I was excited to learn that acclaimed chef and humanitarian Jose Andres will be the keynote speaker at next January’s FMI Midwinter Executive Conference in Marco Island, FL. In making the announcement, FMI said, “The food retail industry and Chef Andres are united by a common mission: delivering safe, nutritious food that enriches lives. Each operates on a global stage and has been on the frontline of humanitarian responses. And both cherish the communal joy that comes from sharing a meal.”
Andres will join FMI president and CEO Leslie Sarasin in a conversation that will explore these shared values, discussing the opportunities, leadership challenges and perspectives that Chef Andres brings to feeding families both in the U.S. and around the world.
“Jose Andres is a remarkable figure, a renaissance man whose work is equally influential across culinary innovation, humanitarian relief and global food policy,” said Sarasin. “Restaurateurs, grocers and food manufacturers share a mission to feed families and enrich lives; I look forward to the valuable perspectives that will surface in our conversation as we discuss current challenges, future opportunities and ways to master the momentum in our ever-evolving sector.”
Twice named one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People,” Andres is the founder and executive chairman of Jose Andres which operates nearly 40 restaurants. He is credited with popularizing Spanish cuisine in the U.S. and advancing food culture through multiple hit TV programs and other media ventures.
In 2010, Andres founded World Central Kitchen (WKC), a nonprofit that provides meals for those impacted by humanitarian and climate crises around the world. His team delivered more than 3.6 million meals in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria, and has partnered with Ukrainian restaurants and volunteers to serve hundreds of millions of meals during the conflict there. In 2023, Andres established the Global Food Institute at George Washington University to advance research and innovation in food policies and technologies.
Personally, I believe Chef Andres is a true hero – someone who has taken his fame and fortune and put it to work for the sake of many people in this world who have suffered – and will continue suffer – from crises of all types. As our country moves forward under a new administration starting in January, I expect that some of their decisions will ensure that we will experience many more climate crises in this country and around the world for many, many years to come. Chef Andres and his dedicated team will be needed more than ever. Kudos to FMI for highlighting his story and giving him a platform to share his ideas with our industry. Hopefully more of us will follow in his footsteps as a result.
Now that we’re well done with the long, hot summer, apple season is in full swing. It seems like every year we are introduced to a new variety of apple, which is why I was very surprised by an epicurious.com article by Matthew Zuras that I ran across recently titled, “Where Did All The Apples Go?” Apparently, at one time there were 17,000 varieties of apples in North America. Today, that number is closer to 4,500, but more than a dozen of those are unlikely to be found in the produce aisle of your neighborhood as many of those are only available a farmers’ markets pick-your-own orchards.
Early in our nation’s history, apple seeds were planted by the millions. Colonists arriving in the New World sowed the seeds of “keeper” varieties from home that had survived long transatlantic voyages, leading to an explosive proliferation of apple varieties across North America.
Something interesting that I didn’t know is that apples are “extreme heterozygotes” – which is to say that if you plant the seed of a McIntosh apple, for example, you’ll get something entirely different when that seedling eventually bears fruit. Like humans, most apples are diploids, meaning that they have a complete set of chromosomes from each of their parents. While they may carry the genetic lineage of their forebears, apples grown from seeds are not clones. The only way to keep McIntoshes – or Baldwins, or Winesaps, or any other cultivar – is by grafting a cutting from the original tree into rootstock.
The other thing to know is that, like the first colonists, apples were foreigners in North America. A few crabapple species are native to this continent, but they are not the apples that grew to dominate orchards. The apple we know of today comes from a hybrid species that originated in the Tian Shan mountains of what is now Kazakhstan. Over time, that species radiated outward, making its way to Russian and across the Middle East and, eventually, to Europe.
According to the article, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the first apples arrived in North America, but they pretty much came from the many parts of the world that settlers came from. Throughout the next two centuries, apple seed sowing continued, leading to new wild varieties across the continent.
Eventually, people turned from raising seedlings to selecting and grafting varieties that produced the best fruit for various purposes such as baking, cider making or eating out of hand. This process varied around the country leading each region to have its own collection of local varieties.
The fall of America’s love affair with the apple, Zuras found, arguably began at the same time the temperance movement was on the rise in the middle of the 19th century, who wanted to vanquish liquor – including cider – from the land.
The era of mechanization of the farm after the end of the Civil War – along with the expansion of railroads – also affected the broad variety of apples being grown. A shift away from subsistence farming and toward commercialization eventually led to a one-size-fits-all system of going to market, leading to the death of the small farm.
That consolidation of small farms into larger operations led to a focus on one or two apple varieties, with a focus on those that grew and ripened at the same time, streamlining the harvesting and marketing process. Sadly, the few apple varieties that survived were not selected for flavor or versatility so much as for beauty and hardiness in transportation and storage. That’s how the Red Delicious (which I personally don’t care for at all) became the ubiquitous variety of apple sold in supermarkets for a while.
Fortunately for today’s apple lover, the Red Delicious is in the rearview mirror for many customers as orchards large and small have begun to focus on growing other varieties, especially the heritage cultivars that were once deemed too imperfect for the market. And, new varieties have begun to proliferate as well, including the now seemingly omnipresent Honeycrisp (yum yum!), now the most planted apple in Washington and Minnesota.
Pretty, pretty, pretty interesting stuff…You should read the whole thing at epicurious.com/ingredients/history-of-apples.
Congrats to Tasha Museles and the entire team at the Children’s Cancer Foundation on another great gala. Like Chef Andres, the folks at CCF are doing wonderful work that makes lives better. We need more like them.
