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The Year in Food 2006

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Published on Monday, December 11, 2006, by The CHOW Editorial Team / Edit Post

Following in the footsteps of Britain’s Jamie Oliver, former president Bill Clinton added another page to his do-gooding portfolio this year by broadening his charge against childhood obesity to include fast food and sodas. The policy-wonk heartthrob has a personal stake in the topic, having weighed 210 pounds at age 15. Clinton’s campaign has been complemented on the local level by the likes of Ann Cooper, a chef from the Berkeley, California, area who was hired to get kids to eat healthier food at school. For Cooper, the fight has been about more than just obtaining fresher, healthier ingredients; it’s also been about getting finicky kids to eat something other than pizza.—James Norton

Food-industry conferences aren’t so different from other industry conferences, except the buffet table is better. Three large ones—Fusión in Madrid, Taste3 in Napa, and Slow Food’s Terra Madre in Turin—found mainstream footing this year, appreciably upping the navel-gazing quotient. The events tended to stick to familiar ground: recognizing trends (“Cheese trolleys and trays: A booming fashion”—seriously), identifying next waves, and studying how the global market impacts craft. The good things that come out of all this intellectualizing: widening awareness of issues like ancient baking methods and the secrets to the best cup of coffee that eventually trickle down to you, the consumer.—Davina Baum

Americans got concerned about the way their wine was made. “A lot of people are looking at or asking for biodynamic and organic wines,” says Matt Deuriendt, general manager of Brooklyn, New York, wine shop Smith & Vine. (Biodynamics is a method of organic farming that takes into account things like the phases of the moon and considers the land and soil a living organism.) The wine world responded. Last October, heavy-hitter Fetzer Vineyards turned on a 75,000-square-foot solar array built atop its bottling plant that will provide 80 percent of the plant’s power. Fetzer joins smaller, 100-percent-solar-powered vineyards such as Cline Cellars and Frog’s Leap.—Jason Horn

Au Revoir Foie
Chicago is one of the eatin’-est cities in the country, but the idea of delicacy is not something most Chicagoans wrestle with very well. Sausage? Hell yes. Foie gras? Hold on a minute. Thus, there was relatively little alarm when Chicago aldermen heeded the call of anti-cruelty advocates and voted in April to ban the stuff. But then came major controversy. Mayor Daley called the ban “silly” and “embarrassing,” and a move to repeal the ban is already emerging. It would seem that the only thing harder to stomach than animal cruelty is national ridicule.—Aemilia Scott

The raw-milk underground got the spotlight this year. Nina Planck’s book Real Food: What to Eat and Why (Bloomsbury USA, 2006) included a passionate endorsement of raw-milk cooperatives, which are more popular than ever. But the trend hasn’t made public health officials happy—they cite the pathogens, such as salmonella and streptococcus, sometimes carried by the unpasteurized milk. Many states have cracked down. In Michigan, for example, a massive raid on a farmer supplying raw milk included at least ten officers and an undercover agent.—Nicholas Day

Whole Foods Market made it harder for urban shoppers to enjoy one of summer’s most beloved meals—a whole boiled lobster—in June. After an extensive study, management chose to stop selling live lobsters and soft-shell crabs, citing ethical concerns. The crustaceans, it seems, inevitably face some miserable and dangerous living conditions as they make their way along the lengthy Whole Foods supply chain. But we can’t help but look at bans in 2006 on foie gras and trans fats and think, is this the start of a new era of culinary martial law?—Jessica Battilana

The New York City health department passed a ban this year on trans fats, the artery-clogging lipids present in hydrogenated oils. This led to a similar proposal in New Jersey and sparked impassioned responses from the restaurant industry and consumer-rights advocates. At NYC’s first public hearing in October, the ban received overwhelming support. New Year’s Day 2006 was the deadline for food manufacturers to list trans fats on their labels, and this growing awareness—along with a lawsuit filed in June by a Maryland doctor—prompted a growing chain reaction among fast-food joints.—Christy Harrison

It’s official: Buying organic is no longer a grass-roots movement. Superstores such as Wal-Mart have ramped up sales of organic brands, and labels such as Cascadian Farm and Silk are now owned by food giants General Mills and Dean, respectively. As organic has gone mainstream, consumer fears about quality have spiked as well. This isn’t mere hippie hysteria; organic standards are vulnerable to redefinition, and corporations hold a lot of political sway.—Aemilia Scott

The controversial bovine growth hormone (rBGH), a 15-year-old Monsanto product that can boost a cow’s production by at least 10 percent, may be slowly disappearing from America’s milk. Years of complaints from consumer groups, who link it to various diseases and claim it overstresses cows, have suddenly snowballed: This fall, two major New England dairies announced they’d only buy hormone-free milk. The trend’s even reaching the shelves in Monsanto’s hometown, St. Louis. If rBGH use dies out, it’ll be in part because dairy is where many Americans draw the line: Milk has long been the gateway drug of the organic market.—Nicholas Day

Greener Waters Slow Food USA held its first-annual Sustainable Seafood Gala this September in Washington, D.C., confirming that ethical seafood sourcing has become an “it” issue in the food world. Forward-thinking chefs, such as Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin and Peter Hoffman of Savoy, have long supported the sustainable-seafood movement, but now big food producers and distributors are getting on the boat, so to speak. Earlier this year, Wal-Mart announced that it would begin selling sustainably procured fish, certified by the Marine Stewardship Council. And in February, socially responsible catering giant Bon Appétit Management persuaded its parent company to adopt a new sustainable-seafood purchasing policy. The shift comes just in time: A study published in November reports that our oceans have only 50 more years of fish left in them.—Christy Harrison