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

by Dan Saladino

Overview

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice

“What Saladino finds in his adventures are people with soul-deep relationships to their food. This is not the decadence or the preciousness we might associate with a word like ‘foodie,’ but a form of reverence . . . Enchanting.” —Molly Young, The New York Times

Dan Saladino’s Eating to Extinction is the prominent broadcaster’s pathbreaking tour of the world’s vanishing foods and his argument for why they matter now more than ever.

Over the past several decades, globalization has homogenized what we eat, and done so ruthlessly. The numbers are stark: Of the roughly six thousand different plants once consumed by human beings, only nine remain major staples today. Just three of these—rice, wheat, and corn—provide 50 percent of all our calories. Dig deeper and the trends are more worrisome still: 95 percent of milk consumed in the United States comes from a single breed of cow, while one in four beers drunk around the world is the product of one brewer.

In Eating to Extinction, the distinguished BBC food journalist Dan Saladino travels the world to experience and document our most at-risk foods before it’s too late. From an Indigenous American chef refining precolonial recipes to farmers tending Geechee red peas on the Sea Islands of Georgia, the individuals profiled in Eating to Extinction are essential guides to treasured foods the rest of us have forgotten or didn’t know existed. Take honey—not the familiar product sold in plastic bottles, but the wild honey gathered by the Hadza people of East Africa, whose diet consists of eight hundred different plants and animals and who communicate with birds to locate bees’ nests. Or consider murnong—once the staple food of Aboriginal Australians, this small root vegetable with the sweet taste of coconut is undergoing a revival after nearly being driven to extinction. And in Sierra Leone, there are just a few surviving stenophylla trees, a species now considered crucial to the future of coffee.

Throughout this original and entertaining book, Saladino shows that when foods become endangered, we risk the loss of not only traditional foodways, but also flavors, smells, and textures that may never be experienced again. And the consolidation of our foods has other steep costs, including a lack of resilience in the face of climate change, pests, and parasites. Our food monoculture is a threat to our health—and to the planet. In response, Saladino provides a road map to a food system that is healthier, more robust, and, above all, richer in flavor and meaning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250863096
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	01/31/2023
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	244,426
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Dan Saladino is a renowned food journalist who has worked at the BBC for twenty-five years. For more than a decade he has traveled the world, recording stories of foods at risk of extinction—from cheeses made in the foothills of a remote Balkan mountain range to unique varieties of rice grown in southern China. His work has been recognized by the James Beard Foundation, the Guild of Food Writers, and the Fortnum and Mason Food and Drink Awards.

