MADRID — “I could have all the digital recipes in the world, but my heart wants something formulaic and classic, written down in a book,” food writer Alicia Kennedy wrote in one of her latest newsletters about what makes a cookbook.
Her desire seems to be fairly common, judging from the wave of cookbooks and other publications that tackle all aspects of food production. And among those, a special trend appears: making the act of eating (and the previous act of consumption, as well as the subsequent act of waste) a fair activity with a responsible impact on the planet.
Kennedy’s own 2023 book, No Meat Required, perfectly illustrates this thriving reality in the publishing sector. Her book delves into all the debates and open fronts — vegetarian and vegan food, its relationship with the capitalist system — and develops an exercise of memory and recognition with a racial perspective of the plant-based culinary tradition.
The question of what we eat, how we cook, where our food comes from and whose hands come into contact with it — from its production to the moment it is served on the table — is a pertinent concern in the climate conversation. But it’s also an infinite thread to pull on to discover all kinds of stories that have an obvious connection to our most everyday reality: the fact that we eat every day.
Specialized publishers
Spanish specialized publisher and bookstore Tabletimes has a collection of reading curiosities around the subject of eating. Its digital catablog is full of colorful and varied titles. From a book on the intersection of mushrooms and art, to a text on the food-based approach to death, to a range of recipe books (practical, experimental, with an irreverent approach or with an emphasis on memory). The curation is proof that there is much to say — and to read — about food.
Some cookbooks are close to relics. And you don’t have to go to a specialized bookstore: on Amazon there are books (sometimes out of print) whose original editions reach surprising prices. This is the case of Diet for a Small Planet, by U.S. researcher Frances Moore Lappé, one of the first plant-based recipe books with an ecological approach in Western culture which. As Kennedy points out, Lappé avoided the concept of vegetarianism because of the negative reactions it could provoke — already in 1971.
But perhaps the most striking case is that of The Taste of the Mediterranean, by Spanish chef Ferrán Adrià of the world-renowned El Bulli restaurant. A coveted 1993 edition is priced at more than 3,700 euros.
The social impacts of the food chain
At the same time, recent publications from both specialized and mainstream publishers also show an interest in delving deeper into everything surrounding cooking. This is the case of the book by Spanish historian Vanessa Quintanar Cabello, which looks at the social and culinary impact of foods from the Americas on European populations in the Modern Age.
Along this path, specialized publications have also emerged that are not only concerned about eco-responsible cooking, but also emphasize the way in which food production affects the living conditions of those who cultivate or process our food. This is the case of Civil Eats, in the United States, but also of the interest shown by general newspapers in strengthening their gastronomic sections, previously almost exclusively dedicated to recipes and restaurant reviews.
The story of food is a story of coexistence with nature and of memory.
In this context, publications such as The New York Times wonder about the deforestation of Mexican forests, promoted by the U.S. enthusiasm for eating avocados, or social media profiles such as Jornaleras de Huelva en Lucha (Day Laborers of Huelva in Struggle) give visibility to the unfair and painful conditions of women who work picking strawberries in the Andalusian fields.
The story of food is a story of coexistence with nature and of memory. Whether it is respect for the sacrifice of the women who fed the world with their slave labor in the kitchen to the olive trees now felled by Israeli army soldiers in Palestinian territory, whose leaves are woven into the iconic Keffiyeh scarf, none of this is any longer foreign to the people who write, edit, read and think about food.
Diverse approaches to eating
The Malaga-based publishing house Col&Col focuses on thinking, enjoying and sharing anything connected to the act of eating. Its catalog includes both a recipe book taken from Studio Ghibli films and a line of reflective texts on cooking, selected by specialized journalist Lakshmi Aguirre.
“The criteria are varied because the world of gastronomy is varied: from the brainy reflection to the traditional recipe, from the mixture of artistic disciplines to the consecrated author,” publisher Aurelia Duchemin tells Climática.
“Talking about what we eat, how we eat or how we live is portraying the world we are in.”
The publisher, who is preparing the launch of titles such as a translation of Eating to Extinction, by British journalist Dan Saladino, also adopts this ecological perspective, bringing readers an analysis of the food sector.
“Eating is also a way of being in the world, there is a lot of posturing in the world of gastronomy, and there are great gurus who sell only big phrases with nothing inside,” says Duchemin, who warns of the vampirization of terms such as sustainability. “Talking about what we eat, how we eat or how we live is portraying the world we are in; reading and contrasting ideas is the only way to see clearly or, at least, to confirm whether what we do is coherent or not.”
Need for collective action
Claudia Polo, known on social networks as @soulinthekitchen, has just published Entorno (Surrounding), a particular cookbook that invites us to think and take care of what surrounds us, and a passionate defense of a pantry composed of local products, sensitive to the ecoregion and the impact that food has on it.
“We are in a very interesting moment, very effervescent, because both at a journalistic level and at a social level there is a trend (transversal to several sectors) that consists of this return to the natural, to what is unprocessed. A trend that is both used for profit but also makes total sense, since we are in a climate emergency. Talking about the producer, the land or the impact is a reflection of this situation,” Polo says.
Broadly speaking, there is an increasingly-aware audience, connected to the environment and conscious of the different social struggles, says Polo, who regrets the gap that still exists between discourse and collective action.
“These conversations at the social level are important to then move on to action, but a little more is missing — a mobilization, to put commitments into practice,” she says, “At the individual level, many things can be done, but even if it is a conscious decision, we need a collective mobilization, to think in terms of the neighborhood, the city, as an entity that works with the action of everyone. Here I think there is a lot of work to be done”.
Perhaps the impulse Polo is talking about could begin — in the context of our times — in the pages of one of these books.
