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The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Food & Cookbooks (2014)Third Plate
496 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
930 people are currently reading
16735 people want to read
About the author
Dan Barber
12 books126 followersDan Barber (born 1969) is a chef and owner of several restaurants including Blue Hill in Manhattan and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, New York. He is a 1992 graduate of Tufts University, where he received a B.A. in English, and a graduate of the French Culinary Institute, now known as The International Culinary Center.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 812 reviews
January 1, 2015
This book is like a hybrid of Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel), Michael Pollan (the Omnivore's Dilemma), and ... Donald Trump. Barber is a prizewinning chef at a ultra-ultra restaurant and has won multiple James Beard awards, including the country's outstanding chef of 2009. He also has the ego to match.
Barber quite correctly points out that our current, faddish obsession with farm-to-table is not sustainable. In his telling, contemporary American cuisine has traveled through two phases, or plates. The first plate was made possible by nineteenth- and twentieth-century technological innovations in agriculture and the plate was centered on a seven-ounce prime cut of protein (e.g., corn fed beef, feedlot pork, Perdue-style chicken). The second plate appeared in the waning decades of the twentieth century, as we became somewhat cognizant of the terrible ecological costs of industrial monoculture and concentrated animal feedlot operations. Barber points out, however, that the second plate was also dominated by a seven-ounce prime cut of protein and surrounded by organic fruits and vegetables. Chefs have changed how they source ingredients, but not what they source, or how they think about the way their food preparation fits into an overall cuisine. Barber argues that we need a new way of envisioning a cuisine, as the totality of how food is grown, and that we must be more sensitive to the overall, long-term ecological sustainability of food systems. In this, his arguments fit very well with other contemporary writers who have thought about food systems (e.g., Pollan, Eric Schlosser), although Barber harkens back to an earlier generation of ecologists, such as Aldo Leopold and Wendell Berry to a greater degree.
While I don't disagree with Barber's overall conclusions, I have two major gripes with the book. First is that Barber is almost unbearably elitist, and seems to truly believe that chefs will be the ones to drive this type of ecologically-minded change. At the start of the book he writes, "chefs are known for their ability to create fashions and shape markets. What appears on a menu in a white-tablecloth restaurant one day trickles down to the bistro the next, and eventually influences everyday food culture (p. 10)." Barber is apparently a chef who has never eaten really great street food off the back of a truck. He does not seem to really grasp the possibility that culinary influence may flow in the opposite direction, i.e., that chefs may be inspired by humbler, local cooking traditions. It's a curious blind spot, since he describes a vivid memory of seeing Palladin at work in the kitchen, making a delectable sauce that made the poorest cuts of a chicken delectable. The book describes a decade-long journey that Barber took to arrive at his new ecological sustainability, and he meticulously traces his shifting perceptions and deepening understanding of sustainability. This journey takes him to Spain, where he observes how centuries-old practices have produced not only the famed Jamon Iberico, but a thoroughly integrated system of crop, forage, and livestock production. It amazes me that he could come away from a setting like that and still cling so tenaciously to a top-down assumption about how foodways are created and sustained. I suppose I shouldn't find it surprising, considering the milieu that he works in at his own restaurant, and I suppose that the clientele who patronize Blue Hill would find his trickle-down cuisine as comforting as the trickle-down economics they have been peddling in this era of growing social and economic inequality.
And this brings me to the second complaint I have about the book, which is that although Barber argues elegantly for a more holistic sense of ecology in food system production, he completely ignores the social and human inequalities that are embedded in our current food systems. There are a host of authors writing about the social injustices that are perpetrated within our contemporary food system, and yet Barber turns a completely blind eye to the people who work in our fields and feedlots. I'm thinking about people like Schlosser, but also Barry Estabrook, whose investigative reporting for Gourmet magazine revealed the injustices that are heaped upon pickers in Florida's tomato fields. Or Sara Jaraymaran, who writes about the plight of restaurant workers throughout the American restaurant sector (not only in fast food joints but in the very kind of white-tablecloth establishments where Barber works). It amazes me that Barber could spent a decade soaking in the literature (e.g., Aldo Leopold's land ethic, or Carl Safina's sea ethic) and completely ignore the human ethics in our current food systems that are so problematic. I'm especially puzzled about this omission, given that he traveled so extensively and talked with so many big thinkers in the process of developing this book. If this had been an exercise in armchair philosophy, I could understand how someone might read Thoreau, Emerson, and Leopold and retain such a single-minded commitment to agrarian idealism. But he was out there, in the field, quite literally. There's a glimmer of this kind of consciousness when he visits the North Carolina low country to study how people are reviving the tradition of planting Carolina gold rice. He writes, "there was an uncomfortable duality to this short historical period. Flavorful food was widely available; in many places, it was the only food available. But it happened at a time when the South was still in the grips of slavery. 'At least initially," Glenn said, 'everyone experimenting with kitchen gardens had a slave. They did the work. They almost always did the cooking, too. We had a bunch of wealthy white people who could afford to write books about what some really smart black people were doing.' (p. 347)" Our food system has not evolved very far at all from that time.
Barber makes a gesture toward Big Picture thinking. At the end of the book, he argues for the realization of a third plate, one that uses all parts of the harvest. In this mode, we would not abandon the current farm-to-table model, but deepen our commitment to it, to execute an honest nose-to-tail enactment of that ideal. He designs a menu that would use bycatch, harvestable portions of cover crops, spent grains from beer making, etc. That's all well and good, but at the end of this book, I'm still left asking the question, who will do this work? And how, exactly, would it transform American cuisine on a broad scale?
Barber quite correctly points out that our current, faddish obsession with farm-to-table is not sustainable. In his telling, contemporary American cuisine has traveled through two phases, or plates. The first plate was made possible by nineteenth- and twentieth-century technological innovations in agriculture and the plate was centered on a seven-ounce prime cut of protein (e.g., corn fed beef, feedlot pork, Perdue-style chicken). The second plate appeared in the waning decades of the twentieth century, as we became somewhat cognizant of the terrible ecological costs of industrial monoculture and concentrated animal feedlot operations. Barber points out, however, that the second plate was also dominated by a seven-ounce prime cut of protein and surrounded by organic fruits and vegetables. Chefs have changed how they source ingredients, but not what they source, or how they think about the way their food preparation fits into an overall cuisine. Barber argues that we need a new way of envisioning a cuisine, as the totality of how food is grown, and that we must be more sensitive to the overall, long-term ecological sustainability of food systems. In this, his arguments fit very well with other contemporary writers who have thought about food systems (e.g., Pollan, Eric Schlosser), although Barber harkens back to an earlier generation of ecologists, such as Aldo Leopold and Wendell Berry to a greater degree.
While I don't disagree with Barber's overall conclusions, I have two major gripes with the book. First is that Barber is almost unbearably elitist, and seems to truly believe that chefs will be the ones to drive this type of ecologically-minded change. At the start of the book he writes, "chefs are known for their ability to create fashions and shape markets. What appears on a menu in a white-tablecloth restaurant one day trickles down to the bistro the next, and eventually influences everyday food culture (p. 10)." Barber is apparently a chef who has never eaten really great street food off the back of a truck. He does not seem to really grasp the possibility that culinary influence may flow in the opposite direction, i.e., that chefs may be inspired by humbler, local cooking traditions. It's a curious blind spot, since he describes a vivid memory of seeing Palladin at work in the kitchen, making a delectable sauce that made the poorest cuts of a chicken delectable. The book describes a decade-long journey that Barber took to arrive at his new ecological sustainability, and he meticulously traces his shifting perceptions and deepening understanding of sustainability. This journey takes him to Spain, where he observes how centuries-old practices have produced not only the famed Jamon Iberico, but a thoroughly integrated system of crop, forage, and livestock production. It amazes me that he could come away from a setting like that and still cling so tenaciously to a top-down assumption about how foodways are created and sustained. I suppose I shouldn't find it surprising, considering the milieu that he works in at his own restaurant, and I suppose that the clientele who patronize Blue Hill would find his trickle-down cuisine as comforting as the trickle-down economics they have been peddling in this era of growing social and economic inequality.
And this brings me to the second complaint I have about the book, which is that although Barber argues elegantly for a more holistic sense of ecology in food system production, he completely ignores the social and human inequalities that are embedded in our current food systems. There are a host of authors writing about the social injustices that are perpetrated within our contemporary food system, and yet Barber turns a completely blind eye to the people who work in our fields and feedlots. I'm thinking about people like Schlosser, but also Barry Estabrook, whose investigative reporting for Gourmet magazine revealed the injustices that are heaped upon pickers in Florida's tomato fields. Or Sara Jaraymaran, who writes about the plight of restaurant workers throughout the American restaurant sector (not only in fast food joints but in the very kind of white-tablecloth establishments where Barber works). It amazes me that Barber could spent a decade soaking in the literature (e.g., Aldo Leopold's land ethic, or Carl Safina's sea ethic) and completely ignore the human ethics in our current food systems that are so problematic. I'm especially puzzled about this omission, given that he traveled so extensively and talked with so many big thinkers in the process of developing this book. If this had been an exercise in armchair philosophy, I could understand how someone might read Thoreau, Emerson, and Leopold and retain such a single-minded commitment to agrarian idealism. But he was out there, in the field, quite literally. There's a glimmer of this kind of consciousness when he visits the North Carolina low country to study how people are reviving the tradition of planting Carolina gold rice. He writes, "there was an uncomfortable duality to this short historical period. Flavorful food was widely available; in many places, it was the only food available. But it happened at a time when the South was still in the grips of slavery. 'At least initially," Glenn said, 'everyone experimenting with kitchen gardens had a slave. They did the work. They almost always did the cooking, too. We had a bunch of wealthy white people who could afford to write books about what some really smart black people were doing.' (p. 347)" Our food system has not evolved very far at all from that time.
