there.
My other great grandparents lived in New Jersey too,
and they raised chickens for their families to eat.
My grandparents, as well as my own parents, had huge vegetable gardens,
and none of these people found it necessary
to employ the practices that are commonplace
in many industrial farms, in confined animal feeding operations,
and mechanized commercial dairies.
They also didn't eat food that was produced under these circumstances,
or they did not eat much food produce under these circumstances,
and they were all very happy and healthy --
except the ones who smoked, who did not fare so well.
But when you cook from scratch you're gonna want to know
what's in the food that you're eating and buying,
so learn about what you're eating,
learn where it comes from,
learn what happened to it before it got to you,
learn to cook from scratch.
When you find out where your food comes from,
and what happened to it before it got to you,
you're probably going to decide that you want to eat differently.
When I was an adolescent, I got a summer job working on a farm.
New Jersey, after all, is the garden state.
and when I was young there were farms all over the place
where we all worked in the summer
-- selling tomatoes, selling corn, selling all manner of vegetables.
You could buy fresh produce there,
you could talk to the farmer about how things were going,
and you could complain to him about why his food was so expensive.
"12 cents for an ear of corn! 15 cents for a tomato! You gotta be kidding!"
Remember that this was 30 years ago, all right?!
I'm kind of older than most of you in the audience, I'm afraid --
You can't get an ear of fresh Jersey corn for 12 cents anymore.
As a matter of fact, you probably couldn't get much of anything for 12 cents anymore.
But as a learn from growing up and working in that environment,
producing and growing good food is really, really hard labor.
I hated that job! That's why I became a college professor.
The work was dirty, it was physically exhausting,
and I did not get paid very much at all.
The summer after my first year in college
I was able to score a job in a bookstore
-- the old-fashioned kind of bookstore,
where people came to buy books and not coffee -- we didn't sell any food at that bookstore.
And I said 'sayonara' to working at the farm stand,
but I never forgot the lessons I learned from that farmer.
I got days off, the farmer never did.
I never worried about the weather, the farmer always did.
Why did people complained about the prices he charged?
Because unlike the kinds of corn and soybeans,
which are the primary ingredients in processed food,
vegetables and fruits aren't subsidized in any great measure by the Federal Government.
And so, the farmer had to charge people
what it actually cost him to grow corn and tomatoes.
Farming is hard work and is a hard living,
but it's the hard work that allows us to keep living.
I want you to think about this.
People who work in agriculture in this country
are literally keeping us alive.
The vast majority of them don't make very much money
and they're not treated very well.
Many family farms are going under
and so, most of us don't know enough about the people
whose labor makes it possible for us to eat,
and what this work is really like.
The lentils and the rice that I have here are organic.
And so, many of you are probably thinking,
"Well, I buy organic, that's great!".
Well, what organic means is that these food are not genetically modified organisms --
it also means that they're grown without pesticides or synthetic fertilizers,
but just because they're organic... I like that! -- doesn't necessarily mean
that the people who produce them are decently paid,
and have fair and safe working conditions.
Because I used to work on a farm,
I buy as much food now as I can possible afford
from local farmers who I make an effort to get to know.
If I can't buy a product locally,
I try to do research on the company that produces it
and the business that sells it to me,
to make sure that the people who work there are treated like people,
and that the animals, whose dead flesh I eat,
were treated decently as well.
Have you ever had a conversation
with the people who produce the food you eat?
Have you ever had a conversation with anybody
who's worked in an industrial poultry farm,
or in a slaughtered house?
Have you ever talked to the people who work at the grocery store,
behind the deli counter, the cashier... about what their work is like?
And how they're treated?
You should!
Because you're going to learn about why the tacos and the burger, and fries,
and all the other stuff that's on the fast food value menus at a drive-thru are so cheap.
It's because the majority of people who work to get those foods,
or those edible food-like substances through that window,
are disposable cogs in our food chain,
to use Eric Schlosser's metaphor.
Local independent farmers, ranchers, agricultural workers,
and slaughter house and supermarket employees
deserve more from us.
So, honor the people and the animals that give us their lives so that we can eat
by making their lives better.
Learn to cook from scratch!
When you cook and you start asking questions about your food,
and get to know the folks who produce it,
you're going to encounter new ingredients,
new cooking methods and new people.
