Healthy and Delicious

The other day on Belief (formerly Speaking of Faith) on NPR, Krista Tippett interviewed chef and flavor-lover Dan Barber about the ethics and enjoyment of growing and eating delicious food. I can't recommend this interview more highly. Click here to listen or podcast it.

Barber is a young chef with two New York restaurants, one on a farm. He respects the flavors of fresh food and says it's his job to enhance them, not show off with fancy chef tricks. When he is cooking, he feels the farmer standing behind him, and remembers that it is the farmer who should receive credit for the food, not the cook.

He is a proponent of organic farming methods and heirloom varieties because he has found they taste better. He tested the brix (natural sugar) level of the carrots growing on his farm, and found it was twice the normal level for carrots. Then he tested organic bagged grocery store carrots and found their brix level was practically non-existent. He theorized that people are genetically wired to eat sweet foods like healthy carrots, but as produce is hybridized for easy growing and transporting, a lot of the flavors and sweetness have been lost, so it's no wonder kids don't want to eat their vegetables.

He's also connected with a doctor doing cancer research to see whether these super vegetables have more antioxidants and cancer-fighting chemicals than regular produce. He is sure that vegetables that taste better must be healthier, and he is looking to prove it scientifically.

Another story he told was of a friend who grows kosher spelt. To be certified kosher, the grain has to be harvested with no weeds in it. At harvest time, a rabbi walks at the front of the harvester, checking for weeds. If he sees any, the harvest stops while workers rip the weeds from the field. The farmer did some research, and found that the non-kosher weeds indicate a soil imbalance. As he improved his soil, mainly with manure from his cows, fewer weeds grew in it, and he was able to harvest more quickly and reap more grain from his land. The old ways made good sense.

Barber also emphasized that in order to eat healthy, we need to cook our own food. Not necessarily grow it, because farmers are generally bettter at that than we are, but take fresh food home and turn it into good simple meals. Krista Tippett asked how we can do that in our busy lives - she was hoping to be let off the hook, but he wouldn't do it. He pointed out that 10 years ago if someone had said Americans will spend four hours a day on the internet, everyone would have said they didn't have time. If someone had said 30 years ago that everyone would pay for television cable service instead of watching free t.v., or 10 years ago that everyone would pay for cell-phone and internet services, everyone would have said no one could afford it. Yet we do. So there's no reason we can't cook food and buy local organic produce - the time and the money is there if we choose to focus on it.

He's so right.