The collection has largely been built through donations and i want to thank her for giving us her wonderful collection. People always want to know, is the collection accessible . We have about half of them catalogued. We also have materials on our website under the food studies collection. Finding find links to parts of the collection. You will find papers. And so we welcome people, you do not have to affiliated with nyu or any university to come and consult with the collection. Everybody is interested in food in new york. I didnt want to mention a couple of new titles that have come in just because, who would come up with the title glutenfree comfort vegan food. I am not making it up. And bridgets diet coke look. Diet cookbook. The drag queens guide to sensible living. The, this a bit of very wide swath that we are cutting through this cookbook world. There are more cut books published cookbooks published every year than any other book, except for this one jon runyan. Romance except for this one jon runyan genre. Romance. It is my pleasure to introduce clark wolf. Thank you for coming. Thank you all. One of the reasons we want to together tonight, and particularly after 5 00 as we want to do to get on the sunshine you can get. It is astounding that we would have a day like this to begin celebrating the 20th anniversary of food studies as an Academic Program. I was at a buck program with nary an acyl dusty book party with book party with marion nussle. I said lets walk a little bit, we were a 96 in new york or something. Before we knew it we have gotten all the way here to Washington Square and she convinced me to help her food up the nutrition department. 20 years later there are programs all over the city and country and the program here is striving. It is extraordinary that we are now helping to educate already incredibly smart people. The difference of someone who graduates from a Cooking School and someone who graduates from the headline is food studies 20 years in. We are trying to get a perspective on what has been happening, where we are, what has been going on, and in a lot of cases, the impact of what we have been learning might be or has not been. As you know we are being filmed that just for our archives that are accessible to everyone once they get edited, because funds being what they are. 100available, sometimes thousand times or 150,000 times a year, these archives are looked at, utilized for Book Research all over the country. We are slated to be broadcast on cspan sometime in april so again, if you would like to see the back of your head late at night this is the place to be. We have a collection of very smart people and im going to do them one by one so you know who they are, and then i will go back and ask them each to tell us a little bit about their work and their effort and their thoughts. First is mitchell davis. Andaud for mitchell, lees the jasmine nielsen. And then jasmine nielsen. And then he is an author of a number of very amusing and very smart books. Andrites for vanity fair his claim to fame is he is the author of this now 10yearold book, the United States of arugula, david camp. Next we have someone who is actually doing the political work in washington dc, and she will tell us more about that, de matina. Amin and then the current chair of the department, the professor and chair of the nyu department of food studies, it says Public Health but it has been moved. Nutrition and food studies together again when i belong, dr. Christiana ray. Some of this, as we have these conversations, there is always a little bit about how i spent my summer vacation. Mitchell was in our first graduating class, a phd in the Food Studies Program. He will graduate next thursday at noon. No, i am teasing. Among the really interesting and valuable and fun and smart things that mitchell does is he took the food expo for American Food to milan for six months. Espresso,k a lot of and we are going to ask him what he thinks about starbucks coming to italy. Mitchell, give us the helicopter view of food studies since you started in this program, and give us a moment or two of what it was like to be the American Food guy in milan at a world expo. Mitchell in fact, i was at that first meeting that marion jostled you to convene about, starting this department. So i was someone sitting around a table with some really interesting, smart people from the food world, there was not really a food world then, people working with food, thinking about what a Food Studies Program could be. When it was done, i thought, this is amazing. I have to apply as a phd candidate. The thing that was so exciting about that at the time was, i was that food geek who now probably would be competing on television, who was always obsessed with cooking and interested in food but was not something that a middleclass jewish kid could do with his ord held high, or not his with his familys head held high. I do not regret not being a chef, but the idea that there was an Academic Program that would look at food which is more akin to the way that i integrated food into my life, it was a cultural phenomenon, there were experts, there were artists , and topics and politics and all things related to food. It was really exciting to me. It is so funny to think that with a radical idea it was a radical idea then. For a lot of people a radical idea in academe a academia except that you can study food in history, you can study food legitimately in sociology, poly science. You could really declare yourself a food studies person, and i think the program had a tremendous amount to do with that. It also had to do with the change that i think david can speak to better than i, the current garden of foodstuff that at the time. I have been at the Beard Foundation for 20 years and ive seen this incredible foundation