Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them

Abstract

I love reading books that teach me about the things I eat. This book does just that, while being easily understandable and enjoyable. Each chapter of Eating to Extinction tells a fascinating in-depth story about the origins and history of a particular food that is in danger of being lost to us. It is surprising how many foods are in this precarious position. Author Dan Saladino, a renowned British food journalist, uncovers for us why each meat, grain, fruit, and vegetables is in danger of extinction and the impact of these plants’ and animals’ potential extinction on humanity. If you or your students have an interest in the foods you eat and how humanity can prepare for a future with plenty of healthy food for everyone, then you will find this to be a fascinating read.Saladino conducted extensive research, including traveling to many of the sites around the world where these foods originated. There, he met with the people who still have knowledge of the earliest known versions of the food we now find on our grocery store shelves. Chapters discuss how wild foods, ones our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate, were gradually tamed by farmers during our 10,000 years of agriculture. I found it amazing that the author was still able to find some of the earliest versions of the foods covered in the book. The early versions of foods, sometimes called “landraces,” turn out to be critically import for the genetic diversity they hold. This is because it is in these organisms where important survival genes can still be found. Modern farmers often grow vast crops of monoculture plants or animals in which all the organisms are virtually genetically identical. When a disease or pest appears, or when the climate changes, these monocultures have little genetic diversity to help them adapt to the challenge. However, the earlier versions of the foods are much more genetically diverse. It is in these earlier versions of our foods that important survival genes can still be found. One of the major points Saladino makes is that we need to preserve these early versions of our foods so we can protect our food production from collapse by disease and/or environmental challenges by maintaining a large gene pool.Saladino makes these foods sound so enticing that one wants to go out and sample many of them. However, I must admit I am not yet tempted by a few he enjoys, like skerpikjot, a fermented and dried sheep meat from the Faroe Islands that is covered in a thick layer of yellow, chalky, white and brown mold. Saladino enjoys it, as do people around the world with ancestral ties to the Faroe Islands, but his descriptions made me appreciate both our world’s great culinary diversity and, simultaneously, the advent of modern refrigeration.