Power to the purple pea: How Chef’s Table star Dan Barber’s coloured veggies are changing the culinary scene
Star chef Dan Barber’s seed company Row 7’s nutritious new purple veggies are set to infuse life into the boring, tasteless Stepford vegetables most of us eat now
Dan Barber thinks your vegetables are dumb. To be clear, he is a huge fan of veggies – Barber is a James Beard award-winning chef with two New York restaurants – but he believes most of them could be fresher, tastier, and more nutritious.
In a recent editorial for The New York Times, Barber (who garnered widespread fame on Netflix’s popular series, Chef's Table) outlined his frustration with big seed companies, four of which control more than 60 per cent of the world’s seed sales.
The first thing people say is, 'Is this genetically modified?' Like, no, this is a kind of breeding that our great grandparents were doing
The result, Barber said, is that most fruit, veggies and grains sold in grocery stores are “dumbed down”, meaning they look and taste the same. Their seeds are also mass-produced to suit all types of soils and climates, which can strip them of vital nutrients and flavour.
Barber first came to this realisation while sitting on a panel with a Monsanto (now Bayer) executive who Barber said was “boasting” about spending US$1 million a day on corn research.
“That’s more than all organic plant research in the United States in 20 years,” Barber told Business Insider. “What an abomination of wasted resources.”
With a much smaller investment, Barber and his team at Row 7 – the seed company that he founded in 2018 – believe they have developed a way to infuse new life into the Stepford vegetables we’re used to consuming.
One of these methods involves changing the colour.
Earlier this year, Row 7 introduced a purple snow pea that contains anthocyanin, a natural pigment found in blueberries and raspberries. Early research has shown that anthocyanin may help to improve cognitive function and ward off cancer and heart disease. At the very least, the pigment is an antioxidant that protects cells from damage.
“Part of the brilliance of purple anything, whether it's a plant or a vegetable, is that it's so nutrient dense,” said Barber. “If you're going to choose your diet, you should choose darker colours because that is where the vitamins and minerals are.”
Part of the brilliance of purple anything, whether it's a plant or a vegetable, is that it's so nutrient dense