

Flavor Based Ethical Eating


The Puritan rootstock of Unitarianism and Universalism doesn’t celebrate pleasure seeking as a path for our growth and development. When facing a crisis, many UU’s tend to lean toward the personal virtue of self-sacrifice and doing without. But, could the solution to the looming agricultural crisis be the hedonistic pursuit of flavor? Could self-denial undermine the changes that will move us toward a sustainable and nutritious supply of healthy and ethically raised food?

We are beginning to witness the end of our current system of food production. That system is based on cheap fossil fuel, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and a global distribution network. This agricultural system, heavily subsidized with government funds, values mono-cultures that deplete the land of topsoil and minerals. Way before oil reaches 100 dollars a gallon, this system will fall apart quickly. Little about this extraction oriented, industrial approach to agriculture is sustainable.

And the food produced by this system just doesn’t taste that great. Rarely are the seeds farmers use selected for flavor. Instead they select for disease and pest resistance, transportation stability and shelf-life. And even if the food starts out tasting good, it looses a lot of flavor in the trip from Chile, Florida or California to the grocery store to my refrigerator, to my table. I’ve learned this sprouting seeds. Radish sprouts have a pleasing, spicy zing when I pluck them out of the sprouter and toss them into my mouth. But if I pick them and store them in the refrigerator, they loose that zing in hours. My step brother Don, relishes going to a favorite farm stand at the end of July to get fresh picked corn. He rushes home, throws the fragrant ears in a pot of boiling water then feasts on the delicious flavor. How many of us delight in homegrown tomatoes picked at the peak of flavor, served straight from the vine? Rarely does our food production and delivery system give us this kind of freshness and quality to enjoy.

So what do chefs do? The good ones are out in the markets looking for the freshest and best tasting food they can buy. But often, what they do with that food is to add spices and flavors to enhance or mask the taste of what they bring into their kitchen. At home, the manufactured frozen, dried and canned food many of us eat often bears little resemblance to what it started out as, hidden under artificial flavors and enhanced with sweeteners, salt, MSG and added fat. Since all you really taste is the engineered sauce, you could be eating textured vegetable protein or starch and cellulose shaped to look like meat, fruits and vegetables. This kind of manufactured food could eventually cut the cord with real food and just become a synthetic product that comes out of a chemistry lab. It may have happened with chicken nuggets. And if our noses and taste buds are dulled, we will not know the difference.

Well, this is where things are going and chef Dan Barber wants to stop the trend right in its tracks by encouraging us to be hedonistic foodies. His vision is being hailed as one of the most exciting social movements of our time.

I first heard about Barber from an “On Being” podcast. He is the visionary chef of the Michelin listed, gourmet restaurant, working farm and educational center, Blue Hill restaurant at Stone Barns Center about a half an hour north of New York City in the Hudson River valley. Growing up in Brooklyn, he cooked for his family after his mother died. His first flavor epiphany happened when his aunt cooked for him while he was recovering from having his tonsils out. She made scrambled eggs for him using a double boiler, finishing them in french butter. Unlike the overcooked eggs his father made, these slid down his throat in a rush of pleasure. After college he decided to become a chef, studying in France. A chance meeting with an exceptionally delicious apricot, purchased from a woman on the street in Provence, an apricot grown in an orchard lovingly tended for four generations, began changing his vision of food. Most chefs design their food so that what they present to the diner points back to their artistry. Dan started wanting to present food that points to the farmers and celebrates their mastery.

For Dan, great tasting food is inextricably linked to the quality of the land and the skill of the farmer rather than a product of the cleverness of the chef. To illustrate his point, I’d like to share three of Barber’s stories with you about a duck liver, a fish, and a carrot. If you want the whole story, the first two can be found on TED and the third in the On Being podcast. I only hope the tasty samples I can offer you this morning will whet your appetite for more.

