Hawaii's Share Your Table

You'd be hard-pressed to find another food film shot as beautifully as Ingredients. In this era of food documentaries that expose the not-so-palatable aspects of where our food comes from, filmmaker Robert Bates instead brings to the table a movie that explores the pleasures of connecting with our farmers and how good products of the local food movement can taste.

Bates, a former long-time resident of Honolulu, is well-versed in food cinematography from directing the television series Hawaii Cooks with Roy Yamaguchi and The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter, for which he received a James Beard award. As Americans are beginning to question the way we eat in light of a current obesity epidemic, Bates says with his past experience filming food, “It's time for me to add something to the conversation.” With Ingredients, Bates explores what he calls “success stories” of the local food movement from Oregon to California to New York.

SYT sat down with Bates to talk about the motivation behind Ingredients, its application to Hawaii, and the future of an Ingredients Hawaii.



SYT: Why'd you make this movie?

RB: I knew that my children were at risk. When I understood that their generation's life expectancy was going to be shorter than myself, for the first time in American history, I thought: something's really wrong. And I just scratched the surface a little bit and discovered that a lot of it had to with that we had left seasonal eating patterns and that we were eating a tremendous amount of processed food.

SYT: Who's your audience?

RB: Curious eaters. Our film is the easy film to watch. Our film shows that these places that we often go travel to foreign countries to experience—village life, where you have this intense purity of food and flavor and expression in cuisine— is something that you can find something close to home. And you have to seek them out and support them.


SYT: Ingredients is primarily focused on food communities in Oregon. Do you plan on making an Ingredients Hawaii?

RB: Yes. The reason I'm interested in doing an Ingredients Hawaii is because there is a diabetes epidemic emerging here, [partially due to] increasing independence on imported and highly-processed food. Majken Mechling (director of the American Diabetes Association in Hawaii) said that a child born in 2000 in Hawaii has a two out of three chance of becoming a Type 2 diabetic. That is twice the national average.

But so here we have a huge opportunity [in agricultural land] and we have a big diabetes problem. And I think it's time for us to say "we can do this."

[Additionally], the local food community is food security. When you know the people who are growing your vegetables or raising the animals you consume, you know where that food is coming from. And that food is safe. Maybe more importantly—and this is why I really want to do the Ingredients Hawaii—is because it diversifies the economy. A stronger local food economy will create a stronger local economy.

SYT: What's the message of action in Ingredients?

Go home and cook. The great thing about food is it doesn't take public policy to buy food directly from the farmer. You can go do it. Seek the food out, grow food yourself. Cook regularly with your children, teach them how to eat, and you find that it's very pleasurable.