Dan Barber

When you pursue great flavor, you also pursue great ecology.

Conventional agriculture has never succeeded in feeding the world, and it's never produced anything good to eat. For the future, we need to look toward alternatives.

If you look at the carrying capacity of agricultural areas throughout the world, their ecological habitats are changing. So I think we're looking at - in our lifetime - great collapses of food services.

We need the humbleness and clarity to see that our food, while benefitting from technological advances, has benefitted even more from free ecological resources: Cheap energy, lots of water everywhere, and a stable climate.

People complain that cities don't have fresh, sustainable food, but it's just not true.

Vegetables deplete soil. They're extractive. If soil has a bank account, vegetables make the largest withdrawals.

I'm not here to say I don't eat vegetables - I do, a lot of them - but, from a soil perspective, they're actually more costly than a cow grazing on grass.

There is no such thing as guilt-free eating.

I'm not an environmentalist, or a doctor, or a nutritionist.

I think all chefs who pursue great flavor have good ethics.

It's a fallen world. We eat and sacrifice in the process.