Must Read
A
ward-winning journalist Simran
Sethi explores the history and cultural importance of
our most beloved tastes, paying homage to the
ingredients that give us daily pleasure, while providing
a thoughtful wake-up call to the homogenization that
is threatening the diversity of our food supply.
Food is one of the greatest pleasures of human life.
Our response to sweet, salty, bitter, or sour is deeply
personal, combining our individual biological
characteristics, personal preferences, and emotional
connections. Bread, Wine, Chocolate illuminates not
only what it means to recognize the importance of the
foods we love, but also what it means to lose them.
Award-winning journalist Simran Sethi reveals how the
foods we enjoy are endangered by genetic erosion—a
slow and steady loss of diversity in what we grow and
eat. In America today, food often looks and tastes the
same, whether at a San Francisco farmers market or at
a Midwestern potluck. Shockingly, 95% of the world’s
calories now come from only thirty species. Though
supermarkets seem to be stocked with endless
options, the differences between products are
superficial, primarily in flavor and brand.
Sethi draws on interviews with scientists, farmers,
chefs, vintners, beer brewers, coffee roasters and
others with firsthand knowledge of our food to reveal
the multiple and interconnected reasons for this loss,
and its consequences for our health, traditions, and
culture. She travels to Ethiopian coffee forests, British
yeast culture labs, and Ecuadoran cocoa plantations
collecting fascinating stories that will inspire readers
to eat more consciously and purposefully, better
understand familiar and new foods, and learn what it
takes to save the tastes that connect us with the world
around us.
amazon.com/Bread-Wine-Chocolate-Slow-Foods