from food eating really a particular a particular interest in food being the folly of the rich of a certain age, to it being a cultural phenomenon. I cannot go to a University Campus without the food Group Running to talk to you and meet you. The more that i travel around, and for the expo project we traveled around the country basically two years to digest everything that was happening in food so we can make a presentation in milan about what was going on here, the prevalence of enthusiasm for food culture was overwhelming, to the point that it was weird to me. I cannot get away from it, it is bizarre. I hope one day for another panel, all of that will reseed de and the food peace will meld into the background of what it means to live a good life the way i got to experience it, living abroad in italy. The expo project allowed me and the team we were working with to really try to figure out both what the world takes about food in america, because we created the american pavilion at the world fair. The first time in 156 years the world fair came with food. It was always industry or technology or sustainable cities or clean power, and obviously no one really adheres to those themes anyway. Year, becausehis it was italy, wanted the countries to focus on food. The only right to veto anything because of International Treaties was the thematic statement that the country submitted. They wanted every pavilion to address the topic of how we will take care of the food culture. We traveled across the country trying to think of what on earth we can present, and what does everyone expect to see. Trying to negotiate that and learning both sides was really important to the success that we ultimately had, and we were the most popular pavilion at expo. We had six and a half million viewers. Instead of trying to coherent into, this is American Food or this is americas food culture, we celebrated the diversity that we have that we sometimes take for granted, and represented voices from food sectors all across america, whether they were old american regional recipes or sort of fusion mash food trucks in los angeles and everything in between. I do not know that any of the six and a half Million People left with any clear idea of, what american cuisine is. The attitude that was represented in the food, the values, the openness, all of the things that are part of the american ideal are what we communicated. Showed a we got million times over that in fact, there was an article that pitted the style of the american pavilion versus the russian pavilion. Ideology,our authoritarian versus democratic and all the stuff on top of it, and that is what our food is. We do take for granted that i think we are not just open to change but we expect it. We do not expect todays mail to be the same as tomorrows. That is unique in the world and that is something that we presented. Called thenonical american attitude toward an article called the american attitude toward food. Clark i grew up in southern california, and tangerines were off the back tree and the roses were fragrant, and the apricots were right. All of that happened. I was very excited that tang could be mixed with a glass of water, and we could find water in southern california, and all these innovations made it possible for my mother to make food that came in a plastic bag says that she would not have contact with it, because that was always a bad idea. Iended up in a tea shop and did something called the oakfield grocery where i got to find some of the finest foods in the world. A sense of connoisseurship that ive since found incredibly embarrassing and tedious. Havehat period of time i come to know the difference between discovering something that has a long history that is wonderful, and anointing something as the best of something, as a very odd cultural statement. In the meantime, it turns out that there are other reasons to care about what im eating. When i learned about social justice, it was from cesar chavez and migrant farmworkers in the Central Valley of california. And i knew from a very early age that people got hurt making food easy and inexpensive for me. I was somewhat astounded and mesmerized and a little bit offended by the whole thing. In the meantime, many movements developed. Whonext speaker is somebody helps to run an organization that looks at this in a very practical level. The last time i was at one of your conferences, 800 or 1000 people in the middle of a rainy saturday afternoon on the Upper West Side were talking in really practical terms about what they are doing. It was not a political movement, it was activity and action and discussion. Please help me welcome jasmine nielsen, executive director of just food. And by that, we do not mean only food, we need food at some sense of social justice. Tell me about what that means and what you folks are doing. Jasmine just food was started 20 years ago by a group of people looking at the Movement TowardSustainable Agriculture and the antihunger movement, and thinking that though should not be parallel lines. We had farms disappearing and people in the city who are hungry. And they cast around for a while. The very first conference the very first year, and what they sa, Community Supported agriculture. There are now 130 in our network and from the very beginning there was a focus, and a whole lot of others in the city, there was a focus making sure that was accessible to everyone regardless of income. It also involved payment up front but we encouraged revolving loans and payasyougo for certain people. We also successfully lobbied to make sure you could use snap benefits or food stamps. Over time it evolved to become Community Driven solutions to bring neighborhoods fresh food that did not have that. We support urban farmers and Community Gardeners in growing for their