Many of us refuse to order foie gras. Of course, if you are a vegetarian, you’ve already got a reason to reject this dish. But, from the animal cruelty standpoint, eating foie gras is even more objectionable. Some states have even considered banning it. The reason for this is the way it is produced. Ducks are force fed grain, called gavage, to inflate the size of their livers many times. Chefs prize this kind of liver because of its exquisite flavor. So following the hedonistic principle, would encourage one to consume it. But valuing the ethical treatment of animals would drive us to want to eliminate it from the menu.

So when Barber heard of a prize winning “natural” foie gras being produced in Spain, he decided to investigate. The producer is a fellow named Eduardo Sousa. He takes advantage of the fact that when the temperature drops in the fall, his free-range geese naturally gorge themselves on grain as they prepare for the winter. So, no gavage, no cruelty. His great-granddad started doing this in 1812.

Actually, this way of fattening geese was known way back in Biblical times. Supposedly the Jews discovered the delights of foie gras. When Pharoah found out about it, he didn’t just want it once or twice a year, but all year-round. That’s when the practice of gavage was started. And many forgot this history and assumed the only way to produce the delicacy was through force feeding the poor ducks.

But that is only one aspect of the excellent flavor of Eduardo’s foie gras. He loves his ducks that freely roam his difficult to farm land that also produces olives and figs. He is happy to let his ducks eat 50 percent of his crop if they want it. Eduardo provides them with flavorful herbs they like to eat that enhance the flavor of his product. He noticed his ducks didn’t like his electric fence to keep them in, so he rewired it. The electric wires are now on the outside of the fence to keep the predators out. The ducks are so pleased with their accommodations, they will call out to passing flocks of wild geese to encourage them to stop by, visit, eat and mate with them. Yes, he harvests them for food, but they have a very high quality of life while living on his farm.

Given the challenges today of overfishing, chefs like Barber look for sustainably raised and harvested fish to put on the menu. Some of the best tasting fish like salmon are usually farmed in unsustainable ways. Farmed salmon are often fed ground up wild fish caught by large, diesel-gulping trawlers that further deplete the ocean fish stock. Dan thought he had found a good fish farm with the lowest feed stock ratio of 2.5 pounds of feed to 1 pound of fish – best in the business. It wasn’t until he discovered the feedstock was primarily ground up chicken rendering waste that he became disillusioned.

While in Spain, traveling in search of really great tasting food, he ate some overcooked fish that caught his attention. Even though the chef had botched the preparation, the flavor of the fish shone through. On investigation, he was drawn to the source of the fish on the Mediterranean coast, Veta La Palma. Originally, canals were dug into the wetlands to drain it for cattle production. That business failed. The new owner reversed the direction of the canals, flooding the land to use it to farm fish. But the farming methods were novel.

Instead of setting up a fish production facility, they set up a fish friendly ecosystem that looks more like a bird sanctuary. By last count, they had 600,000 birds on the property representing 250 species. By encouraging a rich diversity of algae, phytoplankton and zooplankton that feed the fish, the fish don’t need to be fed anything. The ecosystem itself produces enough food for everyone, including the flamingos.

The story of the pink flamingos who come there to feed is magical. The birds eat the shrimp, fish and fish eggs that are being farmed, 20% of the crop. But their droppings are feeding the ecosystem. Their strategy is to farm extensively not intensively. “The flamingos eat the shrimp. The shrimp eat the phytoplankton. So the pinker the belly, the better the system. These flamingos don’t even nest there. They fly 150 miles each day to feed because the shrimp are so tasty.

Okay, I’ve talked about ducks and fish, what about vegetables. Barber advocates a diet that a local region can support. This is one reason he doesn’t advocate vegetarianism if the region is best adapted to grazing as it is here in our region. It makes perfect sense however to be a vegetarian in Southern California where fresh produce can be grown all year-round.

That said, our cold weather provides some advantages for growing root vegetables like carrots. Carrots in the ground after a couple of hard freezes go through some interesting changes. To protect their cell structure from being destroyed by ice crystals, the carrot converts its carbohydrates into sugars. This doesn’t happen in warmer climates. This actually increases the nutrient-density of the carrot making it much sweeter.