When I started working on that farm,
I knew the difference between iceberg lettuce and cabbage,
and between celery and rhubarb,
but I didn't know what kale was,
I didn't know what mustard greens were,
and I didn't know what kohlrabi was until I started selling it.
Has anyone ever seen a kohlrabi?
It's like a cross between a beet and a broccoli rabe.
For the first few weeks after I started working on the farm,
I was so tired that I would dream that I was riding my bicycle down the street
trying to escape this massive, Godzilla-sized kohlrabi
with its big bottom that was all green and the spikes that were coming out of it --
It was very frightening!
But, as a result of that, and as a result of being exposed to kohlrabi,
I love kohlrabi... I love it! I think it's great, it's fantastic!
And I talked to the customers who bought this and I said,
"What is this? We never had this is my house, how do you cook it?",
and they told me.
My palate expanded exponentially as a result of that experience.
I've always been very lucky
to live in a very racially and ethnically diverse area.
And I've learned to cook many food from many people
who ate different things than I did at home.
I used to go to ethnic markets all the time
to buy meats, vegetables, grains, spices, and herbs, and utensils I needed to cook them,
and as a result, I've obtained a lot of knowledge about food.
But I also learned a lot of things that have nothing to do with food,
that frankly, I didn't have to think much about
because I'm a white middle-class person
that has a lot of racial and class privilege.
When you cook from scratch, you're going to find yourself taking risks
with other people who cook from scratch.
You're going to learn about how people have excluded, abused, enslaved,
and shamed other people, in order to eat well.
And you're gonna have to decide what you're going to do with that knowledge.
Food brings people together in amazing and sustaining ways
but it often divides us too.
And in too many instances, it's caused people to do
absolutely unimaginable and unconscionable things to each other.
So learn about this history, where you fit into it,
and do something about it. Learn to cook from scratch!
Finally, we live in a culture where increasingly we don't control technology,
technology controls us.
Many of you, I'd hazard to guess, don't spend much of your time
without a computer on, or your cellphone within arm's length,
or without music from an Ipod that's completely blaring in your hears all the time
-- I don't have an Ipod either.
These new technological devices and screens like the one that's behind me,
are invading more and more our public and private spaces
and our traditional meal times.
When you cook from scratch, aside from looking at a recipe,
or getting directions to the farmers' market,
or researching the label practices and sourcing habits of your supermarket,
your relationship with those technologies is gonna have to change.
You're going to be in the kitchen with this -- OK?!
And you're not going to want those electronic devices in your way,
because if you're distracted by anything,
you, and not to mention the people you're cooking with or for,
could be seriously hurt!
It's also not a good idea to drink alcohol while you're cooking,
but you probably knew that already.
When you cook from scratch, you produce something meaningful with these --
Too many of us now are using our hands
primarily to push buttons on electronic devices.
We don't use them as the vast majority of previous generations have,
and that's to make things.
In a frightening irony, these new technologies
have caused us to lose touch with our hands.
These are the greatest tools that humans have known since day one.
And then we lose our capacity to use our hands
to create lasting and meaningful social relationships,
in this case through the preparation and ritual sharing of food.
So, get to know your hands again!
And the power and the pleasure they can give you when you create something;
learn to cook from scratch!
My time is almost up, so I want to finish by reading you a sentence
that currently serves as my mantra.
It's a story called "Real Reason" and it's written by Brian Andreas,
who's giving a TED talk about the power of storytelling that you should all watch.
I've got this sentence framed in my kitchen.
"There are things you do because they feel right,
and they may make no money, and they may make no sense,
and it maybe the real reason we are here --
to love each other, and to eat each other's cooking and say it was good."
I know there's a grammatical error in that story
but everything else is dead on.
So, think about this --
Think about going home, unplugging your microwave,
and texting or calling someone, or 2-3 people who know how to cook from scratch,
and ask them to teach you how.
Turn off the phone, go to the farmers' market
-- today's Friday, tomorrow is Saturday, it's a good day to go to the farmers' market,
don't go to the supermarket because is going to be too crazy and crowded,
and I want you to talk with the people you meet there
about what's good to buy that day.
Buy some real food with those people, and cook it and eat it together.
Then think about what you've done, and talk about what you've just done,
and how our world is gonna have to change,
so that everyone is gonna be able to have the opportunity to do what you just did.
And do what you can to make that change happen.
And then, do it over again. Do it all over again.
And don't ever stop!
Thank you
(Applause)