Barber makes a gesture toward Big Picture thinking. At the end of the book, he argues for the realization of a third plate, one that uses all parts of the harvest. In this mode, we would not abandon the current farm-to-table model, but deepen our commitment to it, to execute an honest nose-to-tail enactment of that ideal. He designs a menu that would use bycatch, harvestable portions of cover crops, spent grains from beer making, etc. That's all well and good, but at the end of this book, I'm still left asking the question, who will do this work? And how, exactly, would it transform American cuisine on a broad scale?
June 21, 2014
I loved this book.
As a professor of environmental science at a small college, I've been trying to raise awareness of the environmental costs of our modern food system for many years now. But when my students have asked for alternatives, I've felt like I've been oversimplifying things with answers about CSA's and farmers markets. I love how this book really tackles the complexities of sustainable food production. While there is some hope out there, it is not a simple task.
Dan Barber explains how a truly sustainable food system needs to go far beyond the farm-to-table ethic promoted in farmers markets and big organic supermarkets. And he does a great job describing the complexity of the ecosystems AND the social systems required to produce the mythical Third Plate.
The most amazing thing about this book for me is that it really was a page-turner. Almost 450 pages about food systems and I couldn't stop reading. Very well researched, very engaging, and very provocative.
As a professor of environmental science at a small college, I've been trying to raise awareness of the environmental costs of our modern food system for many years now. But when my students have asked for alternatives, I've felt like I've been oversimplifying things with answers about CSA's and farmers markets. I love how this book really tackles the complexities of sustainable food production. While there is some hope out there, it is not a simple task.
Dan Barber explains how a truly sustainable food system needs to go far beyond the farm-to-table ethic promoted in farmers markets and big organic supermarkets. And he does a great job describing the complexity of the ecosystems AND the social systems required to produce the mythical Third Plate.
The most amazing thing about this book for me is that it really was a page-turner. Almost 450 pages about food systems and I couldn't stop reading. Very well researched, very engaging, and very provocative.
November 20, 2024
Senza parole. Ho letto anche i ringraziamenti.
October 14, 2014
The grace and fluency with which James Beard Award-winning Chef Barber relates his experiences in his Blue Hill restaurant in New York City, walking the fields of his Stone Barns organic farm in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and in his travels to Europe and throughout the United States left me wide-eyed with wonder. This extraordinary memoir and field notes is engrossing in a way that few writers achieve. Barber is gentle in his instruction, but he is telling us what he has learned about the inadequacy of the current concept of food sustainability, and it is a lesson we really need to assimilate and organize around.
Happily, his lessons are filled with well-cogitated thought, possibilities, solutions, humor, and beautiful images. I’d heard Corby Kummer interview the New York restaurateur on the New York Times book podcast back in the spring of ‘14, and thought it sounded like something I’d like to look at. I felt no urgency. Only when I obtained a copy for someone else and began to browse through it did I discover the can’t-put-it-down page-turning clarity, and the irresistible humor in Barber’s writing. I am trying now to figure out how many copies of the book I can give away for Christmas without repeating myself.
This book is divided into four sections, called Soil, Land, Sea, and Seeds. You won’t have heard these stories in quite this way before, and if they seem familiar, you will find it enlightening to see what Barber has chosen to highlight. Barber moves gradually through his dawning realization that the way we have been eating, in restaurants and at home, is not actually going to be able to sustain the land, the ocean, nor the planet, no matter that we gradually move from pesticide-grown vegetables to organics. There has to be a greater understanding of the web of interconnections between the soil and our eating habits. We have to be willing to increase the diversity of our diet and think about eating foods that replenish the balance in the soil along with ones we use more commonly.
It may be obvious to those who have paid attention to the concept of sustainability that we haven’t yet come around to actually managing the task ahead of us. Barber suggests it is more than simply changing our diets from meat-centric to vegetable-centric. He concludes that we “cherry-pick” our vegetables and therefore limit the amount a farm can sustainably produce for a given community. A farm has to grow cover crops on at least some of the land, and that is part of the cost of crops we actually eat. He urges us to think about how this works in fact, and what this reality means for pricing, output, and consumption.
But I may be making it sound boring. In Barber’s hands, it is anything but that. His work is filled with enlightening vignettes about the places, the people, the restaurants that led him to learn so much about sustainability and its opportunities. Barber awakened me to certain understandings about plant pairings that I’d sort of heard about, but never really believed possible: like having four different crops growing in the same space at the same time to preserve and replenish soil vitality. Especially, or perhaps only, in small scale operations where crops are harvested by hand might this be possible…but it is possible, in fact desirable!
Vignettes about the fish farmers and restaurants featuring fish were particularly interesting. I hadn’t followed the latest developments in that field and am astonished, pleased, and heartened to know that there are some doing things which enhance wildlife rather than diminish it. He tells of a fish farm in Spain which hosts vastly increased numbers of migrating birds as well as produces exceptional-tasting fish for market. It gives me hope that the work on the west coast of the USA to preserve and restore the tidal salt marshes near San Francisco might be successful for life of all kinds, including our own.
Barber outlines his own learning curve, his oversights and humiliations, and he is very funny in places, showing the reactions of people with different world views meeting (at Barber’s behest) face to face and trying to be civil, or in speaking of finely tuned chefs at their most passionate or most perplexed:
The section on wheat farming was completely new and fascinating to me. In the very beginning of the book Barber reproduces a photograph of the perennial Midwest native prairie wheat (with root system) alongside higher-yielding grain varieties planted to replace it. I was truly shocked by the difference in the profiles of the two plants, and thought it indicative of what modern agriculture has done, in every aspect of our food profile, to the concept of sustainability. The good news is that there are folks around the country thinking about our food future. Barber managed to create an international community of thoughtful practitioners striving to figure out how we can best produce what we will need to live on earth.
This completely fascinating book happens to be very easy to read. Someone in your family, not just the foodies, will love reading of Barber’s researches and spending time with this thoroughly decent guy who is willing to share his successes and failures in the field.
Happily, his lessons are filled with well-cogitated thought, possibilities, solutions, humor, and beautiful images. I’d heard Corby Kummer interview the New York restaurateur on the New York Times book podcast back in the spring of ‘14, and thought it sounded like something I’d like to look at. I felt no urgency. Only when I obtained a copy for someone else and began to browse through it did I discover the can’t-put-it-down page-turning clarity, and the irresistible humor in Barber’s writing. I am trying now to figure out how many copies of the book I can give away for Christmas without repeating myself.
This book is divided into four sections, called Soil, Land, Sea, and Seeds. You won’t have heard these stories in quite this way before, and if they seem familiar, you will find it enlightening to see what Barber has chosen to highlight. Barber moves gradually through his dawning realization that the way we have been eating, in restaurants and at home, is not actually going to be able to sustain the land, the ocean, nor the planet, no matter that we gradually move from pesticide-grown vegetables to organics. There has to be a greater understanding of the web of interconnections between the soil and our eating habits. We have to be willing to increase the diversity of our diet and think about eating foods that replenish the balance in the soil along with ones we use more commonly.
It may be obvious to those who have paid attention to the concept of sustainability that we haven’t yet come around to actually managing the task ahead of us. Barber suggests it is more than simply changing our diets from meat-centric to vegetable-centric. He concludes that we “cherry-pick” our vegetables and therefore limit the amount a farm can sustainably produce for a given community. A farm has to grow cover crops on at least some of the land, and that is part of the cost of crops we actually eat. He urges us to think about how this works in fact, and what this reality means for pricing, output, and consumption.
But I may be making it sound boring. In Barber’s hands, it is anything but that. His work is filled with enlightening vignettes about the places, the people, the restaurants that led him to learn so much about sustainability and its opportunities. Barber awakened me to certain understandings about plant pairings that I’d sort of heard about, but never really believed possible: like having four different crops growing in the same space at the same time to preserve and replenish soil vitality. Especially, or perhaps only, in small scale operations where crops are harvested by hand might this be possible…but it is possible, in fact desirable!
Vignettes about the fish farmers and restaurants featuring fish were particularly interesting. I hadn’t followed the latest developments in that field and am astonished, pleased, and heartened to know that there are some doing things which enhance wildlife rather than diminish it. He tells of a fish farm in Spain which hosts vastly increased numbers of migrating birds as well as produces exceptional-tasting fish for market. It gives me hope that the work on the west coast of the USA to preserve and restore the tidal salt marshes near San Francisco might be successful for life of all kinds, including our own.
Barber outlines his own learning curve, his oversights and humiliations, and he is very funny in places, showing the reactions of people with different world views meeting (at Barber’s behest) face to face and trying to be civil, or in speaking of finely tuned chefs at their most passionate or most perplexed:
’Dan,’ [Ángel] said, turning to me, ‘have you ever cooked naked in your kitchen?’Ángel features in another very funny bit:
”[Santiago] goes to different ponds in Veta la Palma [Spain] at different times of the year. Always at the full moon,” Ángel said.
Thinking of Steiner and his lunar planting schedule, I guessed, “Because the fish have better flavor when the moon is full.”
