Eating to Extinction: The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them | 
pickI really enjoyed this. The basic theme is very repetitive: we're losing biodiversity constantly because of maladaptive foodways which rely on monocultures, and squeeze out everything else. This leads to disease, deforestation, loss of habitat, and loss of ways of life.
Each example is valuable and interesting, though.
And it gave me “brackish“ for the #HauntedShelf word finder! And that's all words found.
Learned that there are chickens with black bones (and everything else). Had to Google for pictures I was so curious how it looks.
#BirthdayBashReadathon
pickQuite recently, our world‘s food supply has gone to vast monocultures at high risk for disease, and crowding out historically eaten foods, threatening their extinction. Saladino examines some of those foods, and why it is important to save them. This book is absolutely fascinating and is a great mix of food science, anthropology, and history. It‘ll be on my best of the year list for sure.
pickOne example from this fascinating book: just three plants, rice, wheat & corn, provide 50% of the calories in our diet globally. And there‘s little genetic variation in the kinds of these grains being grown, leaving them vulnerable to massive crop failure. Food journalist Dan Saladino seeks out rare varieties & makes a clear case for their importance, not just culturally & for taste, but for the survival of the human race as our climate changes.
In the UK, between 2010 and 2015, the average price of milk sold in supermarkets fell by one third, making a litre of milk cheaper than a bottle of water. Downward pressure on prices led many dairy operators to operate on a larger scale. Today, the largest corporate dairies can house more than 9,000 cows.
(Photo: my sister carries milk from a single cow to her house)
The red flesh of blood oranges is caused by a genetic mutation. The daily fluctuation in temperature around Etna, from the intense heat of the day to the cool of the night, triggers these oranges to produce anthrocyanin, the compound that makes pomegranates red and blueberries blue.
The mass of the 23 billion chickens alive at any given moment is greater than that of all the other birds on earth combined. We are living in the age of the chicken. One of the geological markers of the Anthropocene is expected to be the amount of chicken bones left behind in the fossil record.
pickWhenever I read books like this, I realize how disconnected to the world I am, I feel like I should know this but I was legit mindblown by all the info in here. To think that the food we eat so regularly is actually, in a way, on the verge of extinction. The natural not so natural. As a pessimist idk how much an individual can do but perhaps there's hope #nonfiction #food #environment
pick
pick34/150 This book isn't easy to review. I can't say I enjoyed it, the message of our loss in biodiversity is very sad, and the possible consequences are down right chilling. As agriculture world wide has come to depend more and more on monocultures in our fruits, vegetables, meats and dairy products, we may be setting ourselves up for a disastrous famine of biblical proportions. 4 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
7th book for #KickTheSlump @DieAReader @GHABI4ROSES
1. Eating to Extinction by Dan Saladino (audio), Gastro Obscura by Cecily Wong & Dylan Thuras (ebook) and Doctor Who: Forever Autumn by Mark Morris (print)
2. Library holds. I have 5 holds currently.
3. Hurricane Lizards & Plastic Squid by Thor Hanson and Cultish by Amanda Montell
#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain
1. Eating to Extinction. I've read some very good reviews for this, I have it waiting on Audible as soon as I finish the Mel Brooks autobiography.
2. Any text abbreviation in print. OMG, ROTFL, LOL etc...
Wanna play? @audraelizabeth @Buechersuechtling @ReadingIsMyHobby @Onceuponatime @TheBookDream @Daisey @Bookishlie @Sharpeipup @Cuilin @ReadingFeedsTheSoul @Lucy_Anywhere @Onepageatatime88 @SpiderGoddess
