Tempering the Flame of Idealism

There’s something about idealism that draws some people like moths to the flame. Yes, it’s quite flickeringly, hypnotically attractive—a warm, bright beacon cast into the inky black of night. But inevitably, that idealistic flame—however pure at the core—burns with the truth of big-picture realism that can send scorched ideas cascading to the ground.

Such thoughts have popped into my mind of late in the wake of the recent spate of PR for wild-caught fisheries. Although the aim of such campaigns, like the current “Vote With Your Fork!” drive, is often pointed in the right direction—here, trying to draw attention to the need to preserve wild habitats for salmon—they often do so at the expense of seeing the bigger picture and making nods toward similarly beneficial routes to raw-materials procurement.

Don’t get me wrong. I whole-heartedly support sustainable wild-catch fisheries. If I could have my way, I’d live on a craggy coast—which would be a quick jaunt from the mountains yet less than an hour from Chicago (or another big-shouldered, yet friendly, city worth its salt)—and regularly cast my own line into the sea like some rugged Hemmingway adrift with the tides.

Of course, we can’t always get what we want—or even need. No matter how hard I try, I’m not going to raise any appreciable mountains in Chicago. And even if we all had the opportunity to only eat wild-caught fish, there just wouldn’t be enough to go around to meet the needs of our growing world population that will increasingly rely on seafood—farmed seafood—for sustenance.

That’s why press releases like the recent one from North Coast Fisheries hit home with me. Sustainably farmed seafood—and other farmed and manufactured raw materials, for that matter—will undoubtedly play a big part on our future. It’s not all or nothing. It’s a bit from here, and a bit from there.

I haven’t given up the ghost of idealism. That flame singed my sensibility years ago, but it didn’t leave a charred, unrecognizable shell in its flickering shadow. It just tempered my outlook to encompass a larger world view.

Although some restaurant chefs might find it possible to live in a more-idealistic world, the rest of us rely on the efficiencies of modern technology to deliver our raw materials to grocery stores and processing plants (but it would be nice for chefs and other spotlit food-industry figures to put some muscle behind sustainable aquaculture). How manufacturers and farmers work together to align themselves—and their products—with emerging sensibilities can go a long way to paving an environmentally and economically sustainable path to the future.