How Do You Convince People to Eat Weeds?

Chez Panisse, the famed, ultra high-end Berkeley restaurant that has built its reputation on clean, local, organic food, could hardly feel further away from West Oakland, where fresh produce can be hard to find and the median household income is just under $36,000 per year. That’s something that the UC Berkeley statistics professor Philip Stark, who heads the Open Source Food project, readily acknowledges.

“There’s not a direct connection,” he says, between encouraging fine dining restaurants like Chez Panisse to prepare and serve weeds—yes, weeds—and convincing the residents of high-poverty neighborhoods like West Oakland to do the same.