The valet made me do it. We bared our souls and talked with each other about food. We did it in the middle of the tastefully decorated lobby of a reputable Cannery Row hotel in Monterey, CA. It began as a very unexpected moment, and has become one of my all-time favorite experiences talking about access to good food. Because it was a conversation not with a chef, foodie or expert. It was with a regular person who longs to connect to food and is somehow stuck, marooned on an island alone, full of latent desire.

The valet—let’s call him Paul—asked me the very question I yearn to hear, and with him I had the discussion that I never tire of. Paul had parked my car when I checked into the hotel, had smiled professionally at me and held the door three mornings in a row when I sashayed excitedly out into the sunlight. The cause of my excitement was a food issue conference hosted by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The Cooking for Solutions Sustainable Media Institute is an annual gathering of journalists and experts who cover food system issues ranging from sustainable seafood to GMOs. It is the highlight of my year, second only to the Ecological Farming Association annual meeting.

The third morning, Paul held the lobby door open and commented that I looked happy. I told him yes, I was happy because I spent the last three days at a conference talking and thinking about food. He immediately grabbed my arm. He looked a bit shocked at his intensity, but recovered quickly and said: “You were at a food conference. Tell me, what should I eat? And why? I know there’s a big debate now about food but I can’t follow it. I can cook, but I’m confused about what’s good for me. The grocery store? I go in there, I walk around…it feels wrong, and I come out with stuff I don’t like. Can you talk with me for a minute?”

Although he spoke quietly, his interest was so intense that the small lobby grew quiet. The receptionist, guests checking out and the other staff stood waiting for my answer. Where to start? Full disclosure: I’m a communications professional who relies on the power of my words to make a living. I know I’ve got about six seconds to keep him or lose him. Do I start with a slogan: Know your farmer, know your food? Nope, too abstract. Do I punt to Michael Pollan’s now famous: Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much? Nope, too abstract again for a lobby conversation. Marion Nestle wrote a huge book about this, like War and Peace for the American eater.

Plus, do I need a pundit or am I ready to be my own? I took a deep breath: “I like to shop at farmers’ markets because they sell food that’s grown right up the road. I bet there’s one near here. I walk around the market, talk to a few farmers, see what looks good to me and buy what I can afford and know I can handle in the time I have available in my basic kitchen. Did you know artichokes are grown in Castroville, just a few miles away from here, and you can steam them in about five minutes?” He burst into a smile. “I’m Italian, from Florida. My family loved artichokes! Growing up we’d save money to buy the good ones, from Italy, in olive oil, in a glass jar, for pasta. You mean I can get them fresh here?” Ah, what a moment.

Several contradictions bear illustration: We’re on Cannery Row in Monterey, CA, where super-green list sustainable seafood sardines had their heyday until the species collapse in 1950s. Right near Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of the shrines of ocean conservation, sits the restaurant Bubba Gump, a shrine to farmed shrimp redolent of butter, garlic and disgusting chemicals like disinfectants, pesticides and antibiotics used to keep filthy shrimp ponds teetering on the brink of legal seafood production. Another contradiction: My food conference is teeming with experts on food system sustainability. A few hundred feet from that, a hotel valet wonders what to eat, and has the guts to talk to me about it. If only more people dared to, and if only we could build a real community around real answers. And buy those artichokes from right up the road.

For me, Paul is an archetype of the struggle around food access. He didn’t just open the door for me mornings. He opened the door to a conversation that needs to happen in every walk of life. Where do we find food that speaks to us? What impact might a deeper connection with food have on our local communities, our health and our environment? We all want to know how to make this connection.

Paul isn’t the only one who wants to talk. I frequently find myself drawn into these conversations. My neighbors, strangers on public transportation, and also people at farmers’ markets want to engage around food. Seems everybody always wanted to make five minute blender mayonnaise but it takes a catalyst in the community to make it happen. We should all share knowledge, not just about the joys of homemade mayonnaise, but also about why we should use a pastured egg from a farmer we know rather than an organic supermarket egg. And we should be talking how to cook a beet and why it has a low carbon footprint. It probably helps when information is shared from simple home cooks, not chefs. What’s clear to me is that engaging with each other around food is the gateway, the first step to transforming our relationship. It has to come from each other, no matter how unexpected the place or the time.

I recommended Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything to Paul as a straightforward tome featuring all the basics, then riffs, galore. But I don’t think cookbooks are the silver bullet. A community connection which starts that dialogue would be a better answer. Steps away from where Paul parks cars and opens doors every day, a food conference was trying to open the door. But it didn’t go far enough. For this movement to thrive, it will take community, connection and deeper dialogue. Let’s start a conversation about food with unexpected people in unexpected situations. I think we’ll all benefit from the results.

The European Parliament agreed to support a ban on trading bluefin Wednesday despite fears by nations like Greece, Spain, and Malta, whose fisherman would be most affected. This decision comes ahead of the next meeting in March of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)–a treaty between 175 governments that protects around 33,000 species to varying degrees–and is a significant step towards adding the bluefin to the treaty. The ban proposed by the European Parliament would allow domestic fishing, covering only the international trade of bluefin tuna. [UPDATE below]

Michael Sutton, Vice President of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which has been monitoring the species, has observed its dramatic decline in recent decades. He praised Europe for bringing attention to the decline of the bluefin. “If we have the fortitude to give this species a break, it will mean more jobs, more profits, and a healthier ecosystem,” he said.

Sutton believes that the President’s Council on Environmental Quality will have to take a position on this issue in the coming weeks, ahead of CITES, despite [potential] disagreement between the Department of the Interior, which is taking sides with industry, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which came out in support of the bluefin trade ban, and adding bluefin to CITES, in October. [UPDATE: the Department of Interior supports listing the bluefin tuna with CITES. While NOAA came out in support in October, they are being pressured by the fisheries to agree that the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) has acted responsibly since then, leaving out the need for the CITES listing. The question remains whether the administration will step in before there is disagreement between the two and make a strong statement.]

