When we think of women who have had an outsized impact on the food world, we tend to think first of chefs. And it’s true that powerhouse chefs like Julia Child and Edna Lewis have enormously influenced how we think about and prepare food. Today, in honor of Women’s History Month, we’re focusing on four women whose main contributions to the food world are not necessarily, or entirely, cooking.
Chef Ann Cooper, a.k.a. “The Renegade Lunch Lady,” is a chef, author, educator, and tireless advocate of nutritious food for young people. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, she worked more than 45 years as a cook and chef, 20 of them in school food programs including serving as Director of Food Services for Colorado’s Boulder Valley School District. Chef Ann is well known for helping kids develop a taste for real, healthy food (yay!). In 2009, she founded the Chef Ann Foundation whose mission is “to ensure that school food professionals have the resources, funding, and support needed to provide fresh, healthy, delicious, cook-from-scratch meals that support the health of children and the planet.” The Foundation website is also home to The Lunch Box – a web portal teeming with free and accessible tools, recipes, and resources to support schools transitioning to scratch-cooked, healthy meals.
Dr. Jessica B. Harris is a journalist, author, educator, culinary historian, and expert in African American cuisine. Among many honors, Dr. Harris holds lifetime achievement awards from both the Southern Foodways Alliance and the James Beard Foundation. Over the course of her long career, Dr. Harris has written extensively about the food and foodways of the African diaspora and envisioned the cafeteria for the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. She currently leads the Culinary Institute of America’s new African Diaspora Foodways initiative which includes the creation of a concentration in African Cuisines.
Dr. Marion Nestle is an expert in the politics of food and dietary choice. She is a consumer advocate, nutritionist, academic, and award-winning author whose work examines the scientific and socioeconomic influences on food choice and health, especially the role of food marketing. In 1996, she co-founded the Food Studies program at New York University, inspiring other universities to do the same. You can follow Dr. Nestle’s musings on her popular blog food politics.
Alice Waters is an American chef, restaurateur, author, and food activist. In 1971, at a time when the United States was all about frozen, canned, and fast food, she founded Chez Panisse, the Berkeley, CA restaurant considered by many as the launching pad of the modern farm-to-table movement. Ms. Waters became known for insisting on fresh, locally grown, and sustainable ingredients, and, as important, for fairly compensating her employees and farmer-suppliers. She also founded the Edible Schoolyard Project to educate, nurture, and empower youth through food.
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