Alex Atala’s activism disguises his own interests – 12/01/2023 – Cozinha Bruta

It took me a few days to digest Alex Atala’s speech at the opening of a series of lectures that preceded the 50 Best Restaurants in Latin America awards.

The chef said, verbatim:

“I see many consumers who come to the supermarket shelf and say: ‘this Brazilian olive oil is more expensive than what came from abroad, so I’m going to buy the imported one’. But, yes, pay more for a Brazilian cheese, for a Brazilian wine . Great ingredients in Europe are not produced by large industries but by small artisans.”

Alex and I are in the same trench. We both defend quality food, access to good ingredients and regulatory mechanisms to curb abuses in the food industry.

His statement, however, goes down as smoothly as a sip of rattlesnake cachaça.

The chef’s imperative hurts: “pay more”. Alex reprimands the consumer who dares to choose what he will put in the grocery cart based on the price.

It can be deduced, from his words, that all the problems of artisanal production in Brazil stem from the lack of civility on the part of the consumer. If he were less stingy and individualistic, everything would go smoothly – since producers, distributors and promoters act with the most perfect excellence.

When mentioning the “supermarket shelf”, Alex points his dissatisfaction to a very specific consumer: the urban guy from São Paulo, Rio or Brasília, who has money and education, but has never seen a cow in person.

You forget to mention the financial strength needed to position a national olive oil alongside Borges and Andorinhas on the Sugarloaf Mountain gondola. It is worth distinguishing the “small artisans” from the bucolic heirs.

The artisanal flour that reaches supermarkets is not the flour produced for generations in a donkey-powered mill in the Serra dos Cafundós at the end of the world. You can find it in the outback, at the MST fair and, in the cities, in markets operated by specialized intermediaries – like Alex Atala himself.

Supermarket crafts have a business plan, goals and a marketing department. They also have tradition: a tradition of accumulating capital.

Especially in the interior of São Paulo, the “revolution” of olive oil, wine and cheese is supported by families who have been sitting on a pile of money from agribusiness, mining and other non-artisan activities for decades.

It’s not a rich man’s hobby because rich people don’t have hobbies, they do business. Absolutely legit. It is also legitimate to stop buying your products when you consider them too expensive.

Alex Atala disguises the lobbying for personal and corporate interests as social activism – here encompassing the entire chain that supports so-called haute cuisine, including journalists and influencers.

He does the right thing by defending his. He slips badly when calling for collectivism for the subsistence of the production of luxury items by wealthy families.

Without euphemism, artisanal food is a luxury in Brazil. Gastronomy is luxury. Buy whoever can and wants to.

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