Enjoying Summer’s Bounty

A recent headline in The New York Times read, “Told to Eat Its Vegetables, America Orders Fries.”

Convincing Americans to eat their vegetables is an enormous, ongoing challenge. Kim Severson, author of the Times article, concedes the difficulty and writes, “Good luck. Despite two decades of public health initiatives, stricter government dietary guidelines, record growth of farmers’ markets and the ease of products like salad in a bag, Americans still aren’t eating enough vegetables.”

Let’s face it — vegetables are a tough sell. Lack of convenience is cited as one of the problems. Most vegetables require some preparation, and many of us don’t have the time or the inclination to go to the trouble. Supermarkets have attempted to make it easy for us — washing our salad greens, cutting up carrots, trimming celery — but the added labor makes them more expensive.

Organic vegetables are more expensive still. And transporting vegetables from far away adds to the costs, and at the same time, results in loss of flavor.

Cost is a problem, but so is availability. In the city’s low-income neighborhoods, where supermarkets are scarce, it’s even tougher. It’s easy to find beer, sugary soft drinks and candy at the corner store, but nary a vegetable. Today’s kids have grown up on fast food and packaged foods, and they’re much more likely to reach for the them or, at most, those French fries, than for vegetables. America has developed quite a sweet tooth, and for the most part vegetables aren’t sweet.

Many of our chefs voice concern about this problem. “We need to have more of a relationship with vegetables,” says Michelin star-studded chef Alain Ducasse. He recalls growing up on his grandmother’s farm, eating seasonal vegetables, and admits to trying to promote eating more vegetables for 20 years. “Now” he says, “it is slowly changing.”

He’s right. It is beginning to change. There’s a new generation of young people who are becoming conscious of where their food comes from. They want to eat locally grown produce, whether they grow it themselves or buy it at farmers’ markets or the grocery store. And when summer produce is at its peak, there’s reason to celebrate. At no other time of year does it take so little effort to prepare exceptionally satisfying vegetable dishes.