What's Eating America with Andrew Zimmern is shining a light on food-related society issues. The 5-part series is running on MSNBC Sunday nights at 9 pm Eastern.
The opening episode devoted 2 hours to the ties between immigration and the food supply. Subsequent episodes covered climate change, addiction with voting rights and fresh food fail coming up.
The immigration and climate change episodes relate all too well to food supply concerns in the United States. Great to have a 5-part series, but wish all the episode were devoted to concerns in the food supply chain.
The addiction episode was more about Zimmern's addiction issues and the impact of alcohol and drugs in the bar and restaurant industry. The voting rights and voting suppression issue is crucial, but looks to be not really food-related.
The food system is also about who is involved in your food
In the immigration episode, you might have recognized Cristina Martinez, who runs a popular barbacoa restaurant in Philadelphia. Full Frontal with Samantha Bee profiled the impact of immigration on food in 2018.
Samantha Bee, a documented immigrant herself (she's from Canada), guided the audience through a path of undocumented immigrants in kitchens. Bee talked with Martinez at her popular barbacoa restaurant in Philadelphia as well as undocumented restaurant employees who didn't want their identity revealed.
Behind the jokes, Stephen Colbert shines light on plight of farm workers
Colbert Report to shine spotlight on farm workers and their sacrifices
Zimmern points out that these are skilled workers given the work that they are doing and that most Americans won't do. He notes that immigration reform would extend the use of food trucks to bring different cultures at lunchtime.
Watching Zimmern pick strawberries shows the need for immigrant workers. Watching that footage reminded us of Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report taking us through the arduous process of picking fruits and vegetables.
Zimmern's style is easygoing, curious, and relatable to people of all classes. The show bounces to all parts of the country whether that is the lack of perch in Lake Michigan to the dead oysters in Apalachicola Bay, Florida. Chef and humanitarian José Andrés helps out in the immigration episode.
168 hours in a week should be long enough for cable news to cover food-related topics. Sadly, that isn't true. Zimmern is a chef who does a lot of television and knows the impact of food in our society. 6 hours is not a long time to cover food issues. The show hopefully will inspire more food journalism on cable TV news.
What's Eating America with Andrew Zimmern runs Sunday nights at 9 pm Eastern on MSNBC. You can catch up (with authentication) on previous episodes.
photos credit: What's Eating America with Andrew Zimmern/MSNBC
Comments