The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food (66 page)
Read The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food Online
Authors: Dan Barber
at Blue Hill at Stone Barns,
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–38,
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diversity in,
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dwarf and semidwarf,
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–64,
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emmer,
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–67,
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extensibility of,
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falling number of,
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–16
fertilizer and,
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,
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–17
genetically modified,
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–98
hyper-local,
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land-grant institutions and,
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landrace,
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–61,
366
–67,
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,
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male and female parts of,
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Martens and,
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–29
milling of,
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–41,
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monoculture of,
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oils in,
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organic,
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Red Chief,
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root systems of,
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–45,
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as rotation crop,
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Roundup in,
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sprouting of,
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see also
bread; flour
Wheat Belt,
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Whidbey Island,
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Wilson, E. O.,
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wineries,
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Wolfe, David,
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World War I,
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World War II,
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–14
Worster, Donald,
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Worst Hard Time, The: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
(Egan),
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xanthophylls,
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n
Yanay, Izzy,
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zebras,
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zucchini,
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*
This, according to Donald Davis, the author of one analysis, is at least partly genetic—the result of breeders selecting for high yield. “When breeders select for high yield,” he explains, “they are, in effect, selecting mostly for high carbohydrate with no assurance that dozens of other nutrients and thousands of phytochemicals will all increase in proportion to yield.”
*
Though Chicago’s ban was later repealed, California’s foie gras prohibition went into effect in 2012.
*
In part, the distinction was merely symbolic. In her classic
Much Depends on Dinner
,
food historian and anthropologist Margaret Visser describes how culinary preparations have always capitalized on the innate appeal of “golden” food: “From the Middle Ages on they doused food in saffron and marigold sauces, daubed egg-yolks over meats, yellowed their pastries, and even gilded joints of meat and large pieces of confectionary. Gold is still high in our mythology; its appeal has been brilliantly harnessed by the marketing of crumbled chicken chunks under the word nuggets.” There’s scientific evidence to suggest that our preference may have pharmacological benefits as well. The yellow color in poultry meat and eggs comes from xanthophylls—the same carotenoids found in certain fruits and vegetables and the prized yellow-colored milk of Jersey cows. They’re a proven antioxidant.
*
Culinary historian Betty Fussell once told me that Americans have a singular preference for blandness. In her research, she discovered that in taste tests for beef, anything gamy in flavor was described in terms of disgust. We have become so dissociated from food in its natural form, she argues, that being reminded of it is unpleasant, if not unpalatable.
*
Studies have shown that more than half the ham’s fat content is oleic acid (the same type found in olive oil), which, as fats go, is one of the better ones to consume. It’s been proven to lower total cholesterol, particularly LDLs (also known as “bad” cholesterol), and actually slow the development of heart disease.
*
This hasn’t stopped them from trying, especially recently, as
jamón ibérico
has become internationally renowned. “Meat companies see an opportunity to raise a cheaper ham. And they’re doing it,” Miguel told me. “Of course, instead of under trees, the pigs are fed indoors, crammed into a small space, and along with the acorns, grains have become part of the diet as well.” Thankfully, the
jamón
equivalent of a Frank Perdue hasn’t yet emerged, because those deeply embedded striations of fat running through the ham cannot be replicated on a larger scale. “It doesn’t work,” Miguel told me when I asked about intensively raising
jamón ibérico.
“Less exercise means less intramuscular fat, which means less distinctive taste. Large meat companies try, but they will fail, because it reduces the complexity of the
dehesa
to the amount of acorns they need to feed a pig to get it fat. If you want to raise pigs in confinement and bring them acorns from Portugal, fine, but don’t call it
jamón ibérico.
Because it isn’t.”
*
In a sign of how deeply connected the world’s become, even for a place as remote as the
dehesa
, the trend of switching from cork bottle stoppers to screw tops has diminished the supplemental income of the Extremaduran farmers, threatening their livelihoods.
*
Rising CO
2
levels pose other, more direct dangers to certain marine life. Once dissolved in the ocean, carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid, which, accumulated over time, lowers the pH of the ocean. Today this acidification is happening at an unprecedented rate. For corals, crustaceans, and mollusks—any organism that relies on calcium to form its skeletal structure—it means the water will become increasingly corrosive and untenable.
*
Rachel Carson was an ornithologist before she became America’s most famous environmentalist. She took frequent birding trips with her friend Roger Tory Peterson, who revolutionized bird watching with
A Field Guide to the Birds
(1934). Those birding experiences proved useful for Carson in 1958, when she received a letter from the owner of a bird sanctuary in Duxbury, Massachusetts. The letter described the bird mortality rates after a particularly strong DDT spraying. For the first time, Carson saw evidence to support what was then only a hunch—that the casual, indiscriminate spraying of pesticides and herbicides would impose long-term damage on the environment as well as incalculable damage to animals and humans. She pursued the issue, amassing more data, connecting the dots, and ultimately presenting her findings in her revolutionary book
Silent Spring.
*
Kindai tuna, a method of bluefin tuna “ranching” developed by Japanese scientists in 2002 (and criticized by Ángel during my meal with Carl), accomplished what was once thought impossible: producing bluefin from hatched eggs rather than captured juveniles. But their success doesn’t do much to solve the problem inherent in aquaculture. The amount of wild fish required to fatten bluefin in captivity makes the practice seem exorbitant. Farm-raised shrimp require two pounds of fish feed for every pound of harvested shrimp; by comparison, tuna, as a top predator on the order of a tiger or lion, has a ratio that’s closer to twenty to one. And they’re pickier about what they eat, preferring delicacies like sardines, anchovies, and herring. So while Kindai might have resolved certain issues, it continues to gnaw at conservationists, who see the ocean’s limited resources dwindling in the face of increased demand.
*
“This was a classic case of unintended consequences,” Peter Johnson, the Rockefeller family historian, told me. “The Rockefeller Foundation invested in Borlaug and agriculture because starvation, and the political instability that came with it, was the pressing issue of the time. No one understood how quickly this would accelerate urbanization—landless peasants with no skills, driven from the land and ending up in urban slums, living hand to mouth. The consequences of mechanization—the urban ghettos in Mexico City and Shanghai, and even the black migration from the South following the dwarfing of cotton—these were all the direct result of the Green Revolution, and we’re still living with it today.”
*
In 1983, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture John Block announced that from then on, federal research would be phased out of plant-breeding programs, so as not to compete with the private sector. This trend continues today. Seed company officials “
prefer to talk in terms of a ‘division of labor’ in which public bodies develop new breeding material that is turned over to companies for ‘final exploitation in the marketplace,’” explain Cary Fowler and Pat Mooney
.
“Translated, this means that government does the costly, basic and innovative research, while big companies pick up the profits in the marketplace.”
*
How does an insect detect a sick plant? “Sick plants smell different,” Eliot told me. In fact, there’s some science behind the idea. Dr. Philip Callahan, a former entomologist who is also an electronics and radio expert, discovered that tiny hairs on the antennae of insects pick up variances in wavelengths emitted from plants. There are odor wavelengths, or “broadcasts,” depending on the plant’s temperature. In his book
Tuning in to Nature
,
Callahan showed that stressed plants produce vastly different odor molecules from those of healthy plants, emitting wavelengths an insect can readily “see.”
