EP 128: Designing the Future of Food | Dan Barber
This week we talk about how real food is the best medicine.
Dan Barber is chef and co-owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York, and the author of The Third Plate. A fierce advocate for sustainable, ethical farming and cooking, Barber’s opinions on food and agricultural policy have appeared in The New York Times and other publications. He also co-founded Row 7 Seed Company, which brings together chefs and plant breeders to develop new varieties of vegetables and grains. Barber has received multiple James Beard awards including Best Chef: New York City (2006) and Outstanding Chef (2009). President Barack Obama appointed him to serve on the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, Sports & Nutrition. Barber continues his work to blur the line between the dining experience and the educational, bringing the principles of good farming directly to the table.
This episode was recorded live at the 2023 Aspen Ideas: Health Festival. Special thanks to the Aspen Ideas team for making this happen! Bon also wrote a blog post for the event, 5 Reasons Why Clinicians Should Think Like Designers.
Episode mentions and links:
Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture
Book: The Third Plate
Chef Dan Barber brings new veggie varieties to the aisle with Row 7 Seed Company
Michael Mazourek: Culinary Breeding Network
Dan’s photo credit: Richard Boll
Follow Blue Hill: Twitter | Insta
Episode Reflection:
I have wanted to travel to experience Blue Hill at Stone Barnes located in the verdant Hudson Valley (not far from the fabled Sleepy Hollow) since the moment I heard about it. As a kid born to Italian parents who decided to settle in the Hudson Valley, NY. I didn’t fully appreciate how I was surrounded by such beautiful and fertile lands. My grandfather, who spent much of his later years with us in the States, would tend a huge garden in our backyard full of many Italian standards like zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, and all sorts of funky odd-shaped beans. I remember him dragging me outside first thing in the morning and showing me how to check the zucchini flowers for bugs before picking them to fry up for breakfast, a dish that remains one of my favorite nostalgic dishes to cook. For the uninitiated, the Hudson Valley is also apple country and like many who lived in this area, we had a small orchard of apple trees behind our house with a few quinces, and pears sprinkled in. I remember the incredible amount of work it was managing the few trees we had. But more vividly, I remember the incredible flavor of these apples (at least the few that we’d manage to get before the squirrels and bugs got to them) that came from the old growth heirloom trees that had been growing in our backyard as long as anyone could remember. When there were no fruits or vegetables to pick, Nonno would be out back foraging for wild dandelion greens that he would prepare simply, steamed garlic with olive oil. Thinking back to how unique this land really was, its no surprise to me that the place where Dan has chosen to mount his food revolution is at Blue Hill at Stone Barnes which resides on this same fertile land.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, on this week’s episode, Dan enlightened us on some pretty somber facts about the state of industrialized food in this country. There are so many parallels between the intervention-obsessed tendencies of the food and healthcare industries that I never fully appreciated until now. The real key learning for me this week though comes down to the fact that these systems are not accidental or natural. Industrialized food and healthcare are designed systems that were created through intentional decisions that prioritize a particular version of reality. As Dan so clearly points out, the butternut squash on your store shelf doesn’t have to be flavorless and the tradeoffs between volume and quality may not be as concrete as we’ve come to believe.
So here's a thought: what if we, like Dan, placed flavor (aka experience) above volume in healthcare? Would it truly be more expensive, less productive, and riskier? Or are these false assumptions thrust upon us by decision-makers who never cared to understand how something can be both enjoyable, good for you, and profitable? As Dan stated, is it so wrong to take such a hedonistic perspective? I think Bon’s right, a show with chefs and doctors would be pretty awesome. Maybe we can fix both industrialized food and healthcare by bringing these two closely related relatives together! This week’s episode with Dan was one of my favs and I’m sure you’ll love it too!
— Farewell, for now. —
If you’ve already listened to the episode, you heard from Bon that this will be our last show for a little while. Making this show has been such an incredible experience. We couldn’t have done it without our amazing guests who gave their time to help us answer the question, “How might we design healthier lives?” And to the listeners out there who have given us so much love and tuned in each week, thank you so much for your support! We see you and we are truly honored that you have found value and purpose in this labor of love.