“No,” [Ángel] said, looking puzzled. “So he can see what he’s catching.”
The section on wheat farming was completely new and fascinating to me. In the very beginning of the book Barber reproduces a photograph of the perennial Midwest native prairie wheat (with root system) alongside higher-yielding grain varieties planted to replace it. I was truly shocked by the difference in the profiles of the two plants, and thought it indicative of what modern agriculture has done, in every aspect of our food profile, to the concept of sustainability. The good news is that there are folks around the country thinking about our food future. Barber managed to create an international community of thoughtful practitioners striving to figure out how we can best produce what we will need to live on earth.
This completely fascinating book happens to be very easy to read. Someone in your family, not just the foodies, will love reading of Barber’s researches and spending time with this thoroughly decent guy who is willing to share his successes and failures in the field.
July 1, 2014
As interesting and well-written as it is, I still wonder for whom this book was written. The foods discussed end-up being unaffordable for many, if not most, people. What good is a food revolution that is targetted to those who already have their pick of the best food available?
December 27, 2014
I am a sucker for any well reasoned book about food politics, and, like a good meal, this one more than satisfies.
Dan Barber is the chef at Blue Hill at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, New York, and at his city restaurant called Blue Hill New York. At these restaurants, he goes beyond the farm-to-table ethic now proliferating by actually growing much of the food he cooks. When I picked up The Third Plate, I anticipated something that might build on The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a book about what and how we eat, a book which has altered the sensibilities of many cooks and eaters.
But this book is really about farming. Barber assumes we all know we should shun meat from antibiotic-fed animals, avoid vegetables laced with pesticides, and eat seasonal and locally sourced food. He figures that’s all good stuff, but it isn’t enough.
In fact, the organic and locavore diet is his definition of the second plate, and Barber is pretty sure any reader of this book is likely already on board, committed to that second plate. (The first plate featured a big hunk of feed-lot steak; let’s not even go there.) He also knows that organic vegetables can come from inferior soils, often products of monoculture plantings. They may be healthier for us and better for the planet, but they aren’t good enough.
The third plate is the one he dreams of. It is filled with foods that have come from healthy, undepleted soils and waters. The Third Plate is all about people and places respectful of maintaining land and water in ways that recognize the interdependence of living things.
Barber’s descriptions of various iconic people whose activities in growing, harvesting, and preserving delicious foods are beautifully written, and he has made sure that I will want to meet them all. Could they really be so colorful, so able to philosophize about life and food? This fabulous collection of characters makes me never again want to call myself a foodie. Never mind that I think every day about cooking and eating. Barber’s farmers, fishermen, and grain breeders are other worldly. The long chapter entitled “Sea” is a particularly lyrical paean to those who want to preserve our oceans to yield delicious fish for years to come.
Ah, that word “delicious.” Turns out that Dan Barber is concerned quite a lot with flavor, and he talks about that more than about health, figuring we had already leapt onto that band wagon. Readers will learn quite a bit about the dehesa system of agriculture in Spain, and they will come away with new respect for the agricultural innovations of land-grant colleges.
Barber’s recipe for the future of food focuses on a “whole farm” approach which he follows himself, one that is particularly good for the soil, that in turn allows more flavorful foods to emerge. Is it possible that farms can follow his example? Will the food be affordable? I can’t afford to have a meal at Barber’s restaurants; I’ve checked the on-line menus.
His ideals are so appealing, so seductive, yet sadly elitist. Perhaps the models he admires will gradually become more common and hence more economical. I hope, I hope.
Though he never mentions it, the “whole farm” ideal, in which many varieties (whether plants, animals, or fish) are interdependent and mutually beneficial, is probably an excellent model for a world anticipating climate change. Climate change gurus say that when a farm has planted different vegetables and varieties, it is better able to withstand a season with aberrant weather.
In fact, the greater good is not something Barber often focuses on. He is concerned with sustainability, but even more with flavor. As a foodie (although I promised not to call myself that), I embrace anything that will bring great food to me and those I love, but I also have nagging feelings about the billions of people on this earth who must be fed. Too many people cannot afford expensively produced foods.
A healthy plate of food that is simply prepared and also inexpensive? That would make a fine fourth plate.
Dan Barber is the chef at Blue Hill at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, New York, and at his city restaurant called Blue Hill New York. At these restaurants, he goes beyond the farm-to-table ethic now proliferating by actually growing much of the food he cooks. When I picked up The Third Plate, I anticipated something that might build on The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a book about what and how we eat, a book which has altered the sensibilities of many cooks and eaters.
But this book is really about farming. Barber assumes we all know we should shun meat from antibiotic-fed animals, avoid vegetables laced with pesticides, and eat seasonal and locally sourced food. He figures that’s all good stuff, but it isn’t enough.
In fact, the organic and locavore diet is his definition of the second plate, and Barber is pretty sure any reader of this book is likely already on board, committed to that second plate. (The first plate featured a big hunk of feed-lot steak; let’s not even go there.) He also knows that organic vegetables can come from inferior soils, often products of monoculture plantings. They may be healthier for us and better for the planet, but they aren’t good enough.
The third plate is the one he dreams of. It is filled with foods that have come from healthy, undepleted soils and waters. The Third Plate is all about people and places respectful of maintaining land and water in ways that recognize the interdependence of living things.
Barber’s descriptions of various iconic people whose activities in growing, harvesting, and preserving delicious foods are beautifully written, and he has made sure that I will want to meet them all. Could they really be so colorful, so able to philosophize about life and food? This fabulous collection of characters makes me never again want to call myself a foodie. Never mind that I think every day about cooking and eating. Barber’s farmers, fishermen, and grain breeders are other worldly. The long chapter entitled “Sea” is a particularly lyrical paean to those who want to preserve our oceans to yield delicious fish for years to come.
Ah, that word “delicious.” Turns out that Dan Barber is concerned quite a lot with flavor, and he talks about that more than about health, figuring we had already leapt onto that band wagon. Readers will learn quite a bit about the dehesa system of agriculture in Spain, and they will come away with new respect for the agricultural innovations of land-grant colleges.
Barber’s recipe for the future of food focuses on a “whole farm” approach which he follows himself, one that is particularly good for the soil, that in turn allows more flavorful foods to emerge. Is it possible that farms can follow his example? Will the food be affordable? I can’t afford to have a meal at Barber’s restaurants; I’ve checked the on-line menus.
His ideals are so appealing, so seductive, yet sadly elitist. Perhaps the models he admires will gradually become more common and hence more economical. I hope, I hope.
Though he never mentions it, the “whole farm” ideal, in which many varieties (whether plants, animals, or fish) are interdependent and mutually beneficial, is probably an excellent model for a world anticipating climate change. Climate change gurus say that when a farm has planted different vegetables and varieties, it is better able to withstand a season with aberrant weather.
In fact, the greater good is not something Barber often focuses on. He is concerned with sustainability, but even more with flavor. As a foodie (although I promised not to call myself that), I embrace anything that will bring great food to me and those I love, but I also have nagging feelings about the billions of people on this earth who must be fed. Too many people cannot afford expensively produced foods.
A healthy plate of food that is simply prepared and also inexpensive? That would make a fine fourth plate.
July 3, 2014
This was an astounding read! I must say it was made even sweeter by previously seeing Dan Barber speak about his recent publication, and then also being the first in line to secure his new book on the hold-shelf at the local library.
I had been hoping to read a book of this caliber for quite some time now, without knowing it was out even there. This was due to a number of recent questions that were beginning to pop into my head like bubble gum. What is the status and health of the wheat being grown in our country? How does it affect us? What is a balanced look at organically grown versus fertilizer grown? Who are the superheroes of agriculture? Where do they hang their capes? How does capitalism reflect the way we till our land? What is the history of the soil we eat from? Where did The Praire go? When did all the machines come in? Is Farmed Fish a possibility? How can a carrot measure 16 points on the brix scale?
All in all I invested about 8-10 hours in this book, taking notes, and going back for review. I found the history, vision and characters curious, inspiring, heartbreaking, and thought provoking, wrapped with well written narrative and wit. A fantastic read and most heartily recommended.
I had been hoping to read a book of this caliber for quite some time now, without knowing it was out even there. This was due to a number of recent questions that were beginning to pop into my head like bubble gum. What is the status and health of the wheat being grown in our country? How does it affect us? What is a balanced look at organically grown versus fertilizer grown? Who are the superheroes of agriculture? Where do they hang their capes? How does capitalism reflect the way we till our land? What is the history of the soil we eat from? Where did The Praire go? When did all the machines come in? Is Farmed Fish a possibility? How can a carrot measure 16 points on the brix scale?
All in all I invested about 8-10 hours in this book, taking notes, and going back for review. I found the history, vision and characters curious, inspiring, heartbreaking, and thought provoking, wrapped with well written narrative and wit. A fantastic read and most heartily recommended.
May 27, 2020
Our son-in-law is a foodie. While discussing Spanish cooking he mentioned that Spain is prevalent in this book so it peeked my interest. He was right, Spain does play a major part of this book.
The farm to table movement began in the 2000s and Dan Barber, an American chef and farm owner is trying see what is the future of food sustainability. The subtitle on this book, “Field notes on the future of food” says it all. We begin with the growing of a 400-year old corn, that was almost extinct.
The book is divided into four sections, soil, land, sea and seed. Barber looks into the different aspects of the food movement, the positives and negatives, it’s past and it’s future, all seen through the eyes of a chef.
