Trying to eat "right" gets more complicated all the time. Instead of just thinking about price and convenience and health when I shop, I'm balancing those basics with worries about mercury and pesticides, animal cruelty and bisphenol-A, and other potential problems on a list that never seems to end. (Moldy tomato paste? What?!)
I've developed personal rules over the years for what to buy and what to avoid, and I shift gears as new information comes along... but sometimes I would sure love an expert to push my shopping cart and help me do right by the world as well as myself. Someone who's educated on the issues, someone who's smart and funny and full of heart, and a fine chef, and...wait! She's here!
Well, not here. She's on the pilot of Mission: Sustainable, a reality show hoping to become the "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy" of sustainable living. Chef Becky Selengut stars in the food segment, giving the chosen family a kitchen "makeover" to help achieve a greener and healthier life. (Other parts of the show deal with other areas of the family's home and habits). Becky, who is writing a book on sustainable seafood, rummages through the family's fridge and shelves and finds plenty to warn them about. There's high-fructose corn syrup, which she tells them is the "canary in the coal mine" that indicates they're eating highly processed foods. The sweetener is even part of their breakfast sausage, along with MSG and preservatives and commodity pork. She unearths transfats and suspect cake mixes, imported farmed shrimp that she warns are often raised in gross conditions -- but when she comes back to discuss her findings, the shrimp are gone. They had been eaten in the interim. Oops.
Well, never mind. "For everything I've mentioned here, there's a good alternative," she tells the family, and takes them shopping to prove just that.
At one of Seattle's top fish shops, she tips a whole sardine toward her mouth, shows the group a farmed fish they can eat with a clear conscience (Arctic char), and finally takes them home to whip up a fine dinner of Louisiana prawns and grits. Oh, and she bestows them with a gift bag of quality substitutes for their pantry no-nos.
Part of the fun of watching the show come together in Seattle was seeing the rather sustainable way it was put together itself. It was filmed on a budget of less than $1,000 -- that's not even a shoestring, it's an aglet. Participants all donated their time. They put together a big-league "green carpet" premiere through donations big and small. The premiere sold out, all 1,000 seats. (Did I mention the creator is only 23?)
Their goal now is to get the show picked up by a cable network. Intrigued? The pilot is now online here. Jealous? Nominate yourself for a makeover of your own!
-- Rebekah Denn