Just because Bon and I are taking a little break from the show doesn't mean we're slowing down. Quite the opposite! If you ever wanna a chat or have a brilliant idea to share, don't hesitate to reach out. Stay connected by following our work at healthdesignlab.com and by catching up with us on social media. You can find our contact info on designlabpod.com, and you can always revisit any favorite or missed episodes on your preferred podcast platform. We sincerely appreciate you joining us on this journey, let's continue striving to create a better world through better design!
Written by Rob Pugliese
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Bon Ku: I'm Bon Ku the host of Design Lab. It's a podcast that explores the intersection of design and health. Our guest today is Dan Barber. He is the chef and co-owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York. He's the author of The Third Plate.
Dan's a fierce advocate for sustainable ethical farming and cooking. His opinions on food and agricultural policy have appeared in many publications like the New York Times.
He also co-founded Row Seven Seed Company. It brings together chefs and plant breeders to develop new varieties of vegetables and grains. Dan has received multiple James Beard awards, including best chef and outstanding chef. President Barack Obama appointed Dan to serve on the president's council on physical fitness, sports, and nutrition.
Dan blurs the line between the dining experience and the educational by bringing the principles of good farming directly to the table. We've recorded this conversation at the 10th annual Aspen Ideas Health Festival. It's a gathering of some of the most creative people I have ever met.
I want to give a shout out to the Aspen Ideas team who allowed us to use their podcasting studio so Dan Barber and I could have this great conversation.
This show is actually number 128 for us. We started this podcast way back in September of 2020. It's been a labor of love. It's given me such great joy. We have listeners all over the world. Thank you for being part of our journey. I'm going through some major life changes right now. So we're going to take a pause on this podcast for the Summer.
But I hope to continue the show in some form or another in the future. It's so inspiring when our listeners reach out to us and tell us why they like to show what they learn from the guests. So please continue to do that. I'm still on social on Twitter. And on Instagram, you could reach out to me there. I would love to hear from you. Now here's my conversation with chef Dan Barber. Dan, welcome to Ideas Health Festival. I know you just got off a plane and really, really appreciate you making some time.
Dan Barber: Pleasure to be here. Yeah,
Bon Ku: so we were talking, before that my dream podcast would be.
Podcasts with doctors and chefs on it. And I, I love it. I think a lot about food, but I took one nutrition class in medical school and I'm ill prepared to tell my patients about how to eat healthier. So I wanna start off with the first question is, why is our current food system so bad for our health?
Dan Barber: Well, you just tipped it off right there. I mean, it's, it's the idea that intervention is the cure to health. Mm-hmm. You know, that's it. Because you don't teach prevention, in medical or, or you teach it very lightly. Mm-hmm. You know, and, and that's what agriculture is.
Agriculture in our country is intervention. That's not prevention. Mm. So you have a, a system based on growing in weak environments. Weak environments are environments where, There's not a lot of diversity like monocultures. Mm-hmm. That's a weak environment. Exquisitely vulnerable to like, what, what does that mean?
Bon Ku: Monoculture
Dan Barber: for those? Oh, mono. Mono. Those mono. A monoculture is one variety of one thing grown in a very large expanse, and it makes you just exquisitely vulnerable to almost everything. I mean, if there's one dictate of nature, it's that it doesn't want to be the same. Mm. Yeah. Just look out the window.
Yeah. I mean, how many shades of green and, and grasses and, and trees. And bushes and the rest, that's what nature wants to be, you know? Mm-hmm. And so when you get into agriculture, you're manipulating that to a certain extent. But the trick for good agriculture and good health, is to mimic what we're looking at outside our window.
Hmm. Uh, that's extreme diversity. Okay? So you can have both diversity, which is an ecologically resilient ecosystem or environment. And produced a lot of food. A lot of food. I mean, look, regions have been doing that. Civilization have been doing that for, 10,000 years. You know, it's just recently. Yeah.