This is where Spain comes in. Known for its jamón Ibérico bellota, he goes to the farm of Eduardo Sousa in the dehesa in Extremadura. His claim to fame is producing foie gras but not in force feeding the geese, rather free ranging ones. And he raises those acorn-fed black pigs for the jamón too. Interesting process.
Down the road in Cadiz, chef Ángel León of 3-Michelin starred Aponiente restaurant uses entirely lesser known seafood items to create celebrated meals. These are typically the stuff dragged in by the catch and discarded. Of course his big interest is used bluefin tuna caught in the 3,000 year old Spanish net fishing process called the almadraba.
Just north of Cadiz in Veta La Palma, Miguel Medialdea uses an old estuary ponds on the Guadalquivir River, south of Seville to raise sustainable sea bass. His method is farming fish in a natural environment, complete with thousands of flamingos.
Jamón Ibérica, foe gras, and bluefin tuna, are all high end foods and the last two are very controversial these days. But remember, Barber is a high end chef of Blue Hill in Manhattan. His aim is to understand the sustainability of the food movement and where is it going. He raises food on his own farm which sounds like a love and challenge in itself.
One could easily dismiss this book as some lofty high end goal. It’s not all lofty stuff. In the final chapter, he focuses on the humble wheat and its outcome, bread. Yet there is plenty of information here that makes one think about the food process.
In Mexico in the 1940s, a visiting American Vice President came down for the inauguration of President Manuel Ávila Camacho. He toured some farms and saw how poor the yields were. With his contacts he brought American fertilizer and a Japanese short wheat to Mexico. Yields were up and India asked for help.
The downside of the story is after a few years the fields were overused and the small farm lands were bought up cheap by big landowners. The poor farmer moved to Mexico City swelling it’s numbers. Repeat around the world.
Dan Barber’s feeling of optimism fills the pages when confronted with global issues to feed the masses. Perhaps as a chef, he can focus on the search for taste, small yields and a passion for food. He provides an interesting menu for the future (literally a five course meal with dessert) for 2050.
It made for a good read, lots of thought about food choices and a good distraction.
The farm to table movement began in the 2000s and Dan Barber, an American chef and farm owner is trying see what is the future of food sustainability. The subtitle on this book, “Field notes on the future of food” says it all. We begin with the growing of a 400-year old corn, that was almost extinct.
The book is divided into four sections, soil, land, sea and seed. Barber looks into the different aspects of the food movement, the positives and negatives, it’s past and it’s future, all seen through the eyes of a chef.
This is where Spain comes in. Known for its jamón Ibérico bellota, he goes to the farm of Eduardo Sousa in the dehesa in Extremadura. His claim to fame is producing foie gras but not in force feeding the geese, rather free ranging ones. And he raises those acorn-fed black pigs for the jamón too. Interesting process.
Down the road in Cadiz, chef Ángel León of 3-Michelin starred Aponiente restaurant uses entirely lesser known seafood items to create celebrated meals. These are typically the stuff dragged in by the catch and discarded. Of course his big interest is used bluefin tuna caught in the 3,000 year old Spanish net fishing process called the almadraba.
Just north of Cadiz in Veta La Palma, Miguel Medialdea uses an old estuary ponds on the Guadalquivir River, south of Seville to raise sustainable sea bass. His method is farming fish in a natural environment, complete with thousands of flamingos.
Jamón Ibérica, foe gras, and bluefin tuna, are all high end foods and the last two are very controversial these days. But remember, Barber is a high end chef of Blue Hill in Manhattan. His aim is to understand the sustainability of the food movement and where is it going. He raises food on his own farm which sounds like a love and challenge in itself.
One could easily dismiss this book as some lofty high end goal. It’s not all lofty stuff. In the final chapter, he focuses on the humble wheat and its outcome, bread. Yet there is plenty of information here that makes one think about the food process.
In Mexico in the 1940s, a visiting American Vice President came down for the inauguration of President Manuel Ávila Camacho. He toured some farms and saw how poor the yields were. With his contacts he brought American fertilizer and a Japanese short wheat to Mexico. Yields were up and India asked for help.
The downside of the story is after a few years the fields were overused and the small farm lands were bought up cheap by big landowners. The poor farmer moved to Mexico City swelling it’s numbers. Repeat around the world.
Dan Barber’s feeling of optimism fills the pages when confronted with global issues to feed the masses. Perhaps as a chef, he can focus on the search for taste, small yields and a passion for food. He provides an interesting menu for the future (literally a five course meal with dessert) for 2050.
It made for a good read, lots of thought about food choices and a good distraction.
June 22, 2024
I loved reading about Stone Barns, especially since I grew up visiting on the weekends with my family to roam the grounds and watch livestock graze. I loved reading about little pockets around the world where the food system in place is an essential piece of that region's culture. It was slightly depressing to read about how messed up the U.S food system is, but I enjoyed hearing about all of the integral work land grant institutions are getting involved in to combat the decline. I feel like I learned so much about the work that people do at Cornell too, and that makes me so incredibly excited for college. I want to learn more about seed breeding in particular!! They seem to be well-versed in breeding research. I will say that the epilogue was kind of weird, as well as some of the analogies (others were really helpful though), but as a whole the book was very good!
From the moment I started this book, I thought it would be a good idea to take notes on anything I found interesting, because I regret not doing that with the last nutrition related book I read. So here are my consolidated notes, more for my own benefit whenever I want a refresher on the book's main/most compelling points. Actually, it may be best if you don't read my notes, because you'll either be bored by them or realize how much of a nerd I am. thanks. bye.
- soil restoration occurs naturally through the planting of certain crops; spelt and clover are integral for it, replenishing carbon and nitrogen, respectively (63). additionally, artificially adding nutrients back into soil is detrimental to the health of crops because of potentially overly saturated soil. also, npk and other additives neglect to add other nutrients back into soil. another interesting note is that algae blooms in nearby bodies of water are a result of fertilizer runoff, and they can deplete water of oxygen, choking aquatic life (216).
- you can tell what nutrient(s) soil is deprived of by whatever weeds grow there (63). how incredibly cool is that !
- farmers can make more money feeding animals than people which is sad when you think about it (66)
- refractometers measure the amount of sugar, healthy oils, amino acids, proteins, and minerals in a fruit or vegetable (81)
- crops get minerals from the soil they grow in, so if soil has been depleted of nutrients, the crops will be too (98). I was actually talking about this with someone at the farmers market and she has a masters in nutritional sciences. she said this fact makes it important for you to source your vegetables from multiple places, to diversify the nutrients you receive from what you eat. every farm has different soil health / compositions!
- you can taste what the animal you've eaten has eaten (134). I think it's kind of wild that some chefs have that particular of a palate that they can tell exactly what the animal has eaten right before death, but for the general public this more so means animals that are fed some sort of grain feed don't typically taste as good. oh also! animals taste better when they die peacefully. if they are stressed right before death their flavor isn't as good. a common method for fish is to submerge them in ice water, which essentially sets them to sleep (309)
- really well grown things shine on their own, and don't need additions (136). seems simple but it's crazy to think about. accordingly, taking shortcuts results in less tasty, worse quality food (146).
- barn animals requiring less feed and time to grow into mature adults have been bred exponentially, neglecting breeds that follow a more natural line of progression and growth (149).
- we eat too much of the expensive parts of meat, neglecting other cuts. also, expensive cuts are typically very tender but simultaneously very bland. muscles that are oxygenated have a deeper, more prominent flavor, but are chewier because they are worked more. there is a tradeoff, and people prefer to not have to work too hard for their food (153). i love Chinese food because it often highlights less desired cuts of meat (tripe my love).
- also, because collectively we don't eat enough of the less desired cuts of any kind of meat, there is often a lot of food waste. the poultry industry is a good example because people buy the same cuts over and over again. it's gotten to the point where fish farms are feeding fish chicken scraps. weird. the poultry industry is messed up because the amount of chicken grown in the U.S is such a problem. it's also a seemingly never-ending cycle (157)
- the industrialization of farming has led to the loss of the culture part of agriculture (175)
- bottom trawling, a type of fishing that drags nets on the bottom of the ocean floor, deeply upsets ocean floor ecosystems (214)
- bycatch makes up about a quarter of all fish caught at sea, and they are thrown back into the water because they are dead or dying (215).
- phytoplankton provide food for herbivore marine life, contribute to cloud formation, and provide oxygen to breathe. a lot of oxygen. so the depletion of natural phytoplankton is a cause for concern (217). but people have found ways to grow it in labs!! so that's interesting
- "oceans cover about 70 percent of the planet, and yet we eat like there are only about twenty varieties of fish out there" (228)
- the antebellum south had intense vegetable breeding and experimentation in order to regenerate soil and maximize flavor. taste used to be most important, not yield (347)
- higher seed diversity means better resistance to diseases, pests, and unpredictable weather conditions. monocultures have no diversity and have little resistance, making pesticides necessary and organic practices nearly impossible (387)
- wheat is so incredibly complex and i LOVED READING ABOUT IT
- wild wheat is perennial and therefore doesn't need to be replanted every year (41)
- the wheat that many monocultures in the United States and worldwide use today is of a semidwarf variety because it has a better response to the use of fertilizer. these semidwarf varieties also have incredibly small root systems that are horrible at collecting micronutrients and are just weak. they were originally introduced as a widespread solution to famine and growing populations, but their continued use greatly deteriorates seed diversity (364)
- modern wheat isn't bred for flavor, but high yields (342). the production of grain has all but lost its cultural heritage (377)
- the green revolution forced farmer to specialize, monetize, and modernize (369)
- modern seed is generally less resilient, with short roots, and will not survive changes in climate (which are inevitable with climate change) and fluctuating weather (372)
- now this is a fascinating one! fresh flour actually has to be refrigerated! the stuff we buy at the grocery store lasts on shelves because the wheat is harvested when it is practically dead ("picked long past ripeness"), and then to add onto that it is dried out through a light toast (374)
- land grant institutions are tasked with educating in agriculture (386). do more research on Cornell Mountain Magic varieties.
