Eating to Extinction
The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
'A book of wonders' Bee Wilson, Sunday Times Books of the Year
Winner of the Wainwright Prize 2022 - Eating to Extinction is an astonishing journey through the past, present and future of food, showing why reclaiming a diverse food culture is vital.
'Saladino inspires us to believe that turning the tide is still possible' Yotam Ottolenghi
From a tiny crimson pear in the west of England to an exploding corn in Mexico, there are thousands of foods that are at risk of being lost for ever. Dan Saladino spans the globe to uncover their stories, meeting the pioneering farmers, scientists, cooks, food producers and indigenous communities who are defending food traditions and fighting for change.
Eating to Extinction is about so much more than preserving the past. It is about the crisis facing our planet today, and why reclaiming a diverse food culture is vital for our future.
* With a new preface by the author *
Winner of multiple awards, including the Fortnum & Mason Food Book Award and the Guild of Food Writers Food Book Award.
'I love this book... I wish the whole world could read it' Raymond Blanc
'A brilliant read' Tim Spector
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