Like a hundred years. You know, really that is the American experiment with turning that equation on its head. And the equation is, we're gonna do everything that we can do to prevent a pest or a fungal disease. Mm-hmm. Or a, you know, a root crop illness by doing several things, most of them based on intense diversity.
Mm-hmm. And what we've done is said, no, we're going to use technology to grow one variety of one thing. Mm-hmm. Over a huge landmass. And our answer to problems when they present themselves, because they present themselves pretty quickly. Yeah. Is a chemical intervention, whether it's a pesticide or fungicide or herbicide.
I would suggest to you now I'm extending that analogy between the two white coats, that that is very much how we look at the medical profession because intervention. We have gotten, you have gotten very good at, it's very persuasive. Yeah. Because prevention is very hard to pin down.
Bon Ku: And, uh, the food as medicine movement has been gaining in popularity, but.
I heard you say something interesting. You said food as vaccine. Can you unpack that? Like what, what do you mean by that?
Dan Barber: Well, I think that came from, I remember saying that I think it was during C O V I D because, I had done an interview with someone from the Rockefeller Foundation, a scientist, and he just, bombed on, on something.
I still remember years, years later, he said that, We were in the middle of Covid. Mm-hmm. You know, it's very, very, yeah. Very frightening time. And he said, covid, is really about, diabetes. Mm. It's about diabetes and obesity more than anything. Mm. And he gave me this statistic that was the bomb.
He said, if you adjusted COVID. For type two diabetes. Mm-hmm. In the 1970s, prevalence of type two diabetes in in America in the 1970s, covid would've been a really bad flu season. That's it. Mm-hmm. That when you count the statistics. Yep. And that just, you know, that blows your mind.
So that's what I said, like food is a vaccine. Mm-hmm. Because it's a prevention, it's preventative.
Bon Ku: Now you said before that, food was, the food system was regional. what does that mean?
Dan Barber: Well, the food system used to be regional. Used to be regional. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we used to eat everything that was grown very close to us. And just in the last 50 years, we've turned that up upside down by producing most of our food. Mm-hmm. Upwards of 85% of our food. From vegetables from California, Texas, Arizona, Uhhuh, Mexico and beyond, and almost all of our grains, west of, you know, Ohio, and Iowa and almost all of our milk and meat, west of where we're sitting Colorado.
Mm. So that's a, a game changer. and what that has enabled is a very efficient food system in terms of cheap food. Mm-hmm. and in terms of lots of food. Yeah. but it's happened that way because we've allowed it to happen. Mm-hmm. And we've enabled it to happen. It didn't just all of a sudden become, a cross country, food system.
Mm-hmm. , Uh, for, us in New York, you know, it happened because politicians and agribusiness, and the powers that be built, a system that made that very efficient. Hmm.
Bon Ku: Well, is that so bad? If, you know, I'm in Philadelphia in January, if I want a strawberry, like what's a big deal with that?
Dan Barber: I'm not gonna, you know, wag my finger at you, man.
I don't even know you. What I'm gonna tell you though is that, that strawberry is not gonna taste very good.
They taste dumbed down because they're grown, in basically sand.
They're grown very quickly. They're pumped up with water and they tasted nothing. Mm. Now get a strawberry that grew near Pennsylvania, near near Philadelphia, uh, some of of the best farmland in the country is mm-hmm west of Philadelphia, and you'll have yourself a delicious strawberry, but you can only have that.
In May and June. Mm-hmm. And then again a little bit in September and October and that's it. And that's it. And that's a wonderful way to enjoy a strawberry. Yeah. Uh, you know, part of our problem is that we've come to believe that we can have a strawberry 365 days a year.
And that, that doesn't work.
Bon Ku: So if we were to go back to a regional food system, would there be enough food for us?
Dan Barber: Well, people ask me that all the time, and my answer is, unfortunately I don't mean to, confuse this, but maybe I'll do it to con do it in Instructively. How about that? Confuse it
instructively. We have the possibility of recommissioning our agriculture, in a regional way if we eat different. So we cannot have a strawberry 365 days a year. Yeah. And eat locally. We cannot have a protein centric, plate of food, steak or a chicken breast or a salmon filet, you name it. Mm-hmm.
