All You Can Eat
Seattle Times food writer Nancy Leson is on hiatus for the first half of 2012. Until she returns, Rebekah Denn will host the All You Can Eat blog.
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Rebekah Denn stepping in for Nancy
Rebekah Denn is a James Beard award-winning food writer and former Seattle Post-Intelligencer restaurant critic. She can be reached at rebekahdenn@gmail.com or on Twitter at @rebekahdenn
The 50 most powerful food folks in America?
One list ranked Seattle food safety lawyer Bill Marler among the most powerful food figures in America. Photo by Ken Lambert/Seattle Times
Who are the most powerful people in America when it comes to food? According to The Daily Meal, the Nifty Fifty is topped by the president of the Food Network, Brooke Johnson, who beat out Thomas Vilsack (#2), secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Next in the top 5 are Jeremy Stoppelman (co-founder and CEO of Yelp), Mike Duke (president and CEO of Walmart), and Indra Nooyi (chairman and CEO of PepsiCo).
A few Seattleites made the Meal's cut.
Craig Jelinek, the new CEO of Costco, came in at #15. Restaurateur-celebrity Mario Batali (as I said the other day, we still get to count him as a favorite son) was #22. And food safety lawyer Bill Marler, whose influence we have long chronicled, made the list at #46. A lot of mega-corporation heads ranked high, including those at Tyson, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, The Monsanto Company, and McDonalds. Daily Meal editorial director Colman Andrews (the co-founder of Saveur magazine) wrote that a high ranking didn't imply (or not imply) approval, it just reflected reality. "Putting the president of Subway above the director of the Monterey Bay Aquarium doesn't mean we think assembling foot-long chipotle chicken and cheese sandwiches is a nobler pursuit than monitoring and encouraging sustainable fisheries -- just that more Americans (sad to say) are probably affected by the former than the latter."
Andrews told the industry-oriented Smartblog that, while they got dinged for not including more farmers on the list, the toughest job by far was figuring out the order, not figuring out who to include.
"Is a key media figure really more powerful than the chairman of a multinational corporation? Should a celebrity chef outrank an anti-hunger activist?" he said in the interview. "We argued long and hard about relative position, coming up with an order that can be disputed endlessly but that we feel is ultimately justified."
Agree? Want to dispute the list endlessly? Take a look at the full 50 and let us know what you think.
May 23 - 5:30 AM Get a sitter -- please -- for these 10 great date-night restaurants
May 18 - 6:00 AM Whose fault is it when a recipe doesn't work?
May 17 - 6:00 AM CB's Nuts working for peanuts -- Washington-grown peanuts!
May 16 - 12:00 PM Former Seattle chef makes a (delicious) case for 'Pure Beef'
May 11 - 6:00 AM Weekend food picks: Cookbook swap, school lunch contest
News where, when and how you want it
Listen to Nancy on Wednesday at 5:30 a.m. and 7:35 a.m. during Morning Edition, and at 4:44 p.m. during All Things Considered and again the following Saturday at 8:30 a.m. during Weekend Edition on KPLU 88.5.