- there is a difference between old fashioned breeding / scientific selection, and seeds / variations grown in a lab.
- private industry funds agricultural research more than the USDA at land grant institutions (396)
- a whole loaf of bread made from modern varieties of wheat has the same nutritional value as half a loaf made from older varieties (403)
- people understand that availability of fruits and vegetables changes with the seasons but fail to gather that wheat works like that too. bread is seen as a staple, but wheat harvests change with the seasons. this is partially why processed flour has taken over; it is more consistent. it doesn’t matter that it doesn't have nearly any nutritional value (411)
- there is a direct correlation between healthy soil and good protein content in wheat, and to get good protein content every harvest, fertilizer has to be used. crops aren't always consistent, unfortunately! (416)
- grass fed cows produce butter varying by season and week, but also by field (cows grazing in fields with more fertilized soil produce richer butter) and breed (437)
- increased flavor and increased yield are not mutually exclusively (439)
okay I think I'm done now that was a little much
From the moment I started this book, I thought it would be a good idea to take notes on anything I found interesting, because I regret not doing that with the last nutrition related book I read. So here are my consolidated notes, more for my own benefit whenever I want a refresher on the book's main/most compelling points. Actually, it may be best if you don't read my notes, because you'll either be bored by them or realize how much of a nerd I am. thanks. bye.
- soil restoration occurs naturally through the planting of certain crops; spelt and clover are integral for it, replenishing carbon and nitrogen, respectively (63). additionally, artificially adding nutrients back into soil is detrimental to the health of crops because of potentially overly saturated soil. also, npk and other additives neglect to add other nutrients back into soil. another interesting note is that algae blooms in nearby bodies of water are a result of fertilizer runoff, and they can deplete water of oxygen, choking aquatic life (216).
- you can tell what nutrient(s) soil is deprived of by whatever weeds grow there (63). how incredibly cool is that !
- farmers can make more money feeding animals than people which is sad when you think about it (66)
- refractometers measure the amount of sugar, healthy oils, amino acids, proteins, and minerals in a fruit or vegetable (81)
- crops get minerals from the soil they grow in, so if soil has been depleted of nutrients, the crops will be too (98). I was actually talking about this with someone at the farmers market and she has a masters in nutritional sciences. she said this fact makes it important for you to source your vegetables from multiple places, to diversify the nutrients you receive from what you eat. every farm has different soil health / compositions!
- you can taste what the animal you've eaten has eaten (134). I think it's kind of wild that some chefs have that particular of a palate that they can tell exactly what the animal has eaten right before death, but for the general public this more so means animals that are fed some sort of grain feed don't typically taste as good. oh also! animals taste better when they die peacefully. if they are stressed right before death their flavor isn't as good. a common method for fish is to submerge them in ice water, which essentially sets them to sleep (309)
- really well grown things shine on their own, and don't need additions (136). seems simple but it's crazy to think about. accordingly, taking shortcuts results in less tasty, worse quality food (146).
- barn animals requiring less feed and time to grow into mature adults have been bred exponentially, neglecting breeds that follow a more natural line of progression and growth (149).
- we eat too much of the expensive parts of meat, neglecting other cuts. also, expensive cuts are typically very tender but simultaneously very bland. muscles that are oxygenated have a deeper, more prominent flavor, but are chewier because they are worked more. there is a tradeoff, and people prefer to not have to work too hard for their food (153). i love Chinese food because it often highlights less desired cuts of meat (tripe my love).
- also, because collectively we don't eat enough of the less desired cuts of any kind of meat, there is often a lot of food waste. the poultry industry is a good example because people buy the same cuts over and over again. it's gotten to the point where fish farms are feeding fish chicken scraps. weird. the poultry industry is messed up because the amount of chicken grown in the U.S is such a problem. it's also a seemingly never-ending cycle (157)
- the industrialization of farming has led to the loss of the culture part of agriculture (175)
- bottom trawling, a type of fishing that drags nets on the bottom of the ocean floor, deeply upsets ocean floor ecosystems (214)
- bycatch makes up about a quarter of all fish caught at sea, and they are thrown back into the water because they are dead or dying (215).
- phytoplankton provide food for herbivore marine life, contribute to cloud formation, and provide oxygen to breathe. a lot of oxygen. so the depletion of natural phytoplankton is a cause for concern (217). but people have found ways to grow it in labs!! so that's interesting
- "oceans cover about 70 percent of the planet, and yet we eat like there are only about twenty varieties of fish out there" (228)
- the antebellum south had intense vegetable breeding and experimentation in order to regenerate soil and maximize flavor. taste used to be most important, not yield (347)
- higher seed diversity means better resistance to diseases, pests, and unpredictable weather conditions. monocultures have no diversity and have little resistance, making pesticides necessary and organic practices nearly impossible (387)
- wheat is so incredibly complex and i LOVED READING ABOUT IT
- wild wheat is perennial and therefore doesn't need to be replanted every year (41)
- the wheat that many monocultures in the United States and worldwide use today is of a semidwarf variety because it has a better response to the use of fertilizer. these semidwarf varieties also have incredibly small root systems that are horrible at collecting micronutrients and are just weak. they were originally introduced as a widespread solution to famine and growing populations, but their continued use greatly deteriorates seed diversity (364)
- modern wheat isn't bred for flavor, but high yields (342). the production of grain has all but lost its cultural heritage (377)
- the green revolution forced farmer to specialize, monetize, and modernize (369)
- modern seed is generally less resilient, with short roots, and will not survive changes in climate (which are inevitable with climate change) and fluctuating weather (372)
- now this is a fascinating one! fresh flour actually has to be refrigerated! the stuff we buy at the grocery store lasts on shelves because the wheat is harvested when it is practically dead ("picked long past ripeness"), and then to add onto that it is dried out through a light toast (374)
- land grant institutions are tasked with educating in agriculture (386). do more research on Cornell Mountain Magic varieties.
- there is a difference between old fashioned breeding / scientific selection, and seeds / variations grown in a lab.
- private industry funds agricultural research more than the USDA at land grant institutions (396)
- a whole loaf of bread made from modern varieties of wheat has the same nutritional value as half a loaf made from older varieties (403)
- people understand that availability of fruits and vegetables changes with the seasons but fail to gather that wheat works like that too. bread is seen as a staple, but wheat harvests change with the seasons. this is partially why processed flour has taken over; it is more consistent. it doesn’t matter that it doesn't have nearly any nutritional value (411)
- there is a direct correlation between healthy soil and good protein content in wheat, and to get good protein content every harvest, fertilizer has to be used. crops aren't always consistent, unfortunately! (416)
- grass fed cows produce butter varying by season and week, but also by field (cows grazing in fields with more fertilized soil produce richer butter) and breed (437)
- increased flavor and increased yield are not mutually exclusively (439)
okay I think I'm done now that was a little much
July 1, 2019
Audiobook read by the author.
The biggest problem I had with this book and the food movement today is that it is still mostly for the affluent and privileged. I worked many years in the cooperative food business emphasis on health and integrity . We were perceived as freaks. Today it's gotten to be big business but oops some of the integrity has been put on hold.
The food worker, gardener and cook part of me found the histories about wheat, corn, fish and other foods fascinating but they aren't for me. I cook and eat healthy but no way can I afford to buy most of the foods in this book to cook much less travel to their locales or eat in fancy restaurants. The whole uber chef dynamic is a bit much too. It ties right into the status of eating a meal that costs more than most of us spend a week on groceries.
I can appreciate how farmers, cooks and others want to use high quality and tasty food grown/ raised responsibly with respect but I did not see how the instances in this book can translate out to solutions for all parts of the population and into the larger world. Ironically with the increase of marketing organically grown food by large corporations, some of the same practices (harvesting too early, growing for easier shipping, plastic over packaging) of commercial food corporations have become the norm. The plus is fewer chemicals for eaters and those who grow and harvest a minus is control for bigger profits.
The bigger question is how we feed billions, improve the quality of food available and do it without further destroying our environment and plant gene base. I didn't see that addressed enough in this book.
The biggest problem I had with this book and the food movement today is that it is still mostly for the affluent and privileged. I worked many years in the cooperative food business emphasis on health and integrity . We were perceived as freaks. Today it's gotten to be big business but oops some of the integrity has been put on hold.
The food worker, gardener and cook part of me found the histories about wheat, corn, fish and other foods fascinating but they aren't for me. I cook and eat healthy but no way can I afford to buy most of the foods in this book to cook much less travel to their locales or eat in fancy restaurants. The whole uber chef dynamic is a bit much too. It ties right into the status of eating a meal that costs more than most of us spend a week on groceries.