With a small little smattering of vegetables and, and white rice uhhuh, for dinner. Mm-hmm. We just can't do that. twice a day, seven days a week. Yeah. So our understanding of what's for dinner needs to change. Mm-hmm. And the reason I'm positive about that possibility is that the hulking piece of protein or the strawberry, that that logs a lot of long distance miles, frequent flyer miles.
is just not that good. Mm. It's just not that good. Mm. And I feel like there's a generation, this, millennial generation and the Gen Z'ers that are waking up to good flavor. Yeah. Man, these guys are dialed in. It's crazy. Oh, way more than me. Yeah. Yeah. Way more than my generation. They're very attuned to it and they demand a story and they demand something that doesn't carry with it, you know, a carbon sequestration trunk load.
Yeah. As they have dinner. those are things that, I find very thrilling and, I see a movement, that is not only much more delicious, but much more nutritious. And that's the thing that's probably the best, you know, late inning revelation I've gotten is the understanding that nutrition and flavor are the same thing.
Mm-hmm. And we always forget, you know? Yeah. I, when I was growing up, I was under the impression that nutrition was something you just had to pinch your nose and swallow, you know? Yeah. If food was good for you, it did not taste good. Yeah. I dunno. Cod liver oil, I mean, what, what, you know, it's like all these associations to our parents and us that are totally backward.
Yeah. You know, they're totally backward. Mm-hmm. It's like deliciousness comes from, well, comes from flavonoids, you know that. Mm-hmm. Flavonoids, flavonoids is flavor. Same thing. Same thing. Yeah. It's the synthesis, of those flavonoids that, creates the things that we. Say is, oh my God. Very tasty.
So there's, there's something I think, rooted in all of this that's hedonistic, you know, and instead of coming at it from the white medical coat Yeah angle, my preference is to come at it from, a celebratory hedonistic, you can have your cake, you eat it too. Cause you can
Bon Ku: I'm with you on that and, and you're literally redesigning.
How we eat through company that you started Row Seven. Can you tell us about
Dan Barber: that? Well, I got to the point that, the change agent starts with seed. Mm. And in some ways, seed is the blueprint for the whole system that we've been talking about, the whole goddamn thing. Mm. I blamed politicians.
I blamed agribusiness interests. I blamed. Sorta everyone, uh, on the way to our miserable food system and food culture. But none of that would've been possible without seed, without seeds conspiring. Mm. And what I mean by that is you can't grow 85% of our vegetables in three states, and Mexico without a stunning efficiency with seed. You know, a dumb downness of seed. So whereas not that long ago, we were all celebrating strawberries in every region that were different. Very different. Size difference, sweetness difference, acidity difference, time of year difference, obviously. And what we've done is monoculture that, but we've done it because we've
gotten a seed that's enabled us to do that. Yeah. Now if you take that analogy, that's a parable for everything that's a parable for corn. Mm. And soybeans, which has grown on 190 million acres of our farmland. That doesn't feed us. It feeds a cow. Yeah. In our gas tanks, you know, and that, that happened because of seed technology.
Mm. So I, in answer to your question, I started a seed company because I wanted to go to the source. Mm. You know, everything we're talking about is a cultural shift. Yeah. You gotta change the culture and that's happening, but that's, It takes a lifetime. Yeah. Uh, to get back to a semblance of what we used to have.
Even 60 years ago. But seed you can change pretty fast now. Mm-hmm. You know, we have technologies now that don't need to be put to the monoculture, endgame. Yeah. You don't need that. No. We can, and we do, and this is what I work on, is take some of the strawberry genetics from the past mm-hmm.
That we really loved. Mm-hmm. That were grown in particular places in the country, and we can marry all those genetics. We can pick and choose actually, and we can, sort of menage-a-trois it with some, really good disease resistance for organic re systems and some good yield. So we're not talking about something that's precious and that's a $5 strawberry.
we have the technology now to do that, in a couple of years. Mm-hmm. Where if our grandparents wanted to do that. they were stabbing in the dark and they may have, been able to develop new variet of strawberries, but would've taken them a lifetime. Yeah.
