How It All Started
When Greg and I started working on Food Forward almost two years ago, we knew we needed a quick and direct way to describe the show–an elevator pitch. Early on we settled with calling Food Forward “a sustainable food TV show.” That worked pretty well. Everyone seemed to get it. But then I started to question it. What does sustainable mean to me? What does it mean to other people?
The word sustainable gets thrown around a lot these days and it’s in danger of losing its meaning because it’s used so indiscriminately. But I think the term has value as long as we define it. I’m using the word in it’s literal sense: sustainable is an activity that has the capacity to endure. Indefinitely. That’s a lofty goal. For most human endeavors it’s probably unattainable. But that’s OK. I’d rather have the bar set very high, higher than we can reach.
We’ve since come to describe Food Forward as “a show about people who are changing the way we eat in America–for the better.” But it’s still a sustainable food TV show. The people we’re profiling are helping to create a new and higher standard for how we feed ourselves. The work that they are doing may not be sustainable in my literal sense of the word but each of them aspires (and inspires) to reach higher.