Other vegetables like spinach and kale are very hardy and grow just fine in very cold temperatures. Add indoor gardening to sprout seeds and grow fresh greens along with stored roots, onions and garlic and we can eat locally all year-round quite effectively and nutritiously without sacrificing great flavor.

Does eating locally mean totally giving up imported foods? No it doesn’t have to. What it means is a change in attitude about those foods. Fifty or a hundred years ago, few people ate foods out of season. They just were not available. And foods like oranges that traveled many miles were delicacies to be savored. If you have strawberries in February, its a special treat not something repeated on a daily basis. The same goes for other exotic foods that need to come from half way around the world. When energy is no longer cheap, those long distance foods will become far more expensive anyway.

The critical message I have for you is we are responsible for the food system we get. What we choose to eat each day is a powerful vote. With modern data tracking methods, vendors are carefully watching what we buy and don’t buy. Even small changes don’t go unnoticed. Each one of us really can make a difference by how and where we spend our money. Choosing to buy a community supported agriculture share this winter, planning a garden for the spring and starting some seeds now, shopping at farmers markets and the Honest Weight Food Coop are excellent ways to vote for a different kind of food system than we have today. I particularly like shopping at the Coop because they have already selected the safest, most ethical food available for me to enjoy.

What I find delightful is the conjunction of hedonism and good food practices. The best tasting food is usually raised with the most respect for the land and the environment in which it is produced. What this hedonism requires is my willingness to value taste over price. Rather than looking for the cheapest tomatoes or peppers or carrots I can find, I need to buy the ones that taste better. And the ones that taste better are likely to be fresher, more nutritious, and most likely raised according to healthier principles. Because we’ve eaten factory food for so long, we’ve lost our taste for really delicious food. By choosing the best tasting food, we start turning the system around.

And, yes, this is going to cost more money. You’re going to spend a lot of money at Barber’s restaurant. But since we already eat way too much food, I suspect if we are more satisfied by the really good tasting food we eat, we may be willing to eat less of it, balancing out the cost somewhat.

But this is a much bigger topic. Barber is often asked how he envisions scaling this up to feed 7 billion people. I’ll be addressing his thoughts on this subject along with other reflections on eating for peace and justice next week.

Between now and then, I encourage you to indulge your desire for flavorful food, but not to settle for less than the best tasting food you can find. And see if it satisfies you!

Categories: commentary, General, religion
Sam Trumbore

8 Responses

  1. jakester says:

    Interesting Rev Sam. I wonder what chef Barber thinks about catching your own fresh trout and shooting a deer. Can’t get anything more naturaly feed than that. The story about the duck was odd in that
    it ends at the same point. You eat the ducks liver. One way the duck is “force fed” whatever that entails, the other the duck is encouraged to over feed himself. Same result. Ducks with fat livers.

    Are ducks like dogs and will keep eating till they’re sick?

  2. I’d expect Barber would approve of harvesting wild food as long as it doesn’t unbalance the ecosystem. And in the case of deer, we need more hunters not fewer to deal with the damage deer do to trees, shrubs and other plants when they’re populations explode.

    As to the ducks, I doubt the ducks who naturally overeat stress their livers (and digestive systems) the way gavage does. As the song goes, “Be kind to our web footed friends, for a duck may be somebodies mother.”

  3. jakester says:

    Yep, good one Rev! My mom use to sing that line to us when we were kids !

  4. Deerjon says:

    Seeking good tasting food hardly falls within hedonism. By unitarian/universalist standards…If growth and development doesn’t involve selfish pleasure seeking, and in the midst of crisis ‘we should seek self sacrifice’ , then I suggest that we should eliminate the self-indulgent practice of unnecessary harm done to others(animals) and pursue a wonderful tasting plant based diet(which is actually ‘appropriate’ for most regions). It is good for us, for the nonhuman animals, and for the planet. Although I am speaking about ‘food’ choices, a way of life that works to eliminate intentional yet unnecessary harms to living, feeling beings is what veganism really aspires to(its not just about their diet).

    I love the taste of peace and nonviolence on my plate.