And what we can do now is like speed it up film. Yeah. Because of genome has been mapped. Because you can, you have computer technology, you have transmitter gene, you can look at this stuff literally and see. Where the genetic expressions will hold in what regions? and we can improve our food system, I think overnight if we start with seeds.
why I gravitated to, yeah. I'm also very interested in the, forgotten scientists in the food chain. You know, we talk a lot about farmers. I've, I'm an evangelist for Yeah farm to table. I mean, look, I've got a restaurant in the middle of farm, so I've, yeah, I've got a, I got a skin in the game. But what I've come to understand is that, I'll tell you the story that made me come to understand this, and I'll tell you what I understand.
14 years ago, a breeder walked into my kitchen after dinner, I invited him for a meal. He was a squash breeder from Cornell University, and I, I was like very awkward in the kitchen. It was kinda loud and, you know, I didn't have anything to say to him, so I just turned to one. I didn't know much about seeds or breeding at all, so I just turned and said, you know, if you're a squash breeder, how come you don't create a butternut squash that actually tastes good. Like why are we adding maple syrup, brown sugar, and yeah. Rest. Right. And
Bon Ku: I don't think I've had a butternut squash without those.
Dan Barber: For good reason. Yeah, because you want it to taste good for your family on Thanksgiving or whatever holiday.
I it's purposeful. It means you're a good cook. You're thoughtful and you're thinking about it. I do the same thing. Cause that's what I said. I said, why do we have to go through these heroics to make a squash taste like a fucking squash? It's crazy. Okay. But I said that, you know, a little too provocative, he got very serious on me and he looked like, right in my face and said, the reason I've never created a butternut squash that taste good is cuz no one's ever asked me to select for flavor.
Mm. that was the moment I said, that I felt like a curtain went down. I was like a before and after moment. Mm-hmm. Because it, it was so amazing that. the criteria for selection of our food supply didn't include what the hell it tasted like. Yeah.
And I'm like, well, who? That's crazy. Who are breeders talking to? Well, of course you learn. They're talking to big business and they're talking to, they're talking to seed companies, that are chemical companies. I mean that there is, there is the problem. Yeah. Seed companies today are in the hands of four companies, 65% of our seed.
when I say seed, I don't want to be oblique. 65% of our food supply worldwide, not Am America worldwide, yeah. Is in the hands of four companies. Those four companies are not seed companies. They are chemical companies. Unbelievable. All seed companies now have been bought up by chemical companies.
You're so, you have Chem China, you're, you're blowing my mind right now. But, but now, but I'm trying to get it back actually to health and that, that's why I said I was gonna, gonna try and tell that story to, say something larger, which is, the game is rigged. The game is rigged and and right there for companies, chemical companies.
Tell me what incentive a chemical company has to create a vibrant seed, organic seed that can thrive in the field, defend its own pest because squash do that very well. Yeah. Defend against disease because squash do that very well and produce a good tonnage, a good harvest per acre. They do that very well if you do the R&D on organic system.
But if you're a chemical company, you own the seed company, what the hell do you want? Organic. So you don't make any money on seeds. That's why all the seed companies lost, sold out. They sold the chemical companies cuz the money uhhuh is in the intervention. Yeah, that's the problem with the medicine. The money is in the intervention.
Yeah. Where is the research going? Intervention. Because you get a drug. Mm-hmm. You get a drug, you get the money. Yeah. I mean eat real organic vegetables grown in a dynamic, diverse environment with serious microbiology in the soil. That right there is over time, over a 10,000 year history, the clearest prescription for long-term health.
Mm-hmm. Long-term degenerative disease. I don't need to tell you that. It's diets. Yeah. And diets have long-term possibilities. Mm-hmm. So you can eat your way to a great preventative lifestyle Yeah. And do it deliciously. But if you're a seed company, as I said, you're in the hands of the chemical company.