“I like to say that bluefin is the ‘Porsche’ of the fishing industry,” he said, referring to the fact that one bluefin tuna can fetch up to $100,000 in Japan, where 80% of this specific species of tuna is eaten. “Because of that there is bound to be controversy…[But] driving the fish to extinction is not good for livelihoods in the long term.”

Indeed, the Japanese are the most opposed to the trading ban on bluefin, as the source of one of their most prized foods–toro sashimi–is imported mostly from the Mediterranean. Adding to the issue, as seen in the documentary film on overfishing that looked specifically at the plight of the bluefin, The End of the Line, the company Mitsubishi has been hoarding tuna waiting for just such an opportunity to control the market.

The U.S. fishing of bluefin is largely confined to the Northeast coast, and represents 2% of the total world catch. Therefore, it could be argued that most of the damage to the bluefin population is happening in the Mediterranean. However, were the US to act decisively on this issue, it would bolster the issue at CITES, and support a species that is well on its way towards extinction. “At this point, we’re asking the Administration to join the world community and signal its unqualified support for CITES action,” said Sutton. “Only a trade ban would relieve the immediate pressure on the species and serve as a powerful incentive for the Atlantic Tunas Commission to prepare and implement a recovery plan.”

The session was moderated by Sam Fromartz, author of Organic Inc. and the Chews Wise blog. Fromartz asked his diverse panel how their media organizations reported on sustainable food issues.

Jane Black, a writer for the Washington Post, began by commenting on the changes in the media world. She noted that “newspapers are operating under rules that blogs aren’t,” that is they have stricter reporting standards such as utilizing multiple sources. These stricter standards are one of the primary advantages of newspaper reporting.

Black continued by saying that in the newspaper world, “we have to be objective and not have an opinion – and anyone who knows me knows that I do have an opinion.” This is an extremely important point when it comes to sustainable food topics.

Writing for both a newspaper group and a blog as I do, I understand her point about objectivity. Since I am a columnist for the newspaper, not a reporter, I am able to interject some of my personality into the mix – but there are distinct limits. As a blogger I have much greater freedom of expression.

An excellent example relates to my recent reporting of CAFOs in relation to the H1N1 flu outbreak. I had to edit my description of some of the CAFOs negative effects for my newspaper column, while I was able to freely discuss some distressing research (increased infant death rates) in my blog story.

Black finished by asking: “How do you write a good story?” Answering her own question, she said the key is to find the right person to personify it. For example, she said, the White House Garden story received a mountain of press attention not because most people care about gardening, per se, but because the Obama’s are such prominent personalities that people really want to know what they are doing. And it is this crossover that will introduce sustainability issues to a new audience.

Finally, Black noted, she keeps writing the same story again and again. The story is: How does this transition to sustainable food happen? The key is finding the most interesting people and angles that amplify the message while keeping it fresh.

Barry Estabrook, contributing editor at Gourmet Magazine, echoed Black’s sentiments when he said “Never, Ever Preach – and Always Tell it Through People.” People are always interested in the people who bring them food, Estabrook continued, and it is often that interest in other people that leads them to explore sustainability.

But he also noted that “it’s really important to pick the right boss,” saying that Gourmet Editor in chief Ruth Reichl was committed to “articles about where food comes from.” But, he criticized, “we as food magazines do not do a good job of bringing issues of sustainability to our readers. That’s a weakness from our corner of the business.”

“There’s this perception that isn’t panning out,” Estabrook said, “Our editors think our readers don’t want to learn about declining fish stocks. But interestingly, in practice, people seem to like these stories. Our circulation has remained very robust since we’ve introduced this element to the mix.”

Katherine Alford, a Vice President with the Food Network, agreed that communicating sustainable issues through people was important. “We will never have a show just about sustainability,” she declared bluntly. “We want that to come through our talent, someone that people relate to.” She conceded that the Food Network’s audience was very mainstream, and that they were in the entertainment business. So, Alford said, sustainable topics can also come through the ingredients. “By using certain ingredients, and talking about where certain ingredients come from,” we can communicate our passion for these ideas, she said.

She also had an interesting perspective on sustainability as it relates to television. “TV is expensive…and so we have the idea of evergreen TV shows.” That is, producers don’t want an episode of a show to be obsolete because an ingredient isn’t available anymore. “You can’t do a issue with Chilean Sea Bass because it’s not available. Over the years, people have gotten more and more receptive to that story,” Alford said.

Finally, Alford thought that television cooking programs could do a better job of connecting people directly with their food. “I think that the food media has done an amazing job of connecting to chefs, but at the detriment to home cooking.” He continued,  “I think we do a horrible job, in the food media, of saying ‘think like a chef.’ And this makes people think they can’t be involved…and those are the people we need to reach – you want them to go the farmers market.”

She concluded “We have to celebrate cooking a meal, and the skill level that comes with it.”

Finally, if you’re watching TV or a movie and you see characters discussing sustainable food issues, there’s a good chance that you’re looking at the work of Debbie Levin, president of the Environmental Media Association.
Celebrating their 20th anniversary, the EMA links “the power of celebrity to environmental awareness.” They pitch environmental ideas, story lines, and products to place in TV, movies, and directly in the hands of celebrities to get the eco-message across.

Levin loves working with sustainable foods, because “with food, you can wake up and make sustainable choices each day,” she says. She cautions us to never “underestimate the power of using celebrity to role model positive trends.” Addressing all the non-profits and sustainable food executives in the room, Levin said “you give us the information, we can get it out there.”