  5. Charlie Talbert says:

    I hope that you will consider this piece by B.R. Myers that has just appeared at the website of The Atlantic. Eating can be a pleasurable, uplifting, and ethical experience. As Myers points out in this article, though, some renowned foodies have cloaked their gluttony with feigned concern for non-human animals, while others unevasively proclaim their right to torture others for their own gastronomic pleasure.

    Dan Barber may not belong to either of these groups, but if it’s immoral to harm another being for a reason of desire and appetite, why is it moral to do the same, but just to a lesser degree?

  6. As someone with severe dietary issues, I find it very difficult to eat without the inclusion of animal products in my diet. Not completely impossible but with a high impact on the quality of my life. The radical changes I’ve had to make in my diet over the years gives me great compassion for others confronted with those changes. Getting physically ill is a much more powerful motivator for many than ethical reasons. Yet many people kill themselves with their diet even knowing the dangers of what they are doing to their bodies.

    So, Charlie, I’d only wish for some recognition from you of the struggles people bring to this issue and a little compassion along with the clarity of your moral stance. If you want to move people, you have to love them where they are first if you want to be an effective advocate.

  7. Charlie Talbert says:

    Sam, as far as I know, you are one of the few ministers in the Unitarian Universalist blogosphere who goes beyond writing empty platitudes about their “concern for animals”. I appreciate that.

    I also take to heart your advice that I be more compassionate with my message. I wonder about it too, though.

    If you follow the UU blogosphere, you may recall from several years ago the outpouring of anger that the Michael Vick dog fighting incident sparked. One minister, a Buddhist, suggested a terrible fate that awaited Vick’s reincarnated being. No one suggested more compassion for him.

    No one suggested loving him where he was, or respecting his choices, or just reducing his dog slaughter, or enlarging their cages, or feeding them organically. And yet Michael Vick’s dogs had a better life than 99% of the sentient beings fed upon by the same humans upset with Vick.

    One of the ways advocates have always been marginalized is to characterize them as angry, anguished zealots, lacking compassion and love. Our abolitionist forebears were widely criticized for their single-minded unwillingness to countenance slavery in any form. Those advocating Christian slavery – better working conditions for slaves, fewer beatings, families kept together – were seen as the reasonable, compromising, compassionate people.

    I consider myself, like most Unitarian Universalist animal advocates I know, a compassionate and gentle person. I think most people who know me would agree. Some might disagree, but I wonder if their reason isn’t found largely in Harry Truman’s quip, “I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.”

    Still, I recognize that confrontation can be counterproductive. My eyes were not opened all at once, and were not opened at all by anyone being aggressive or confrontational. Thank you for this reminder.

    Blessings to you and everyone on a path to a more compassionate diet.

  8. Yes, in the advocacy world, it is very hard to balance taking stands that prick the conscience with being warm, compassionate and forgiving. Truth telling is indeed an effective strategy to deliver a message that causes people to consider their behavior with greater self-awareness of the results of their actions. By the way, I think you’d like my Ethical Eating sermon I did last fall that follows your comments more closely. It majorly upset several members of my congregation which led to my more measured approach in the last two sermons.

    Taming desire has to be one of the most challenging aspects of the path to inner peace and liberation from suffering. It doesn’t take too much effort to convince people to stop self-harming behaviors – though that is hard enough. I find persuading people to stop eating animals that are shot through with toxins and hormones is generally easier than doing it for humanitarian reasons. And even then, people continue to engage in extreme self-harming behaviors (smoking, excessive drinking, over-eating), driven by craving, knowing full well that these behaviors are likely to shorten the duration and diminish the quality of their lives … just not yet. I see it in myself as I struggle to keep my sugar consumption at a very low level to deal with skin problems that respond to a low sugar diet. In the moral vs. desire struggle, the conscience too often loses. Craving is a powerful force not to be underestimated.

    Glad to have you advocating for animals Charlie. Things are gradually changing in your favor when you consider where this conversation was even 10 years ago. When meat costs 10 times as much as it does now, as the grass fed beef at my coop does, you may have even more converts!