Mm-hmm. Chemical companies. it is rigged game. Yeah. It's out there to make money and it's out there for the intervention. Yeah. And so is medicine. Yeah. I'll tell you the end of my story, and I'm sorry to gas on for so long. The end of the story. I'm gonna fast forward now 12 years, okay? Mm-hmm. I became quite good friends with that squash breeder, Michael Mazourek.
Mm-hmm. And, we worked together on a, on a squash that blows people's minds. it's now called the honey nut. It was a trial number called 8 98 that we selected. And
Bon Ku: I've seen pictures of this on Instagram and it looks amazing.
Dan Barber: I mean, right. And I wanna tell you that today, that's about 14 years.
Yeah. After our conversation, in the kitchen. The honey nut squash, which was a trial number, which was an idea in that kitchen, became a trial number, became tested by us, and then we broadcast it out and chefs started using it all over the country. Uhhuh, today it is grown coast to coast, wow.
From New York to Florida, Michigan to Texas, California to Oregon. And it is in, Trader Joe's. And it's in. Costco this year. Wow. I mean, you're,
Bon Ku: you're literally redesigning how we eat.
Dan Barber: Well, the breeders are, what I'm doing is giving them, some enabling power because that, that's what we started with, is I'm drawn to a sector of the food system that's critical, absolutely critical, that nobody understands.
Yeah. the reason I can say confidently nobody understands it, is because first of all, you start asking people about seed. They're just like, you know, they think GMO crops or whatever. And the second thing. No one understands that four chemical companies control our food supply.
That's scary. Yeah. Yeah. That's scary. So,
Bon Ku: and, and people don't understand that our food is as genetically engineered as the pharmaceutical drugs Exactly. That we, that we take exactly like food is engineered.
Dan Barber: Yeah. To be honest with you, I'm open to the idea of engineering food because breeding and selection is engineering.
You are making choices and that sense, the word gets a little fuzzy. Yeah. What I don't like is the criteria for that engineering. Mm. Yeah. What's the criteria? Yeah. Is it, that you produce a weak plant that requires a chemical cocktail of intervention? Mm. Because if that's what you're doing, then that's a really Yeah.
Abusive use of technology. Yeah. You know, the reason we don't have organic, people always say like, organic vegetables is so expensive, it's for the elites. It's like, you know, it's like, no, I mean, it's that way because we've allowed it to be that way. Yeah, because again, who invests in organic seed.
I can tell you that nobody does. Mm-hmm. I, I am, but I'm nothing. I mean, I was on the stage with the Monsanto, Vice President, ah, guy was such a jerk. Wow. And, and he was, he was really David versus Goliath. He was, man, I was not, I wasn't even David. I'm like a flint on this guy's lapel.
But he, he said, you know, we spend a million dollars a day on corn research. Oh my. A million a day. You know how much organic corn research is spent in this country. It's almost nothing. So then when people say, well, how come organic, you know, is so expensive? Well, it's because they've got one hand tied behind their back.
Those seeds, nobody's investing in. Yeah. In, that's why I say technology and, investment is a good thing if it's for the right purpose. Yeah. The guy, the squash breeder, Michael Mazourek from Cornell, he has this great line. He always says it's not that, Organic has a yield gap with conventional food.
Mm-hmm. It's that we have an R&D gap and nobody understands. Mm-hmm. When you go into Whole Foods, where do you live?
Bon Ku: I live in right outside Philadelphia. Oh, you said, okay. I go to, I go Whole Foods, foods, foods a lot. Yeah. When
Dan Barber: you go into Whole Foods and you purchase an organic vegetable, I almost guarantee you that that vegetable, that organic carrot or strawberry, was grown from conventional seed.
Wow. Which means that when they developed the seed, they were coating it in chemicals. Yeah. The seed itself and the environment around it was grown up in. And then an organic farmer is allowed by the U S D A to grow that chemically treated seed. Mm-hmm. In their organic field, if there's no equivalent organic seed, of which there's almost never equivalent organic seed.
So that farmer now has to use that seed, has to, huh. And that farmer gets, is like, raising a sick child. Mm-hmm. It's like you have to care for it in this way. That's like, it's so crazy because that child, that seed child was raised with chemicals. Mm. And it doesn't add up to, creating a vibrant organic food economy. Mm-hmm. It just creates an expensive food chain. Yeah. so, you know, that's why I started all of this. Yeah. I was like, there are a lot of breeders out there who don't wanna be owned by chemical companies. Most of them.
