Quote of the Day: Dan Barber on Slow Food "Elitism"

At the checkout aisle, we're not paying the real cost of food. Whether you're an elitist or not, you're a human being and the real costs of your food are being paid in environmental costs and healthcare costs. And who pays when we have an obese nation? We all do. We just pay it under the radar. To call it elitist, I think, is really shortsighted.

I think that eventually what we're talking about is really rooted in peasantry, which is the ironic thing. To say that good food is for the elite is preposterous, like saying that Chinese peasants who talk about and revolve their day around food are elitist, or the Peruvian mountain farmers who grow dozens of different types of potatoes are elitist.

Most importantly, I'd say that in order to experience the pleasures of good food, leave the politics, leave the health issues and leave the ecological issues aside. Tasting good food is a pleasure that people will come back to. That's what this is: hedonism, a to z. And I think that's one angle that makes sense [in connection] to slow food. Let's look at this from a hedonistic, celebratory viewpoint and not a depressing one, and I think that has some legs for the future."

—Dan Barber, chef and co-owner of the Blue Hill restaurants in New York and a longtime advocate of sustainable farming, in a 2007 interview with Salon.