Bradford Heap (above right), Colorado chef and owner of farm-to-table restaurants Salt and Colterra in Boulder County, just made news by completely converting his restaurants’ food to non-GMO options. That includes eggs from chickens that aren't fed GMO corn; meat, which can't be finished on GMO grain (he’s also committed to meats free of “antibiotics, hormones, and torment”), vegetables, grains, hot sauce, cooking oils … everything.
I first learned about Brad’s non-GMO move earlier this week through an excellent article by Carol Maybach in 5280 magazine:
“If I won’t feed something to my own family, I am certainly not going to feed it to the people in my restaurants," [Heap] explains. …What’s most important, [he] says, is for the public to become educated on this topic. "[People] need to be inspired, like I was, by Tom Colicchio's Ted talk about the food policies of this nation," Heap says. "I know that if I serve factory-farmed food with GMOs to my customers, I’m just as guilty as the corporations in this pervasive situation."
Like Heap, I’m distrustful of the Monsantos and ConAgras of the world, who insist that there’s nothing wrong with GMOs but fight labeling tooth and nail. And I’m convinced that if more chefs like Heap take a similar stance—and if we vote with our pocketbooks by patronizing such restaurants—we'll start to see even more progress in our right to know what’s in our food.
“I’m mortified by the lack of [government] oversight on this,” Heap said today. “It's criminal to me.”
Photo courtesy of Salt Bistro.