Bon Ku: So you sound like more of a scientist than a chef when I'm talking to
Dan Barber: you.
You know, I failed, I failed seventh grade biology. I've gotten so interested in the science behind it.
Bon Ku: at your farm Blue Hill Farm, you have an R&D lab, right?
Dan Barber: At Blue Hill. At Stone Barns? Yeah. Stone Barn. Which, which is, which is, yeah. Would you? I have Blue Hill Farm as a family farm.
That's a dairy. Okay. Which we haven't even talked about dairy, but uh uh, that's Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Is a restaurant and working 200 acre working farm, of which we spend half of our week. So we're only open three days week for dinner. I dunno if you know that three days a week. And then the other days we are doing R&D on the kind of stuff that we're talking about to give farmers and breeders
voice.
Bon Ku: Yeah. Cause I follow you on Instagram. I'm seeing what you produce. I'm like, my mind is blown. I'm like, I've never seen these types of fruits and vegetables
Dan Barber: before. It's That's crazy. It's like crazy. They're all out there. They're all out there, you know? And so I created a company sort of like Ellis Island.
It's like, gimme the ones that have been the amount of rejection from these chemical companies because it doesn't yield enough or because, It doesn't fit into a box. Yeah. Or because the yellow on a yellow pepper isn't yellow enough for the consumer and all this shit. Mm-hmm. It's, it's crazy cakes.
And I want the misshapen and the Yeah. You know, the ignored, you know, come to me. That's what I said i's what I've been doing. Every time I sit with a breeder, I look, first thing I say is, what are you throwing away? Mm. The other night when you woke up in the middle of the night and you were thinking about a variety that you weren't pursuing, what was it?
That's what I want. Mm. And that's what chefs want. Mm. The shrunken, butternut squash. Yeah. You know who nobody, when we took that first prototype of the shrunken butternut squash that I said is grown coast to coast now and is in Costco. We brought that to Walmart executive. sorry, uh, , a buyer, a Walmart buyer, Uhhuh Walmart buyer, said to the breeding group, said, that'll never work. That'll never, no one's ever gonna pay enough money for half a size squash. Mm-hmm. By the way, the betacarotene mm-hmm.
Alone, just on that, the nutrient density is, is like, I, I've forgotten the number versus, butter squash, but the, betacarotene is three times Wow. Per spoonful. Than regular butternut squash, because butternut squash is water. It's 80% water. So actually kind of all the breeder did was force out the water and made a smaller squash.
So, you know, our whole food system is based on weight. Mm. And all the breeding goes towards weight. Mm. Yield weight shelf life. Well, because you could charge charge more. Yeah. Because you get paid through weight. Wow. Farming gets paid by weight. Distribute gets paid by weight. Whole Foods get paid by weight.
Everybody gets to weight and so water is where everything in breeding went. That's why I wanted to go another direction. What if you squeeze water out of it? mean, that's what chefs, if you wanna distill what chefs do, that's good. That's incredible is we get water out of the way. That's what cooking a lot of cooking is, breaking down cell structure, getting water out of the way.
So you intensify flavors. It's actually, that's kind of all we do. So what I'm suggesting is that, we should start the recipe a lot earlier. Yeah. Huh? Not at the chopping board, not at the stove, and not at the farm. It's not just about being a, you know, having allegiance to your local farmers, going way, way upstream.
Yeah. Man, it's like by the time, the farmers got it. Cake's already been baked. Mm. You know, you gotta start with seed. Then, then you have a shot with a, with a great farmer. if you don't have a good farmer, you have a terrible farmer, chemical farmer, and you have great seed, great genetics like that, squash, well, it won't be expressed.
So it's not like a miracle, you know, you need the farming, but on the opposite, if you get the best farmer you know of, yeah, doing the most diversity and getting the most biologically diverse community intact in his or her soil. He or she does not have the genetics, it will not be expressed. So that to me, it's, there's an opportunity there that's really quite exciting.
