The Routledge Handbook of Gastronomic Tourism by Dixit Saurabh Kumar;

Author:Dixit, Saurabh Kumar;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

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Sustainable restaurant system and gastronomy

Paul Hellier

The journey of sustainable food, what happened?

A century ago and beyond, the notion of unsustainable food could only be a fairy tale. In the old Norse stories, Thor’s goats were killed every night to make a feast for heroes and then were magically resurrected every morning to serve as another feast. Food without effort! In the real world, food came from farms and gardens, and was recognized as part of a balanced ecosystem, one which was also part of the ongoing life of the planet. The idea of wasting perfectly edible food, packaging it in a non-biodegradable substance, and shipping it in from the other side of the planet to a place where there was already sufficient food was unimaginable (Reisch, Eberle, and Lorek 2013).

In the modern world we barely think about where food comes from. We buy whatever we want, whenever we want it. Fruits and vegetables are always in season somewhere, so we import. Mangoes in the middle of winter? That’s ok. If you are willing to pay, you can have it.

We have learnt not to consider the impact of these options on the planet. Forgotten the effort required to create our food, resources used, the lives and payment of those involved along the supply chain.

Un-sustainable food

Since the Second World War, an ever-increasing industrial mind-set has meant much of our food resembles something closer to a factory production line than a farm or garden (Bernstein et al. 2016).

It is understandable that in some parts of the world, a sufficient variety of fresh produce is not always available. Frozen ground and minimal sunlight can mean growing crops is a difficult task. For most of us, however, the toughest part of an off-season is going without our favourite fruit or vegetable. Living without a daily banana smoothie or an avocado fix is a part of life we just don’t want to face. This is when supermarket shelves often make up for the deficiency with food from the other side of the world, bringing us imported delicacies rather than encouraging us to buy what is locally in season (Burnett et al. 2014).

Far from being condemned as expensive and pointless, this behavior is encouraged at many levels. Tax incentives create financial opportunities for business to favor exports over selling what is locally in season. Consumers can’t resist favorite delicacies. It drives up prices of fresh produce for locals and those on the other side of the world, being supplied with foreign food (Smith and McKinnon 2007).

Our planet’s topsoil has been over-processed topsoil and its symbiotic bacteria have been lost, blown away by the wind, increasing the need for synthetic additives (Milman 2015). Agriculture suffers at the hands of the system, monoculture crops of corn, wheat, and soya fill the landscape, harvested by machines powered by petro-chemicals. Crops sprayed with herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers, natural systems left in favor of production (Reisch, Eberle, and Lorek 2013).

Is there any consideration for food animals like chickens and turkeys? Kept in

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