Alice Waters Quotes & Sayings

Americans don't have deep gastronomic roots. They wanted to get away from the cultures of Europe or wherever they came from. We stirred up that melting pot pretty quickly. — Alice Waters

Good food is a right, not a privilege. It brings children into a positive relationship with their health, community and environment. — Alice Waters

Grass-fed cattle are leaner. But it's not true that they are less flavorful. — Alice Waters

In Berkeley, we built the garden and a kitchen classroom. We've been working on it for 12 years. We've learned a lot from it. If kids grow it and cook it, they eat it. — Alice Waters

It's so important to that we go into the public schools and we feed all of the kids something that is really good for them. — Alice Waters

If we don't preserve the natural resources, you aren't going to have a sustainable society. This is not something for Chez Panisse and the elite of San Francisco. It's for everyone. — Alice Waters

My mother made a lot of things because she thought they'd be healthy for us. There were some very unfortunate experiences with whole wheat bread and bananas. I always tried to get rid of that sandwich and eat one of my friends' lunches. — Alice Waters

We can't think narrowly. We have to think in the biggest possible way. — Alice Waters

I think if you buy from people who are taking care of the land, you're supporting the future of this country. — Alice Waters

I guess I don't really believe in retirement. I believe in shorter days and maybe in weekends! — Alice Waters

Cooking and shopping for food brings rhythm and meaning to our lives. — Alice Waters

I love those tiny little onions in the spring that are so small they're almost like a little chive. — Alice Waters

We all need to know how to cook. I can buy a chicken and have many meals come from it. Is it affordable? Yes. Cheap? No. I want to pay the farmers the right price for food. They deserve it. They are the most important people in the country besides our teachers. — Alice Waters

The things most worth wanting are not available everywhere all the time. — Alice Waters

We have to understand that we want to pay the farmers the real price for the food that they produce. It won't ever be cheap to buy real food. But it can be affordable. It's really something that we need to understand. It's the kind of work that it takes to grow food. We don't understand that piece of it. — Alice Waters

Always explore your garden and go to the market before you decide what cook. — Alice Waters

If we want children to learn to tend the land and nourish themselves and have conversations at the table, we need to communicate with them in ways that are positive. — Alice Waters

I can't imagine leaving the restaurant. It's hard for me to separate my life from my work; I'm really thinking about what we're doing every day. — Alice Waters

I want every child in America to eat a nutritious, delicious, sustainably sourced school lunch for free. — Alice Waters

Basically, the person in the White House should be principled, should have a philosophy about food that relates directly to organic agriculture. I will continue to push for that. — Alice Waters

People cooked with a certain integrity before fast food, 50 or 60 years ago. When the cheap food arrived, and we didn't have the education and deep cultural roots to hold on, we got swept away by fast, cheap and easy. — Alice Waters

When you don't have much money, cooking can be incredibly reassuring. You feel like you're doing meaningful work. — Alice Waters

Eating is an environmental act. — Alice Waters

You do need some dispensation for local farmers, because the fast food industry will promote the unsanitary conditions of farming. With vegetables, you have to be careful where they come from; you have to know the farmers and trust them. If you buy from the farmers' market, it's already been investigated. — Alice Waters

Good food depends almost entirely on good ingredients. — Alice Waters

I used to do calligraphy, and I'm afraid that has lapsed, but I've always been interested in book printing. — Alice Waters

I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege, and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist. — Alice Waters

First, kids should be involved in the production of their own food. They have to get their hands in the dirt, they have to grow things. They also have to become sensually stimulated, and the way to begin is with a bakery. — Alice Waters

I came to all the realizations about sustainability and biodiversity because I fell in love with the way food tastes. That was it. And because I was looking for that taste I feel at the doorsteps of the organic, local, sustainable farmers, dairy people and fisherman. — Alice Waters

Buy foods from nearby farms and have that food served in the cafeteria. — Alice Waters

I think you have to plan ahead. When I go to the market on a Saturday, and I'm buying for family and friends, I'm thinking about what I'm going to eat on the weekend but also about what I'm going to make for the following week. — Alice Waters

You have to take it upon yourself and preserve and can foods that you'll want for the winter. — Alice Waters

I used to think that I wanted to be a hat maker, but I don't think that would have worked out. — Alice Waters

This is the power of gathering: it inspires us, delightfully, to be more hopeful, more joyful, more thoughtful: in a word, more alive. — Alice Waters

