Eating to Extinction (Saladino)

Eating to Extinction:
The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them by Dan Saladino (2022)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

Note that this was finished a couple months ago, in 2022, but for some reason didn't write the blog entry.

WOW I actually read a 2022 book in 2022. It must've been brand-new when I heard about it on NPR and first got it from the library.

I heard Saladino interviewed on NPR on Saturday morning (on The Splendid Table, I believe -- I was out walking). THe book sounded interesting so I reserved a copy. The ebook might not have been available yet, so I had the hardcover, which I carried back and forth to work for a while and even sat in my yard over the summer reading it. Then I learned that the ebook existed, and I finished the book faster after that.

Basically, the book traces the history of food (grains, animals, sweets, beer, etc) over the past 12,000 years. There are "landrace" grains that have survived for millenia that are being squeezed out and destroyed by development and by the Green Revolution of the 20th century, which meant to maximize food output by specializing in just a handful of seeds at the expanse of existing foods. Once seeds are lost, we can never get them back. There have been attempts over the past century to save and catalogue these food varieties.

By homogenizing our food system, we not only lose variety, but we open the food supply up to blights and other diseases that could spread like wildfire. Meanwhile, the displaced seeds survived hardships for 12,000 years.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bedeviled Eggs (Childs)

Image
Bedeviled Eggs Laura Childs (2010) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) This is the third in the series that started with my pandemic book club selection. THe first one was interesting enoug that iI thought I'd try a couple more. This book was not available as an ebook from any of three NYC library systems, so I had to get it as a paperback, just as I did with the previous two. I also got the audiobook, as I did with the last two. It's good to listen to when I'm out for my walks. The usual gang is back. Szanne, the recent widow, and her new boyfriend, Sam the doctor, along with Petra, whose husband is in a medical facility, and Toni, who is still married to Junior. Junior proves to be little more useful in this book. The relationship stays on-again-off-again. I'd imagined Junior as a cross between Jethro Clampett
Read more

Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Doidge)

Image
Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (The Dowser #1) by Meghan Ciana Doidge (2013) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) I'm pretty sure that this was a freebie in a Book Bub mailing list, but it might've been a random search result when looking for free paranormal cozy mysteries. I don't remember. It was mostly a quick read, and I rushed to finish it because a library book became availalbe and I wasn't go to be able to renew that. As it was, I practically forgot that I'd read it, until I noticed the title again on my phone. (My iPad is loaded with a lot of recent stuff which gets downloaded automatically.) This is the first book in the "Dowser" series. The main character, Jade, is half-witch, half-human, and she knows nothing about her father. Her mother never chose to tell her anything, and sh
Read more

Cibola Burn (Corey)

Image
Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey (2014) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) I read this nearly a month ago, or at least it seems that way. Once again, I watched the show first which might've made this book go by a little faster. That said, there were enough differences between them. For starters, most of the book takes place on and above the planet Ilus or New Terra, depending upon who's talking. Any of the shows subplots that take place in the Sol system are absent here. There is also some rewriting of settlers. Belters and Outer Planets people (such as refugees from Ganymede) managed to get through the Ring and settled on an inhospitable planet that has a lot of lithium, which they are mining to sell to hire lawyers to stake their claim to "Ilus". They've already been there for a while when a UN/Mars backed
Read more