Clark Wolf is the host and organizer. The panel—on food and politics—includes me, talking about my memoir, Slow Cooked, An Unexpected Life in Food Politics; Chloe Sorvino, author of Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat; Alex Prud’homme, author of Dinner With The President: Food, Politics and the History of Breaking Bread at the White House; and Tanya Holland, author of Tanya Holland’s California Soul. Free, but register here. It starts at 5:00 p.m. and lasts one hour.
by Marion Nestle
Feb
6
2016
Weekend Reading: Forked! (It’s just out)
Saru Jayaraman. Forked: A New Standard for American Dining. Oxford University Press, 2016.
I did a blurb for this one, for good reason. Saru Jayaraman is doing important work on behalf of low-wage restaurant workers, most of them immigrants and women. This book is her manifesto.
That restaurant workers can be paid as little as $2.13 an hour, and require taxpayer-supported food assistance to survive, is a national scandal. Forked tells the stories of enlightened restaurant owners who treat and pay workers decently, with immediate returns in employee loyalty, better customer service—and profits. This book should inspire all restaurant owners to take the “high road,” and all of us restaurant customers to demand that they do.
Read it and join the campaign for decent pay for restaurant workers, farm workers, and everyone else who is excluded from minimum-wage requirements.