I believe there should be breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack, all for free and for every child that goes to school. And all food that is good, clean and fair. — Alice Waters

Our full humanity is contingent on our hospitality; we can be complete only when we are giving something away; when we sit at the table and pass the peas to the person next to us we see that person in a whole new way. — Alice Waters

People have become aware that way that we've been eating is making us sick. — Alice Waters

Food culture is like listening to the Beatles - it's international, it's very positive, it's inventive and creative. — Alice Waters

I think health is the outcome of finding a balance and some satisfaction at the table. — Alice Waters

Whenever I want to know how to cook something, I can't ask one chef - I have to ask six. — Alice Waters

I really am at a place where I think we need to feed every child at school for free and feed them a real school lunch that's sustainable and nutritious and delicious. It needs to be part of the curriculum of the school in the same way that physical education was part of the curriculum, and all children participated. — Alice Waters

I feel like old age in America is a very sad thing. I have been many different places around the world where getting older is something you look forward to. — Alice Waters

I have a love affair with tomatoes and corn. I remember them from my childhood. I only had them in the summer. They were extraordinary. — Alice Waters

A whole set of values comes with fast food: Everything should be fast, cheap and easy; there's always more where that came from; there are no seasons; you shouldn't be paid very much for preparing food. It's uniformity and a lack of connection. — Alice Waters

I wanted people to come to the restaurant and feel at home, so I put it in a house. — Alice Waters

I am confident that we will see a growing consensus about the most effective way to transform food in America: building a real, sustainable and free school-lunch program. — Alice Waters

When you have good ingredients, cooking doesn't require a lot of instruction because you can never go very wrong. — Alice Waters

In countries around the world, people spend more money on food because they know how precious it is. — Alice Waters

Change the food in the schools and we can influence how children think. Change the curriculum and teach them how to garden and how to cook and we can show that growing food and cooking and eating together give lasting richness, meaning, and beauty to our lives. — Alice Waters

We have to bring children into a new relationship to food that connects them to culture and agriculture. — Alice Waters

The decisions you make are a choice of values that reflect your life in every way. — Alice Waters

I feel it is an obligation to help people understand the relation of food to agriculture and the relationship of food to culture. — Alice Waters

I have been talking nonstop about the symbolism of an edible landscape at the White House. I think it says everything about stewardship of the land and about the nourishment of a nation. — Alice Waters

I am disappointed because nobody is talking about food and agriculture. They're talking about the diets of children, but they're talking about Band-Aids. We're not seeing a vision. — Alice Waters

It's about children cooking themselves, growing themselves. When kids grow it and cook it they eat it. — Alice Waters

I try not to do anything that's immoral. — Alice Waters

We make decisions every day about what we're going to eat. And some people want to buy Nike shoes - two pairs, and other people want to eat Bronx grapes and nourish themselves. I pay a little extra, but this is what I want to do. — Alice Waters

I think America's food culture is embedded in fast-food culture. And the real question that we have is: How are we going to teach slow-food values in a fast-food world? Of course, it's very, very difficult to do, especially when children have grown up eating fast food and the values that go with that. — Alice Waters

I can remember the three restaurant experiences of my childhood. All I wanted to do on my birthday was to go to the Automat in New York ... but I don't know if you consider that a real restaurant. — Alice Waters

English food writer Elizabeth David, cook and author Richard Olney and the owner of Domaine Tempier Lulu Peyraud have all really inspired the way I think about food. — Alice Waters

Food isn't like anything else. It's something precious. It's not a commodity. — Alice Waters

When I first went to Paris in 1965, I fell in love with the small, family-owned restaurants that existed everywhere then, as well as the markets and the French obsession with buying fresh food, often twice a day. — Alice Waters

The problem with living in a fast-food nation is that we expect food to be cheap. — Alice Waters

We eat every day, and if we do it in a way that doesn't recognize value, it's contributing to the destruction of our culture and of agriculture. But if it's done with a focus and care, it can be a wonderful thing. It changes the quality of your life. — Alice Waters

He understands that creating a meal means creating your own reality ... — Alice Waters

I don't think it ever works to tell people what they can't eat. They can do it for so long, and then they fall off. You have to bring them into a new relationship with food. — Alice Waters

The biggest thing you can do is understand that every time you're going to the grocery store, you're voting with your dollars. Support your farmers' market. Support local food. Really learn to cook. — Alice Waters