I can appreciate how farmers, cooks and others want to use high quality and tasty food grown/ raised responsibly with respect but I did not see how the instances in this book can translate out to solutions for all parts of the population and into the larger world. Ironically with the increase of marketing organically grown food by large corporations, some of the same practices (harvesting too early, growing for easier shipping, plastic over packaging) of commercial food corporations have become the norm. The plus is fewer chemicals for eaters and those who grow and harvest a minus is control for bigger profits.
The bigger question is how we feed billions, improve the quality of food available and do it without further destroying our environment and plant gene base. I didn't see that addressed enough in this book.
June 26, 2014
While in many ways The Third Plate is comparable to In Defense of Food or The Omnivore's Dilemma, Dan Barber is certainly not, as some have hailed him, the next Michael Pollan. Third Plate is a fascinating, at times rambling food memoir in the truest sense. It follows through with its subtitle of "field notes," sometimes feeling like one restaurateur's long indulgent marketing project. This is not to say The Third Plate is not worth a read, certainly it is the strongest book in this genre to hit shelves recently and offers a subtle, almost accidental, argument against big food. Don't expect anything earth-shattering, do expect a good afternoon of reading guaranteed to famish you thoroughly.
December 26, 2015
A book that doesn't just define what we, how we eat but more importantly, it determines what we grow for our children, their children, and their children's children.
August 15, 2014
It's absolutely unfair that one of the best chefs in the country is also such a fabulous writer. Barber is engaging, astute, and optimistic. He tells his story here through a series of character profiles (an organic grain and dairy farmer, an obsessed Spanish seafood chef, an ecologically aware sea bass farmer [also in Spain--this book made me want to visit Spain], a lowcountry rice cultivator [shout-out to South Carolina where I live!], and a midwestern wheat breeder. In this character and story-driven approach, Barber follows on the heels of Michael Pollan, but with his own vein of humor and hope. The ecological and agricultural circumstances of contemporary life that he writes about are dire, and he gives the facts about the economic pressures that support agribusiness and deplete our oceans and our soil fertility. But he's also always interested in solutions and community and in respectful innovation, which is SO satisfying to read and very encouraging in terms of rethinking what the "future of food" could be. His anecdotes are both very much located in his life as a working, high-end chef at the Blue Hill Stone Barns center (Sidenote: this book makes me REALLY REALLY want to eat there), but they also think through the interrelationships of species, localities, and cultures. An editorial came out this week in the New York Times on the relationship between reduced biodiversity and reduced cultural and linguistic diversity (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/13/opi...), and this book powerfully advances the message that local traditions must be preserved, advanced, and transformed for the present and future. It is especially persuasive as it talks about the ecologically complex relationship of the plants and animals that come out of the the Spanish dehesa, a region that produces fabulous figs, acorns, geese, and, most famously, the pigs that produce jamon ibérico. Barber proposes an agriculture that is not at war with or decimating its surroundings but that acts within (rather than against) the beautifully organized chaos of nature. I found it to be both an inspiring and a gripping book, and one not subject to the vague nostalgias that the "localism" or "slow foods" movements are heir to (hence his engagement in the work of breeding new wheat varieties at the end of the book). An absolutely delicious study--part observation, part ecological autobiography, part manifesto, and every bit a pleasure. (Plus a fabulous bibliography at the end!)
Addendum: This is also a book that made me wish so much that science education was approached in a more interdisciplinary fashion in public middle schools and high schools. The entwinement of chemistry, biology (cum ecology), agriculture, cooking, literature, and philosophy in this book made me realize how passionate i could have been about these forms of knowledge that always seemed opaque to me. This is also a tribute to Barber's power as a teacher and storyteller (and a neophyte as he admits his bio background, like mine, only extends to ninth grade!).
Addendum: This is also a book that made me wish so much that science education was approached in a more interdisciplinary fashion in public middle schools and high schools. The entwinement of chemistry, biology (cum ecology), agriculture, cooking, literature, and philosophy in this book made me realize how passionate i could have been about these forms of knowledge that always seemed opaque to me. This is also a tribute to Barber's power as a teacher and storyteller (and a neophyte as he admits his bio background, like mine, only extends to ninth grade!).
March 14, 2019
I loved this deep dive into farming culture and sustainable methods of food production. It's more than that, too. It's a look at why wheat matters, why we're straight up destroying our oceans, and why monoculture farming is so damaging to the land. (If you want a short version of that last part, go watch the "It's Alive: Goin' Places" video on youtube where Brad visits a bison ranch.) The book tends to rely a lot on the influencce of chefs, but since that's Barber's actual job/life, I didn't mind so much. I'll be thinking about this for a long time to come.
A note on the audiobook: Barber himself does the narration, which works out very well. His tone comes across as curious, compassionate, and just a tiny bit smug. There's some repetition to the chapters, but that worked out really well for a car book since I like to be able to zone out occasionally while I drive. I have no idea if he wrote this entirely on his own or with the help of a ghostwriter, but the writing is also quite good.
A note on the audiobook: Barber himself does the narration, which works out very well. His tone comes across as curious, compassionate, and just a tiny bit smug. There's some repetition to the chapters, but that worked out really well for a car book since I like to be able to zone out occasionally while I drive. I have no idea if he wrote this entirely on his own or with the help of a ghostwriter, but the writing is also quite good.
September 18, 2014
If you love food as much as I do and learning how a chef thinks, researches and approaches aspects of putting together good quality products then this one is for you. I really enjoyed the breakdown on items from the sea, land, earth, soil description and the many conversations he had with other chefs, fishermen, farmers and the like. Not to mention his visits to Spain (perhaps that conjured up my own memories of visits and their food culture? haha)Wonderfully engaging and gives one pause even as a consumer on what quality consumption from a food perspective might be about now and in the future.
February 26, 2024
I loved this so much. A great balance of storytelling presented with information/science.
I think I am going to be thinking about how to be a better participant in the larger system of agriculture for a long time.
I think I am going to be thinking about how to be a better participant in the larger system of agriculture for a long time.
February 1, 2017
Living in Durango, I certainly know some folks with what I consider to be very extreme. . .militant even. . .views about their dietary choices. Lacking a Biblical worldview, it is clear to me that these people have made food, or their flavor of environmentalism, their religion and many of them are angry zealots. I have been treated with utter disdain by a cashier at a local health food store for buying animal products. My friend, Stephanie, had a total stranger grab her face, peer into her eyes and then cluck her tongue and shake her head in dismay and exclaim, "You look so bad because you are eating all that meat." (For the record, Stephanie looks just great.) I have had friends over for dinner and they refused to eat the food I served because every component of the meal wasn't organic. Their culinary ethic (which was beyond my budget since our income was a fraction of theirs) meant more to them than their friendship with my family. I could go on and on regaling you with many amusing/bemusing stories from the farmer's market. My experience is that people, armed with little BUT zealotry, get crazy about environmentalism and food.
I have spent many hundreds of hours reading about food, growing food, sourcing food, cooking food and. . .the best part. . .EATING food. I have tried to do my best with the information available to me in my given life situation to be a good steward of the food God has made available to me. I want to approach food with the most consistent Christian worldview I can sort out. Frankly, the screaming accusations of one school of culinary thought against a differing school (vegan vs. vegetarian. . .Weston A. Price vs. Paleo. . .raw food. . .fashionable food "intolerances," etc.), the all-out selfish rudeness of people regarding their personal dietary choices and the dueling "experts" and "studies" have left me pretty fed up (and not in a post-Thanksgiving Dinner sort of way). Plus, as I listen to friends and missionaries talk about their experiences abroad I can't help but think this is all an elitist first world problem anyway. As I debate whether to use vanilla bean paste, or my homemade vanilla extract in a Victorian sponge cake, my missionary friends are telling me how much foreign food aid is killing entrepreneurs in impoverished countries. Sometimes I wonder why I bother trying to sort any of this out because it all seems to be well above my pay grade.
So, when I began reading The Third Plate (not knowing anything about the author) my initial vibe was that this was yet another non-scientist high minded chef wanting to scold evil human beings for despoiling Gaia and I anticipated some snarky anti-Christian disdain to be sprinkled throughout. But, I like to finish what I start and I DID find the writing style engaging, so I kept reading. As I turned the pages, I found myself calling my kids in to read a paragraph here and there. Topics from the book became topics of conversation around the house. We looked up more information about aquaculture and sustainable seafood. We had good worldview discussions about gluttony and the fate of the American buffalo. I started wanting to apply for a passport so that I could travel to Spain to eat! By the time I closed the book, I was glad I had kept reading because I had a totally revised appraisal of Dan Barber and his approach to cuisine. I am positively a supporter of all that Dan Barber is doing and seeking to do.
My reflection on the book is that America does totally lack a food culture (assuming Fast, Cheap and Easy doesn't count for a food culture) that unites it, but we do have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to natural resources. So, being a Southern woman who cherishes her Southern food traditions, maybe the way to go is to perfect local cuisines. . .make the best tasting food by applying the most deft hands and agile minds to the resources available in any locale.
My husband always says that God's ideas are GOOD ideas and I think a focus on a community united around a local food culture is good for the health of the people, the animals, and the environment. Good dominion taking isn't stuffing our gobs with the last bluefin tuna in the sea just because we can afford to, or making Frankenfood just because we have the technology available (not worrying about any consequences beyond profitability for ourselves). . .exercising brute force upon the planet every which way we can for our own personal consumption and enjoyment. Good dominion taking is a stewardship obligation to make the world God gave us better, more beautiful, more beneficial for our good and His glory. I think Dan Barber's approach is doing just that.
