It is not possible to pinpoint precisely when the adjective sustainable joined the ranks of fair trade, local, and natural as modifiers that signal virtuous food. A decade into the twenty-first century, it has become nearly as common in culinary palaver as the word organic—and, like organic, in danger of emasculation due to overuse. To wit: In 2010 the Sustainable Supply Steering Committee of McDonald’s Corporation announced, “McDonald’s vision for sustainable supply is a supply chain that profitably yields high-quality, safe products without supply interruption while leveraging our leadership position to create a net benefit by improving ethical, environmental, and economic outcomes.”
A major milestone on sustainable’s rise to the big time came in 2001 when chef Alice Waters and a group of students and faculty founded the Yale Sustainable Food Project in New Haven, the mission statement of which declared, “The world’s most pressing questions regarding health, culture, the environment, education and the global economy cannot be adequately addressed without considering the food we eat and the way we produce it.” Dining halls on the Yale campus have set a goal of serving 45 percent sustainable food by 2013; students who major in Environmental Studies can concentrate in Sustainable Agriculture.
While there is no cut and dried measure of the term (as there is for organic), to dub food sustainable means that eating it will not eventually kill it off. Furthermore, the word suggests that creation and consumption of the food enrich the earth rather than deplete it. Sustainable’s favorite things include small-scale production rather than agribusiness, the use of manure instead of chemical fertilizer, humane treatment of animals while they are raised and slaughtered, and happy farmers with an equitable stake in their product (aka fair trade), as opposed to downtrodden migrants. Conventional wisdom assumes that just as sustainable food enhances the well-being of the planet, it also is good for the health of individuals who eat it.