Bon Ku: Last question I have for you, Dan. We've been talking a lot about health equity here at, Aspen Ideas Festival and, you know, health equity, we can't have it without food equity. This food system that you're talking about, isn't it pretty expensive? The person, the communities are underserved. How could they afford to
Dan Barber: eat healthy?
Yeah. Well, this is part of the problem with the investment where our infrastructure has gone over the last a hundred years. It's to create cheap food that is not nutritious for us. And my contention is that if you are cooking yourself. Mm-hmm. You are not only cooking demonstratively more healthy food cause someone else cooks for you, it's not as healthy.
Mm-hmm. But it's also cheaper. but you have to devote the time. Yeah. And that then it gets into the question, well now you are saddling people, with without economic means. Mm-hmm. With time, which is similar to money and that's not fair. And my answer to that, cuz I've been challenged on that a lot, Uhhuh, is that, I don't know about that.
Mm-hmm. We, we have over the last 20 years figured out because our culture demands it, ways to like spend a lot of time doing a lot of things. Mm-hmm. The internet, cable tv, our iPhones. I mean, you and I growing up, we didn't have any of that stuff. No, no. Huh. And by the way, if I said to you, if we were sitting here in this interview and I said to you in 1990, uh, what's, we're in 2023?
So why don't we just take 1993 Uhhuh, and I said to you, Hey, you know what, in 20, 24, I'm gonna tell you the craziest thing. There's this thing called an iPhone that all of a sudden the average, that there's gonna be a 90% penetration with Americans, spending disposable income, extra disposable income of $150 a month.
You'd think I was crazy. Yeah. And then I'd say, oh, hold on, hold on. There's this thing called cable TV that's gonna have 80% penetration in 2024. That's gonna cost another a hundred dollars. You'd throw up your hands and be like, who is this guy on my podcast? Okay. But we figured out a way to afford that because the culture.
Demanded that was something that was essential. Why don't we do that with food? Mm. And we should. And we can. And that is what's happening in the millennial and Gen Z. Mm. I see that up close, every day with my staff. Yeah. And I see it out when I'm talking on the road. It is impressive.
And it's, It's, to me, the cultural shift is the way to go. Yeah. Because you can't wag your finger and that's, that's why the, the medical perspective, health perspective, yeah. I think, has to come from a different angle. Mm-hmm. Has to come from pleasure, principle, pleasure.
Bon Ku: To Z I I I 100% agree with you.
Okay. I mean, that, that's why I work out too. It's like, yeah, you look pretty fit, man. What's yours? Well, because I'm a, I'm a surfer and that's my pleasure. Oh, you surfer. So in Philly, surfer in Philly, I surfer in Jersey, but I work out in order to get that pleasure to surf better. Nice. And
Dan Barber: I'm, have you read this guy's book?
Longevity? No. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yes. Yeah. I'm obsessed. Yeah. I was up the other night till four in the morning. Obsessed, obsessed. I'm like, I'm doing it all wrong. This guy's, he's very, very interesting. Very interesting. Yeah. You don't buy
Bon Ku: it? I totally buy it. I wanna be sensitive to your time cuz you just got off a flight.
You need I need to get coffee. I
gotta
Dan Barber: get cup of coffee. Come on. Let's go get a cup of coffee. We can't continue it on a cup of coffee. No, that doesn't work. Thanks
Bon Ku: Nan. I, really appreciate what you're doing about designing the future of food and Thank you. You're just optimistic.
Look for it. Yeah.
Dan Barber: Yeah. I'm actually very cynical, but I felt like being optimistically. All right.
Bon Ku: Dan is one of the most creative people I've ever met. I was so inspired by our conversation. You could follow Dan on Instagram @chefdanbarber or on Twitter at @danbarber.
I'm signing out for awhile. Hope to be back in the future. But in the meantime, please reach out to me. Design Lab is produced by the amazing Rob Pugliese. Editing by Fernando Queiroz. Emmanuel Houston created our theme music and Eden Lew created our cover design.