Table of Contents

Map xii

Introduction 1

Food: A Very Brief History 13

Part 1 Wild 19

1 Hadza Honey (Lake Eyasi, Tanzania) 23

2 Murnong (Southern Australia) 31

3 Bear Root (Colorado, USA) 38

4 Memang Narang (Garo Hills, India) 47

Mapping the wild 52

Part 2 Cereal 57

5 Kavilca Wheat (Büyük Çatma, Anatolia) 61

6 Bere Barley (Orkney Scotland) 75

7 Red Mouth Glutinous Rice (Sichuan, China) 80

8 Olotón Maize (Oaxaca, Mexico) 89

Saving diversity 101

Part 3 Vegetable 103

9 Geechee Red Pea (Sapelo Island, Georgia, USA) 108

10 Alb Lentil (Swabia, Germany) 115

11 Oca (Andes, Bolivia) 121

12 O-Higu Soybean (Okinawa, Japan) 131

Seed power 138

Part 4 Meat 141

13 Skerpikjøt (Faroe Islands) 146

14 Black Ogye Chicken (Yeonsan, South Korea) 154

15 Middle White Pig (Wye Valley, England) 163

16 Bison (Great Plains, USA) 172

Spillover 182

Part 5 From the Sea 185

17 Wild Atlantic Salmon (Ireland and Scotland) 190

18 Imraguen Butarikh (Banc D'Arguin, Mauritania) 203

19 Shio-Katsuo (Nishiizu, Southern Japan) 208

20 Flat Oyster (Limfjorden, Denmark) 213

Sanctuary 221

Part 6 Fruit 225

21 Sievers Apple (Tian Shan, Kazakhstan) 230

22 Kayinja Banana (Uganda) 238

23 Vanilla Orange (Ribera, Sicily) 246

The Lorax 254

Part 7 Cheese 257

24 Salers (Auvergne, Central France) 264

25 Stichelton (Nottinghamshire, England) 268

26 Mishavinë (Accursed Mountains, Albania) 274

Snow room 281

Part 8 Alcohol 285

27 Qvevri Wine (Georgia) 290

28 Lambic Beer (Pajottenland, Belgium) 303

29 Perry (Three Counties, England) 312

May Hill 318

Part 9 Stimulants 321

30 Ancient Forest Pu-Erh Tea (Xishuangbanna, China) 325

31 Wild Forest Coffee (Harenna, Ethiopia) 333

Stenophylla 343

Part 10 Sweet 345

32 Halawet el Jibn (Horns, Syria) 348

33 Qizha Cake (Nablus, West Bank) 353

34 Criollo Cacao (Cumanacoa, Venezuela) 358

Cold War and Coca-Colonisation 367

Epilogue: Think Like a Hadza 371

Further Reading 378

Notes 383

Acknowledgements 428

Index 432

Editorial Reviews

"Eating to Extinction is a celebration in the form of eclectic case studies . . . What Saladino finds in his adventures are people with soul-deep relationships to their food. This is not the decadence or the preciousness we might associate with a word like “foodie,” but a form of reverence . . . Enchanting." —Molly Young, The New York Times

"An immensely readable compendium of food history, cultural lore, agricultural science, and travelogue. There are new flavors to imagine and places to visit on every page." —Richard Schiffman, The Christian Science Monitor

"Eating to Extinction tells the stories of dozens of . . . endangered tastes and makes a reasoned case for saving them in which nostalgia and sentimentality play very little part . . . Saladino has an 18-year-old backpacker’s willingness to light out for remote destinations far from the usual food-writer feeding troughs . . . [A] deeply humanist book . . . Saladino’s eye for detail is photographic when he is describing places and things." —Pete Wells, The New York Times Book Review

"[An] impressively researched book . . . Saladino brings his subjects to life, even breaking bread with them as he seeks out these rare and important foods. His evocative descriptions make a culinary case for preserving them." —Hannah Wallace, The Washington Post

"Fascinating . . . A delightful exploration of traditional foods as well as a grim warning that we are farming on borrowed time." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Into this maelstrom of climate change that all of us are now experiencing, to varying degrees, Saladino . . . brings more bad news, seeded with some good . . . A deeply saddening, too-familiar story containing yet a kernel of hope." —Alan Moores, Booklist (starred review)

“Dan Saladino’s stories of endangered foods form a rallying cry to us all to protect the world’s diversity before it’s too late. But this is also a book filled with optimism; it captures the energy of a global movement of people dedicating their lives to saving the plants, the animals, the flavors, and the food knowledge we must preserve.” —Alice Waters

“This is a big book with a simple message: that we all need to pay more attention to what we are (and are no longer) eating. Behind everything we eat there are people, places, and stories. When we lose diversity in our food, we threaten also the culture and history of the land and the people who produce it. As the world becomes increasingly homogenous, preserving these things—keeping hold of diversity—matters. Dan Saladino manages to highlight the urgency of this matter while also inspiring us to believe that turning the tide is still possible.” —Yotam Ottolenghi

“I’ve long admired Dan Saladino’s journalism for its broad scope and passion. The same qualities animate his first book, Eating to Extinction, an inspiring account of endangered foods and food cultures across the planet. Everyone who cares about what they eat will want to know its stories.” —Harold McGee

"This inspiring and urgent book is one of the few food books that has ever given me goosebumps. Eating to Extinction is a love letter to the huge diversity of foods enjoyed by human beings. A story full of both loss and hope." —Bee Wilson, author of The Wall Street Journal's "Table Talk" column

“Over the course of the handful of millennia we humans have been growing food, Dan Saldino tells us in his incisive book Eating to Extinction, we have foolishly whittled down our original diet from over 6,000 species of plants to just nine. Rice, wheat and corn make up half of our calories. By digging at the roots of this top heavy arrangement Saladino delivers profound truths about our food system while taking the reader on a fabulous journey of taste, texture and provenance.” —Paul Greenberg, bestselling author of the James Beard award-winner Four Fish.

"This is a work of staggering importance. If we relinquish control of the food supply to industrial technology, we lose not only our cultural heritage and good taste, but the ability to feed ourselves in a sustainable, local and meaningful way. Dan Saladino sounds a call to action, not a swan song of bygone foodways, and it should be required reading on the lists of everyone concerned about food." —Ken Albala, professor of history at the University of the Pacific

"Eating to Extinction is an exhaustively researched and fascinating account of endangered food and drink. As a study of biodiversity and cultural creativity its message is alarming yet hopeful." —Paul Freedman, professor at Yale University and author of Ten Restaurants that Changed America