communities. So we do that through a trainer model. We teach people to teach their neighbors help to grow, and out of that they said, we are growing enough food that we want to formally be able to sell it and we want to start our own Farmers Markets. They told us we had to learn and we went out and learned with them, and now we have about 27 Community RunFarmers Markets around the city. We also do Community Food education where we train people forto cook with example, if you have never come across it. We also have a farm to pantry program, a new York State HealthDepartment Contract and we them. Ct with that pantry clients and workers get to go up and visit the farms. The farmers come down. A Work Together year after year so the farmers begin to grow things that the pantry clients like so it is a symbiotic relationship. We have evolved into a capacity of Building Organization a Capacity Building organization. Is the what do you feel product see is the problem and what do you see is the solution . Clark that is wonderful. Livedsay that because i part of the time in Northern California and Sonoma County where the Farm Community is very connected, and there is a lot of discussion and a lot of effort. It sounds like the kind of activity that would go on in any community that cares about their food anywhere. The fact that it is going on in the middle of new york city is extraordinary. Something we would like to have happen that we thought never would be tooe it impractical and expensive, you have been doing it for 20 years. Tell us when is the next conference. Sunday, this coming march 13. I put postcards at the back that you can go to jus tfoodconference. Org. It is a great chance to network and understand the brats and adth bre clark if you have ever read about or thought about the south beach wine and food festival, this is the opposite. And god bless, everybody should do what they want to do. Mitchell, am i right . Mitchell yes. Clark do not look up, look away from the camera. The next gentleman reside writes indepth about many things, reveals delightful or painful truths. He wrote a book that i now hand foras kind of curriculum working with me on any of my projects. David kind of . Clark you gave me the big discount. David please please welcome david cap. You wrote the book the United States of arugula. David my narrative echoes a bit of mitchells, i felt like mitchell did. I was obsessed with food and i thought not just of sustenance but as cultural history, american history, and i was looking for this book to read, a book to explain how we made such great strides. For the under 40s in this room this may sound absurd, but there was a time for us over 40s when things like whole bean coffee and balsamic vinegar and go cheese and salad greens other than romain and iceberg were not just knew, but mind blowing, like, this is the best thing ever. And is ad written comprehensive cultural history of how this happened, and who are the people who made this happen. Some of them are big people you have heard. You have heard of james beard and julia child. Some others are unsung. 2006 andcame out in authors, as i am sure you know, are insufferable narcissist, so when i finished this book in 2006 and published it, when naturally thinks of the author, because i am publishing this book we have reached some sort of historical endpoint and history cannot proceed from here. I will not fog everyone elses time, im just going to do some bullet points of some of the amazing ways it has only gotten bigger of the last two years. A small but really telling example, mark bittman do i always knew as a cook a greater migrated from being the recipe ,age guy in the New York Times edm 2011 two 2015, the op writer. Then he moves to california to do a meal food startup called applecare it. Purple carrot. Were not in office. Ladyresident and first making it an important part of their policy. 10 year decline in soda sales. We have to give some credit to nyus own marion nestle. I never thought in my lifetime we would see the needle move where soda sales would decline and mcdonalds would have the management shakeup because its sales have been declining for several consecutive quarters. It is because the American People are more aware that there is better, not just more nutritious food, but better tasting food, or ethically sourced food. Mention,thing i will one of the last people i interviewed for the United States of arugula was the chef tom collegial. Cio. As feeling tom colle he said, i do not know if im doing the right thing, i feel like im addicted to the deal. M i a sleaze . What is wrong with me . Two things happened, tom not thent on to become flip side is the start of this Organization Called food policy action, because he wanted to have a state in food policy, the same thing obamas have been doing, which leads i think nicely to our next person, claire. Claire thank you, dave. Clark sometimes i think i am in control and sometimes i am not. Liz, ifo say this you are back there somewhere, we are going to pass around some three by five cards. If you have a question for the panel, i will clean it up for you and ask the question. If you see a card coming, right your question and i will pass it up to the front so you have a chance to have your thoughts reflected. Speaker is somebody who does it every day. Thank you, david, for the segway. A lot of us talk about these things in terms of public opinion, in terms of the op ed page, in terms of programs and that he schools, in terms of cultural act that patients, in terms in terms of cultural fiction or perhaps nonfiction. Some of you has to do something about the policy and a lot of us feel that our influence is the only thing that matters, and a lot of us feel that variable this is the only thing that matters. What is the role of politics . Nuts andhe role