I was a very picky eater. — Alice Waters

Go to the farmers market and buy food there. You'll get something that's delicious. It's discouraging that this seems like such an elitist thing. It's not. It's just that we have to pay the real cost of food. People have to understand that cheap food has been subsidized. We have to realize that it's important to pay farmers up front, because they are taking care of the land. — Alice Waters

If I've gone to the market on Saturday, and I go another time on Tuesday, then I'm really prepared. I can cook a little piece of fish; I can wilt some greens with garlic; I can slice tomatoes and put a little olive oil on. It's effortless. — Alice Waters

To have a basic ingredient that can be prepared a million different ways is a beautiful thing. — Alice Waters

Let things taste the way they are. — Alice Waters

I do feel like food should cost more, because we aren't paying farmers a living wage. It has to cost more. — Alice Waters

I really appreciate the many neighbourhoods of Berkeley. There is still the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. And it has the University of California, which is the greatest gift, to my mind, to be close to it. It keeps the place alive. — Alice Waters

Everything tastes better with butter. Meat that has fat in it is tender in a certain way, flavorful in a certain way. It's hard to deny the flavor quotient there. — Alice Waters

We need to have a course in school that teaches about ecology and gastronomy. I could imagine that all children could eat at school for free and that the cafeteria would become part of the school's curriculum. — Alice Waters

I really like having someone who knows about food and what goes well together make a meal for me. — Alice Waters

Hard-boiled eggs are wonderful when they're really done right. I bring the water to a boil, and then I put in the eggs. And then I boil them for - well, it depends on the size of the egg - maybe eight minutes. — Alice Waters

I once had an Early Girl tomato at my friend Jay's house, and I thought that was the best thing I'd ever had. But then I visited friends in Senegal, and I ate sea urchin pulled fresh out of the sea. It tasted like the ocean. — Alice Waters

I'm focused on the next generation, because I think it's very hard to break the habit of adults who've got salt and sugar addictions and just ways of being in this world. It's very hard even for the most enlightened people at famous universities that are very wealthy to spend the money that it takes to feed the students something delicious. — Alice Waters

I don't want food that comes from animals that are caged up and fed antibiotics. I am really suspicious of that kind of production of meat and poultry. — Alice Waters

I am an optimist of the first order. — Alice Waters

The way we subsidize food makes it cheaper to go to McDonald's and get a hamburger than a salad, and that's insane. It's pure government policy. — Alice Waters

My kitchen has a wood-burning oven, a large worktable, and windows all around, including one above the sink. I think whoever is washing the dishes needs to have a lot of beauty around. — Alice Waters

Teaching kids how to feed themselves and how to live in a community responsibly is the center of an education. — Alice Waters

The act of eating is very political. You buy from the right people, you support the right network of farmers and suppliers who care about the land and what they put in the food. — Alice Waters

I'm unwilling to eat food that has been adulterated. — Alice Waters

Because only slow food can teach us the things that really matter - care, beauty, concentration, discernment, sensuality, all the best that humans are capable of, but only if we take the time to think about what we're eating. — Alice Waters

Let things taste of what they are. — Alice Waters

Food should be cheap, and labor should be cheap, and everything should be the same no matter where you go; whether it's a McDonald's in Germany or one in California, it should be the same. And this message is destroying cultures around the world. Needless to say, agriculture goes with it. — Alice Waters

We've been so disconnected agriculturally and culturally from food. We spend more time on dieting than on cooking. — Alice Waters

I'm an optimist. I'm hopeful. — Alice Waters

It's hard to come into a new relationship with food unless you're engaged in an interactive way at an early age; it's hard to change your values. — Alice Waters

I'm always changing my work, as there are endless ways to think about food. — Alice Waters

I think the biggest impediment to fixing the food system in the United States is that we expect food to be cheap. We want to by other things with our money. We're so disconnected from agriculture - from the culture in agriculture. — Alice Waters

I eat meat, but no meat that isn't pastured is acceptable, and we probably need to eat a whole lot less. — Alice Waters

Create a garden; bring children to farms for field trips. I think it's important that parents and teachers get together to do one or two things they can accomplish well - a teaching garden, connecting with farms nearby, weave food into the curriculum. — Alice Waters

It is a fundamental fact that no cook, however creative and capable, can produce a dish of a quality any higher than that of its raw ingredients. — Alice Waters

It's around the table and in the preparation of food that we learn about ourselves and about the world. — Alice Waters

A lot of equipment can get in the way of the connection with food, with touching and feeling. — Alice Waters