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It's kind of sad to first learn about a trailblazer in your field when they are already gone. Such was the case with Joan Dye Gussow, whose obituary in the New York Times was headlined, "Pioneer of Local Eating, Dead at 96." The subhead: "An indefatigable gardener, she was one of the first nutritionists to emphasize the connections between farming practices and consumers’ health."
My best explanation is that when I launched my second career as a Good Food advocate after I moved to Chicago in 2011, Joan Gussow was in her eighties and not in the news. Prior to my move, my engagement with the better food movement was strictly as a consumer and home cook.
According to the Times obit, Ms. Gussow was one of the first in her field to emphasize the connections between farming practices and consumers’ health. Her book “The Feeding Web: Issues in Nutritional Ecology” (1978) influenced the thinking of the writers Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver and others.
The obit continued:
"Ms. Gussow, an indefatigable gardener and a tub-thumper for community gardens, began deploying the phrase 'local food' after reviewing the statistics on the declining number of farmers in the United States. (Farm and ranch families made up less than 5 percent of the population in 1970 and less than 2 percent of the population in 2023.)
"As Ms. Gussow saw it, the disappearance of farms meant that consumers wouldn’t know how their food is grown — and, more critically, wouldn’t know how their food should be grown."
I now know that our growing community of advocates owes a great deal to Joan Dye Gussow, who was a relatively lonely voice for a better-for-people-and-the-planet food system when she first gained prominence a half-century ago.
One person who was very much aware of Gussow's leadership role is Erin Meyer, a nutritionist and founder of the Chicago-based Basil's Harvest non-profit, which takes a science-based approach to understanding the connection between soil health and human health.
The following is Erin's tribute to Joan Dye Gussow, which she posted on LinkedIn.
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Remembering Joan Gussow: A Pioneer Who Shaped Our Food System
It is with a heavy heart that I share the passing of Joan Dye Gussow, a true visionary in nutrition education and sustainable food systems. As a dietitian and food systems leader, I stand on the shoulders of giants like Joan, whose unwavering commitment to connecting our plates to planetary health forever changed our profession.
Joan understood long before most that "we are what we eat, but we are also what we grow." Her pioneering work challenged us to look beyond nutrients to the ecological footprint of our food choices. She taught us that nutrition isn't just about personal health—it's about the health of our communities and our planet.
What I admired most about Joan was her practical wisdom. While advocating for sustainable food systems, she lived her values through her legendary garden, growing her own food well into her 90s. Her books, especially "This Organic Life," inspired countless practitioners like me to embrace both the science of nutrition and the art of growing and preparing food.
As we continue our work at Basil's Harvest connecting farms to health, Joan's legacy lives on. She showed us that dietitians must be not just health advocates but environmental stewards and social change agents.
Thank you, Joan, for planting seeds of wisdom that will nourish generations to come.
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