Dan Barber is a celebrated young chef — but his passionate ethics and intellect have made him much more. He's out to restore food to its rightful place vis-à-vis our bodies, our ecologies and our economies. And he would do this by resurrecting our natural insistence on flavor.
Share Your Reflection >
Share Episode
Shortened URL
Guests
dan_barber.jpg
is chef and co-owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns. He's received James Beard Awards for best chef in 2006 and 2009, and was named one of the world's most influential people by Time.
Pertinent Posts
These short films tell the stories of — and share the perspectives of — eight family farmers who echo sentiments harbored deep within the core of most of us.
SoundSeen (our multimedia stories)
visual_feast.jpg
View the splendor of chef Dan Barber's succulent table directly from the diner's chair. These photographs of a nine-course meal might make you rethink that next trip to the local sandwich shop.
Video Interviews with Krista Tippett
inroombarber110519.jpg
Watch the renowned chef talk about his life-changing encounter with an apricot in France, and on why farmers markets and home gardens are a small slice of the regional food economies we need.
Selected Readings
alice_waters.jpg
Restaurateur and slow-food advocate Alice Waters describes her experience of a bouillabase in France and how it influenced her shopping habits and seafood selection on the menu.
Kindred Episodes
About the Image
Dan Barber gives a tour to Michelle Obama and other first ladies during a visit to Stone Barns Center in Pocantico Hills, New York on September 24, 2010.
Share a Reflection
Reflections
While I agree with Barber's concern for flavor, I find his economy simply pandering to the rich. Will his rich clients push the U.S. federal government to stop subsidizing Monsanto and ADM, and start supporting local farmers? I doubt it. I expect that should what geographers call the friction of distance start going up, making local products more competitive, the agri-giants will figure out how to produce flavorless 'food' closer to market, leaving full flavor for the wealthy few, completely rejecting Barber's trickle down ideas.
His reply to the vegetarian question, to me, sounded like an addict desperate to rationalize his eating meat, particularly with saying that geography necessitates eating meat while ignoring that New Jersey's piedmont plains, which grow vegetables very well when they aren't paved over, are closer to Manhattan than upstate New York and New England. His next answer about growing kosher spelt in New York was a partial rejection of his very supposition that only animal products do well in the north-eastern U.S., and his injection of adding manure as a way of improving the soil to defend eating meat ignores the fact that until the 20th century that manure would have come from the animals used to plow the fields, not factory farmed animals raised solely to kill and eat. He also mentions willingness to use technology, but ignores drying beans and canning as a few of the ways of providing vegetarian diets year round to everyone.
And what of global warming? earthsave.org says vegetarianism is the "Most Effective Tool Against Climate Change in Our Lifetimes".
Perhaps Barber should ask himself if humanity's willingness to abuse and exploit animals is the starting point for our willingness to abuse and exploit other people. Maybe then he wouldn't be so angry and abusive in his kitchens.
How about interviewing Will Allen (local food for the not-rich) or Colleen Patrick-Goudreau (vegan food for everyone)?
- reply
With all due respect, to say
With all due respect, to say that vegetarians don't commit "murder" is also a rationalization of valuing those creatures we humans find most like us over those, like plants, that don't mirror us as mammals. Plants don't have large eyes or cute button noses, so their lives don't have value. But the fact is, when you pick and eat a carrot, you kill it. As a Buddhist monk said, "The difference between killing a plant and an animal is that plants can't scream." Obviously we have to eat, and that act requires taking the life of another life form. That makes eating a serious act, and we should find ethical and eco-friendly ways to obtain our food. Also, the vegetables we eat often have a human cost. Many of those who grow and harvest our vege