I have spent many hundreds of hours reading about food, growing food, sourcing food, cooking food and. . .the best part. . .EATING food. I have tried to do my best with the information available to me in my given life situation to be a good steward of the food God has made available to me. I want to approach food with the most consistent Christian worldview I can sort out. Frankly, the screaming accusations of one school of culinary thought against a differing school (vegan vs. vegetarian. . .Weston A. Price vs. Paleo. . .raw food. . .fashionable food "intolerances," etc.), the all-out selfish rudeness of people regarding their personal dietary choices and the dueling "experts" and "studies" have left me pretty fed up (and not in a post-Thanksgiving Dinner sort of way). Plus, as I listen to friends and missionaries talk about their experiences abroad I can't help but think this is all an elitist first world problem anyway. As I debate whether to use vanilla bean paste, or my homemade vanilla extract in a Victorian sponge cake, my missionary friends are telling me how much foreign food aid is killing entrepreneurs in impoverished countries. Sometimes I wonder why I bother trying to sort any of this out because it all seems to be well above my pay grade.
So, when I began reading The Third Plate (not knowing anything about the author) my initial vibe was that this was yet another non-scientist high minded chef wanting to scold evil human beings for despoiling Gaia and I anticipated some snarky anti-Christian disdain to be sprinkled throughout. But, I like to finish what I start and I DID find the writing style engaging, so I kept reading. As I turned the pages, I found myself calling my kids in to read a paragraph here and there. Topics from the book became topics of conversation around the house. We looked up more information about aquaculture and sustainable seafood. We had good worldview discussions about gluttony and the fate of the American buffalo. I started wanting to apply for a passport so that I could travel to Spain to eat! By the time I closed the book, I was glad I had kept reading because I had a totally revised appraisal of Dan Barber and his approach to cuisine. I am positively a supporter of all that Dan Barber is doing and seeking to do.
My reflection on the book is that America does totally lack a food culture (assuming Fast, Cheap and Easy doesn't count for a food culture) that unites it, but we do have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to natural resources. So, being a Southern woman who cherishes her Southern food traditions, maybe the way to go is to perfect local cuisines. . .make the best tasting food by applying the most deft hands and agile minds to the resources available in any locale.
My husband always says that God's ideas are GOOD ideas and I think a focus on a community united around a local food culture is good for the health of the people, the animals, and the environment. Good dominion taking isn't stuffing our gobs with the last bluefin tuna in the sea just because we can afford to, or making Frankenfood just because we have the technology available (not worrying about any consequences beyond profitability for ourselves). . .exercising brute force upon the planet every which way we can for our own personal consumption and enjoyment. Good dominion taking is a stewardship obligation to make the world God gave us better, more beautiful, more beneficial for our good and His glory. I think Dan Barber's approach is doing just that.
August 7, 2014
I wanted to like this books, I really did, but I had my doubts in the beginning. What more can be said about the local food movement and was farm to plate really a failure? Last I heard farm to plate was a smashing success in many communities. For starters, I couldn't afford an appetizer in Dan Barber's restaurant in Manhattan and I'd wager most of the farmers couldn't afford to eat there either. While I was reading this book, I had more questions than when I had started. Barber is a good writer and puts local foods on his menu in his 4 star restaurant in Manhattan, but trickle down cuisine with chefs as the conductors of the orchestra? Please! And fyi the best polenta is Amish Butter from Ayers Creek Farm in Oregon! It was Barber's initial cocky 4star chef tone that set the pace of this book. I also expected a few recipes otherwise why the title "The Third Plate?" I liked Barber's writing but he didn't say anything that I haven't already read, and while he says we would do well to cut the protien portion of our plate, he spent countless pages writing about pigs, cows, chickens and foie gras. Why not say "Vegetarians can stop reading here?" I read all about factory farming in Jo Robinson's Pasture Perfect, and as for seeds, when Barber came to Washington, he should have gone a little farther west and checked out Nash Huber's farm on the Penninsula. I attened a seed and grain growing seminar at Nash's farm nearly ten years ago. Farm to plate is alive and doing well at the farmers' markets where farmers are the conductors of the orchestra, passing out recipes and telling people what to do with all the foods they grow. There were just so many things I'd expected in a new book on local foods that I wondered who Dan Barbar had in mind when he was thinking about readers.
May 15, 2015
If you’ve heard of Dan Barber’s The Third Plate but haven’t picked it up, now’s a good time.
The way to make western eating sustainable, according to Barber, is not just a matter of grass-fed or free-range… what we need is an overhaul of the ingredients and food types we choose. The third plate features second and third cuts, lesser shellfish, a larger variety of grains, and other unpopular or untapped items that present a manageable ecological burden. By encouraging readers to appreciate the relationships between land, ocean, farmers, chefs, and eaters, and by recounting his experiences with near-sustainable foods created with these relationships in mind, Barber is priming our tastes.
I certainly wouldn’t say no a plate of cattails, phytoplankton, or a carrot steak. If every mid-range restaurant committed to perfecting one dish in the next year that features ingredients we can afford to consume, and if we, the eaters, relinquish our obsession with huge portions of prime meat, the “third plate” can minimize some of the impact of today’s food production.
That said, The Third Plate can’t rebut the counterpoint that many of the problems we have with our current food preferences could also crop again with whatever foods we target next. And there’s still the annoying matter of consumer cost: no Third, Fourth, or Fifth plate will ever produce as much food as cheaply as the GMO/corn-fed/feed-lot system.
The journalistic writing has been compared to Michael Pollan’s – a generous comparison, I think, but not outlandish. Barber’s writing is great, although I could do with less off-hand pseudo-self-deprecation. He’s also determined to make everything a perfectly-timed anecdote.
Still , it's some of the best popular non-fiction I’ve read recently. What Barber gives us is a viable step forward from the organic movement. Recommended.
The way to make western eating sustainable, according to Barber, is not just a matter of grass-fed or free-range… what we need is an overhaul of the ingredients and food types we choose. The third plate features second and third cuts, lesser shellfish, a larger variety of grains, and other unpopular or untapped items that present a manageable ecological burden. By encouraging readers to appreciate the relationships between land, ocean, farmers, chefs, and eaters, and by recounting his experiences with near-sustainable foods created with these relationships in mind, Barber is priming our tastes.
I certainly wouldn’t say no a plate of cattails, phytoplankton, or a carrot steak. If every mid-range restaurant committed to perfecting one dish in the next year that features ingredients we can afford to consume, and if we, the eaters, relinquish our obsession with huge portions of prime meat, the “third plate” can minimize some of the impact of today’s food production.
That said, The Third Plate can’t rebut the counterpoint that many of the problems we have with our current food preferences could also crop again with whatever foods we target next. And there’s still the annoying matter of consumer cost: no Third, Fourth, or Fifth plate will ever produce as much food as cheaply as the GMO/corn-fed/feed-lot system.
The journalistic writing has been compared to Michael Pollan’s – a generous comparison, I think, but not outlandish. Barber’s writing is great, although I could do with less off-hand pseudo-self-deprecation. He’s also determined to make everything a perfectly-timed anecdote.
Still , it's some of the best popular non-fiction I’ve read recently. What Barber gives us is a viable step forward from the organic movement. Recommended.
December 27, 2014
So I got most of the way through this and I could ignore his smarminess and I could ignore the way he breathlessly states basic facts as if we are all just learning them and I could ignore the way that His Farm in New York is just the Best Place Ever, but then he got to a part where he started rhapsodizing about the sad loss of the "farming system" (?!) of the antebellum South and that was the straw that broke the camel's back and I had to stop.
March 10, 2022
This book was very dense and I was super busy with school, so I’d read very little at a time and it was hard to motivate myself to read more. I was determined to finish reading it before spring break, so I read about 50 pages at a time. This book was well written with a good blend of facts and stories about farming, cooking, and more. I learned about how consistency and uniformity is prized above all in the food industry, but in reality, those practices are damaging the earth and the quality of food we eat. With everything going on thanks to climate change and an emphasis on short term solutions, this book gave me hope that there are ways to heal the earth, while still enjoying all types of foods. Also, I really got a lot out of this thanks to what I had learned in some of my classes this year and the book the Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I also ready this because I visited the Stone Barns Food Innovation Lab and I hope I can dine at Blue Hill sometime soon.
April 9, 2022
[Audiobook] I love reading things about food written by people who deeply know it. This book got a little slow sometimes, but I did enjoy learning about how nutrition starts in the soil and the water that feeds a food system. It was a great follow up to visiting (shout out!) Osage Creek Farms and reading about how farmers are making changes to ensure nutritious food is available in the future.
October 5, 2025
Picked up this book to learn more about global food systems. Incredibly interesting to read how much sustainably-managed ag influences taste, (through the lens of the domestication of wheat) as well as how cultural cuisines historically formed based on land-based limitations. (Also learned way more about “fois gras” than I ever would have wanted to along the way).
June 19, 2020
This is an extremely informed, eloquent, albeit dense book about the intricacies of the future of food production and culture.
After watching the episode on Dan on Chef’s Table, and visiting Blue Hill in New York — I was so inspired to learn about his work and beliefs.
Dan tells stories about food that changed the way I’ll think about food and my own culture of eating forever.
Highly recommend!
After watching the episode on Dan on Chef’s Table, and visiting Blue Hill in New York — I was so inspired to learn about his work and beliefs.