From the Publisher

09/27/2021

BBC journalist Saladino debuts with an illuminating survey of vanishing varieties of food and the people struggling to preserve them. “Of the 6,000 plant species humans have eaten over time, the world now mostly eats just nine,” he writes. This decline of dietary diversity, driven by the demand to produce crops on “an epic scale,” has triggered a nutritional and cultural depletion that’s spanned the globe, as made evident by the sweeping scope of Saladino’s research. He explores populations that still source their food from the wilds, such as the Hadza, a shrinking tribe of Tanzanian hunter-gatherers who derive 20% of their calories from honey. Endangered types of wheat, oats, and crimson-tipped rice are uncovered in Turkey, Scotland, and China, respectively, while red peas—brought by enslaved Africans to the U.S. low country—nearly met their demise at the hand of real estate developers on Sapelo Island, Georgia. In South Korea, a small family farm fights to preserve the Yeonsan Ogye, “one of the rarest chickens on Earth,” completely black in color, down to its beak and bones. The result is an agricultural investigation that’s fascinating in its discoveries while sorrowful in documenting what has been lost. Agent: Mel Flashman, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

03/01/2022

The world's food supply is becoming monolithic, with a very few companies controlling the breeds of animal and plant in human diets, writes BBC food journalist Saladino. His work begins with a call to action—a plea to listeners to examine their own diet's impact—then transitions into a discussion of the evolution of food from the Big Bang to the present day. After building the argument that listeners should take seriously the homogenization of food sources, Saladino discusses particular species that are going extinct, taking listeners on a global tour of heritage food sources from Asia, Africa, North America, and elsewhere. The audiobook benefits from having Saladino as the narrator; it feels as though he is having a conversation with listeners, building his case that humans should consider our diets and their impact on the global food chain. Saladino begins by discussing wild foods (honey; herbs), then goes on to cereal, vegetables, meat, seafood, fruit, cheese, alcohol, and more. Saladino also introduces listeners to people who are working hard to preserve each of these food sources. VERDICT Suitable for anyone curious about where our food comes from or concerned by the human impact on our world.—Stephanie Charlefour

Library Journal - Audio

01/01/2022

Saladino, a BBC food journalist and broadcaster, explores the physical and cultural extinction of thousands of foods that had traditionally been part of the human diet. Even if it feels like contemporary Western societies have more access to more foods than ever before, Saladino asserts that people are missing out on the nutrition of the thousands of foods that are not part of their diets. Not only have people become distant from the sources of their food, but they often don't know how to grow or prepare them, resulting in homogenized diets. Additionally, the mass-production of fewer foods is unavoidably altering the ecosystem. The result of research throughout Saladino's lengthy career, this book takes readers on a global journey to taste foods at risk of extinction, like Tanzanian honey (plus fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, and even sweets and alcohols). In the resulting hefty volume, Saladino does a comprehensive job of describing the economic, cultural, and industrial forces that have impacted food production, while refraining from the shaming tone and unrealistic propositions sometimes found in similar books. VERDICT Foodies and slow food enthusiasts will appreciate this deep dive into the history and diversity of global foods and the call to preserve them.—Jennifer Clifton

Library Journal

★ 2021-10-26
Fascinating descriptions of Indigenous and mostly disappearing foods, plus an alarming message.

Veteran BBC food journalist Saladino emphasizes that world food production exploded after World War II when scientists produced superproductive grains, plants, and livestock. Though these developments drastically reduced famine, the mechanics involved require enormous inputs of chemicals, fertilizer, and water. Relying on elite, high-yield species eliminated those that didn’t measure up, diminishing their diversity. Today, rice, wheat, and corn provide half of all human calories. Most global pork comes from a single breed of pig, and more than 95% of U.S. dairy cows are a single breed, the Holstein. Limiting food diversity has been enormously profitable for large corporations, but the future consequences make scientists uneasy. “We are living and eating our way through one big unparalleled experiment,” writes the author. Having defined the problem, Saladino chronicles his travels around the world, describing dozens of vanishing edibles and pausing regularly to deliver the history of the major foods and food production. Readers will be intrigued and educated by his interviews with experts who warn of our disastrous dependence on a shrinking number of standardized foods. Commercial barley can’t survive in the cold, infertile islands north of Scotland, but its ancestral variety does fine. Although nearing extinction in the wild, Atlantic salmon is a familiar food item because almost all of them are farm raised. Bred to be faster growing and meatier, they have become a bland domestic food animal no less than the chicken or cow. Though there are more than 1,500 varieties of banana, most markets are dominated by the Cavendish, a cloned fruit grown in immense monocultures visible by satellite. Being genetically identical, they can’t evolve and so can’t develop resistance to disease, which inevitably spreads like wildfire. One specific disease is currently devastating the Cavendish, but scientists are working to edit the plant’s DNA “to find a fix against the disease.”

A delightful exploration of traditional foods as well as a grim warning that we are farming on borrowed time.

Kirkus Reviews