A taste of our food apocalypse and how to avoid it

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

In the early 1970s, American botanist Jack Harlan proclaimed that mass extinction was under way in America’s fields.

‘‘These resources stand between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we cannot imagine,’’ Harlan wrote. He was referring specifically to the genetic resources within three crops that we most depend on: wheat, rice and corn.

Forty years later, his words inspired another botanist, Cary Fowler, to launch an underground seed vault in Svalbard, Norway.

Journalist Dan Saladino unveils the work of Harlan and other visionaries in Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them, his impressively researched book about the variety of crops, animals and foods that have been tossed aside in favour of the monocultures that have come to dominate our food supply.

Though they were meant to improve efficiency and yield by ‘‘feeding the world,’’ these crops and breeds are having unintended consequences. Many of today’s ‘‘improved’’ crops, which lack diversity because they come from patented seeds, have no defences against fungi, viruses and insects – all of which are becoming more of a threat with climate change.

The breeds of animals we rely on for food have also been narrowed on a global scale, making them more susceptible to diseases that could wipe them out.

One by one, Saladino, a food journalist for the BBC, shows how unique foods and crops have been neglected in favour of modern, supposedly ‘‘revolutionary’’ varieties.

In India, the wild citrus fruit memang narang (‘‘the fruit of ghosts’’) was overlooked after 19thcentury plant breeders bred out the bitter-tasting phenols, which are what give this fruit its potent health-bestowing properties and also serve as a defence against pests and disease.

In Anatolia, Turkey, kavilca wheat, a type of emmer that’s been grown since Neolithic times, is not only more nutritious than today’s bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) but, thanks to its tight-fitting husks, is also resistant to Fusarium head blight, a devious fungus that is threatening wheat crops.

Kavilca and other ancient varieties of emmer may also have genetic resistance to wheat blast, a new disease that is decimating crops from Brazil to Bangladesh. (Because of the Green Revolution, which developed more productive crops, 95 percent of all wheat grown today is Triticum aestivum.) In China, red mouth glutinous rice was spurned in favour of highyielding white rices known as IR8 and IR64.

Another culprit is more personal: the gradual but decisive change in our palates. In part because of the ubiquity and popularity of CocaCola and other sugary beverages around the world, people don’t crave the sour, complex flavours of lambic beers as much as they used to.

In some cases, as with the Faroe Islands’ skerpikjot – sheep’s meat that is fermented in sea wind for nine months until it’s covered in mold – the reader may wonder if the extinction of a particular food may be such a bad thing. But whether you hunger to try the delicacies Saladino describes or not, he makes one thing abundantly clear: These ancient culinary traditions kept people alive during hard times, and they’ve become an integral part of a region’s history and culture.

There is hope. In each country Saladino visits, he finds an underground of passionate citizens who are valiantly working to preserve their crops and food cultures.

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.