We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto by Alice Waters

Author:Alice Waters [Waters, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780525561538
Google: AMYZzgEACAAJ
Amazon: 0525561536
Publisher: Penguin Press
Published: 2021-06-01T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

We know how beauty affects our happiness, but we haven’t examined how beauty helps us to survive. “The ultimate test is whether we live in beautiful places,” Wendell Berry writes. “Wherever ugliness has crept in, we have the first symptoms of exploitation and exhaustion.” I understand his point: beauty is not only a way to awaken us to aesthetics and our own senses; it is a way to decide whether networks are functioning correctly, whether they are alive and healthy and fertile. Beauty in nature is one of the outer manifestations that stewardship is happening—that the land is being cared for and protected. Beauty is the language of care, yes, but it’s more than that, too. It is the outcome of care.

When we see something utterly beautiful, we enter a state of awe. Beauty can startle you; it breaks down the illusory barriers between us and nature. Beauty is out of the realm of human control or understanding, and it has a transcendent universality that can’t be ignored. In his book How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan talks about how awe is a fundamental human emotion that may have evolved in us to encourage altruistic behavior, to make us feel part of something bigger than ourselves: “This larger entity could be the social collective, nature as a whole, or a spirit world, but it is something sufficiently overpowering to dwarf us and our narrow self-interest. . . . An experience of awe appears to be an excellent antidote for egotism.” This is why beauty is so important: it creates an involuntary reaction of joy that humbles us and dissolves our defenses, which opens us up to collaboration and empathy.

We need to put beauty first. I believe it is important and possible to create beauty in the things we use and nourish ourselves with every day. It is essential. Food is the easiest way for all of us to engage with beauty in our everyday lives. Any meal has the potential to crack us open to pleasure and connection and joy. I know it can, because I have watched it happen in the restaurant over the past fifty years, and with thousands of schoolchildren, in schools all over the world, for the past twenty-five years. Cooking and eating food together can be an everyday experience of beauty that reaches all of our senses.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.