Dan tells stories about food that changed the way I’ll think about food and my own culture of eating forever.
Highly recommend!
January 12, 2025
This is one of those books that really makes you think about how you live your life. I hope I can take some of the stories of people who are actively changing agriculture (and adding culture back in) and apply them to my own life.
September 17, 2019
This book doesn’t have all the answers that I wanted to get from it. Rather, it does a good job of defining a lot of the problems that I wanted answers to, then tracing an outline for the general possible answers to those problems. The Third Plate is a book that should be dry and boring, but because of Dan Barber’s writing turns out to be compelling and even entertaining while dealing with what most would probably consider dull subject matter. For the most part, I really enjoyed the descriptive language that Dan uses to drill down into the reasons why certain things work for building the future of food, but I did find the opposing viewpoints of some of the answers presented to be somewhat lacking in terms of balance.
The writing in this book is compelling. It has an intrigue and passion that makes this book utterly readable. This is a very important thing for this book since its subject matter is the growing of food and because the answers to many of the problems we seem to have are cultural and people need to want to read more about them to solve them. As I continued to read this book I was consistently compelled to turn the page to find out more details about some obscure way of thinking about the future of our food. Dan Barber acts as the reader’s guide through his travels to meet people who are trying to do food in a different way. Dan is a compelling guide because of his honesty in the fact that he does not have the answers. Instead, the reader goes on this journey with Dan which makes this book feel more like a story and not a sermon.
This book is filled with passion. This is a great thing most of the time, but occasionally I feel that Dan has an answer that he wants to be the right just a little too much and he fails to fully cover the opposing side enough to bring balance to the arguments on the table. To be fair, the fact that he presents two sides at all is to be commended. However, I did find myself wanting to ask harder questions about some of the more idealistic ideas that Dan seems to hold about the future of food.
This is a big book that covers a lot of ground, but I found it to almost always compelling and interesting to read even if I found some of the opposing points to be a little weak at times. Overall, this is a well-written book about what the future of food could possibly look like. Can we move away from the purely business motivated food that we currently eat back to some sort of culturally centered diet? The truth is, nobody really knows. However, any kind of change begins with the conversation.
The writing in this book is compelling. It has an intrigue and passion that makes this book utterly readable. This is a very important thing for this book since its subject matter is the growing of food and because the answers to many of the problems we seem to have are cultural and people need to want to read more about them to solve them. As I continued to read this book I was consistently compelled to turn the page to find out more details about some obscure way of thinking about the future of our food. Dan Barber acts as the reader’s guide through his travels to meet people who are trying to do food in a different way. Dan is a compelling guide because of his honesty in the fact that he does not have the answers. Instead, the reader goes on this journey with Dan which makes this book feel more like a story and not a sermon.
This book is filled with passion. This is a great thing most of the time, but occasionally I feel that Dan has an answer that he wants to be the right just a little too much and he fails to fully cover the opposing side enough to bring balance to the arguments on the table. To be fair, the fact that he presents two sides at all is to be commended. However, I did find myself wanting to ask harder questions about some of the more idealistic ideas that Dan seems to hold about the future of food.
This is a big book that covers a lot of ground, but I found it to almost always compelling and interesting to read even if I found some of the opposing points to be a little weak at times. Overall, this is a well-written book about what the future of food could possibly look like. Can we move away from the purely business motivated food that we currently eat back to some sort of culturally centered diet? The truth is, nobody really knows. However, any kind of change begins with the conversation.
September 25, 2018
It staggers me to consider how much I learned from this book, not the least of which is the wheat I know has an ancestor that was native to the prairie, and perennial with roots up to 22 feet deep. Consider that for a moment -- roots were commonly 22 feet deep. That's like...tree depth but on wheat! Now ponder the fact that in the rush to settle that same prairie, the native wheat was ripped up, cast aside, the land ploughed up and a different, annual breed of wheat was planted. Only this wheat had very short roots that did not grasp the soil sufficiently and was not drought resistant. When the drought of the1930's came along, the prairies were screwed. And we did it to ourselves!
See, you don't expect to learn this sort of thing in a book touted as being for "foodies".
I also learned why everyone that even grows a single tomato plant in a pot should turn their back on chemical additives in their potting soil. And why we should support the smaller farmer who is running a CSA on a handful of acres. I learned how old-school thinking can produce ham that is in demand the world over, how the lack of micronutrients in the soil can affect a child living in the city, and so on, and so on. Honestly, there isn't enough room to discuss all the great things I learned from this book. And I thought I was pretty well schooled in soil, food and organic farming.
On some level, I knew but had apparently forgotten, that the lack in nutrition in our vegetables is linked to a lack of nutrients in the soil. A lack of nutrients in our meat, milk and eggs is connected to the lack of nutrients in the grass/fodder/feed we provide the animals we consume. If you think about it, it is basic science. Even computers are only as good as what we put into them, so why do we ignore this when it comes to animals? And how does all this relate to a growing trend of obesity?
"Starved of micronutrients, we will keep eating in the hope of attaining them" William Albrecht
If you are a foodie, read this book.
If you are a concerned parent who has never touched a food plant, you should read this book.
Heck, if you eat -- at all -- you should read this book.
Ignore the naysayers and make up your own mind. You'll be glad you did.
See, you don't expect to learn this sort of thing in a book touted as being for "foodies".
I also learned why everyone that even grows a single tomato plant in a pot should turn their back on chemical additives in their potting soil. And why we should support the smaller farmer who is running a CSA on a handful of acres. I learned how old-school thinking can produce ham that is in demand the world over, how the lack of micronutrients in the soil can affect a child living in the city, and so on, and so on. Honestly, there isn't enough room to discuss all the great things I learned from this book. And I thought I was pretty well schooled in soil, food and organic farming.
On some level, I knew but had apparently forgotten, that the lack in nutrition in our vegetables is linked to a lack of nutrients in the soil. A lack of nutrients in our meat, milk and eggs is connected to the lack of nutrients in the grass/fodder/feed we provide the animals we consume. If you think about it, it is basic science. Even computers are only as good as what we put into them, so why do we ignore this when it comes to animals? And how does all this relate to a growing trend of obesity?
"Starved of micronutrients, we will keep eating in the hope of attaining them" William Albrecht
If you are a foodie, read this book.
If you are a concerned parent who has never touched a food plant, you should read this book.
Heck, if you eat -- at all -- you should read this book.
Ignore the naysayers and make up your own mind. You'll be glad you did.
June 5, 2014
So many other books about food and the systems which produce it focus on all the things gone horrible wrong: GMOs, factory farming, animal torture, uniformity, waste, over-saturation of fertilizers, soil loss, etc. They talk a little about flavor, nutrition, and the benefits of natural, organic, sustainable farming, but their hopefulness always seems like an aside to the rest of the overwhelming message of how we've broken the ecosystems of farms.
Not this one. The Third Plate is a well-written and engaging exploration of farming that both benefits the environment and the table, and how we can't improve food without also improving how we raise our food. If we want delicious meals, we cannot ignore where the ingredients come from and how the complexities of life interconnect. From soil microbes to landrace farming; from Spanish geese to southern American rice, Barber covers a multitude of factors that contribute great flavor via great farming and harvesting proccesses, and his passion for excellent food is so strong that just reading this made me hungry for ham and fois gras. Joyful, fascinating, optimistic, and immensely educational.
Not this one. The Third Plate is a well-written and engaging exploration of farming that both benefits the environment and the table, and how we can't improve food without also improving how we raise our food. If we want delicious meals, we cannot ignore where the ingredients come from and how the complexities of life interconnect. From soil microbes to landrace farming; from Spanish geese to southern American rice, Barber covers a multitude of factors that contribute great flavor via great farming and harvesting proccesses, and his passion for excellent food is so strong that just reading this made me hungry for ham and fois gras. Joyful, fascinating, optimistic, and immensely educational.
June 26, 2014
A 5-Star book, written by a chef, that shows us the kind of attainable food system we need to save the Earth! Dan Barber does, through his stories, show us the kind of inclusive agriculture that does produce food that tastes really good, while sustaining the environment. He quotes from Jonathan Rosen's book, "The Life of the Skies" about how birdwatching creates environmentalists. "If we don't shore up the earth, the skies will be empty." "Birds", Dan Barber points out, "can tell us about the state of...just about everything." Birds, other animals, water, trees, and people, too, are all healthier if our farms are healthier. As a chef, Dan Barber is naturally most interested in how food tastes, but as he shows, the taste of food is, as John Muir described it, "hitched to everything else in the Universe." Dan Barber visits farms that are a celebration of food and life, with farmers who are in love with farming. Shows the next step, the answer to "Fast Food Nation" eaters. A great book.
November 10, 2014
This book is my choice for 2014 non-fiction, food category. I just voted and I hope it wins. The author certainly deserves it. It is not only full of amazing research, life experiences, meetings of fantastic people who are agents of change but also beautifully written. While it presents a complex web of relations in growing food for the planet, it does so in an incredible accessible, amusing, graceful manner in no way oversimplifying anything. It is a must read for everybody and should make its way into curriculums around the world. I loved how while celebrating wonderful ofen now forgotten achievements of American farmers along with present day pockets of creative and innovative American communities, it includes examples from different parts of the world, Europe, Mexico. Filtered through very personal experiences and relations with food chain workers, it is informative, entertaining, inspiring, ultimately positive and hopeful and overall wonderful book, my choice for best non fiction written in 2014.
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