Food writer Corby Kummer spoke Boston Public Radio on Tuesday of a new food movement in California that is attempting to reduce carbon footprints of restarants and to make meals more climate friendly by tacking on a surcharge to fund a pilot called Restore California. the program is just one system of numerous programs across the country to help restaurants be more sustainable.
"This is saying if every restaurant in the Bay Area. … If they could put a one percent surcharge that goes toward regenerative soil, which is caring about making the soil better for future generations, that’s even better than organic. That’s what matters now. So, this Restore California one percent surcharge, fancy restaurants are going along with it, they’re getting with the program."
Kummer said the fine dining restaurants are serving dishes like beef tartare sourced with meat from a ranch affiliated with a program to help fields absorb more carbon, local lavender, and toast created from Kernza, a "perennial grain with deep roots that helps restore prairie land."
Corby Kummer is executive director of the Food and Society policy program at the Aspen Institute, a senior editor at The Atlantic and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.
