Lost feast Culinary extinction and the future of food

Lenore Newman

eAudio - 2019

A rollicking exploration of the history and future of our favorite foods. When we humans love foods, we love them a lot. In fact, we have often eaten them into extinction, whether it is the megafauna of the Paleolithic world or the passenger pigeon of the last century. In Lost Feast, food expert Lenore Newman sets out to look at the history of the foods we have loved to death and what that means for the culinary paths we choose for the future. Whether it's chasing down the luscious butter of local Icelandic cattle or looking at the impacts of modern industrialized agriculture on the range of food varieties we can put in our shopping carts, Newman's bright, intelligent gaze finds insight and humor at every turn. Bracketing the chap...ters that look at the history of our relationship to specific foods, Lenore enlists her ecologist friend and fellow cook, Dan, in a series of "extinction dinners" designed to recreate meals of the past or to illustrate how we might be eating in the future. Part culinary romp, part environmental wake-up call, Lost Feast makes a critical contribution to our understanding of food security today. You will never look at what's on your plate in quite the same way again.

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Subjects
Published
[United States] : Tantor Audio 2019.
Language
English
Corporate Author
hoopla digital
Main Author
Lenore Newman (-)
Corporate Author
hoopla digital (-)
Edition
Unabridged
Online Access
Instantly available on hoopla.
Cover image
Physical Description
1 online resource (1 audio file (9hr., 08 min.)) : digital
Format
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
ISBN
9781618035707
Access
AVAILABLE FOR USE ONLY BY IOWA CITY AND RESIDENTS OF THE CONTRACTING GOVERNMENTS OF JOHNSON COUNTY, UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, HILLS, AND LONE TREE (IA).
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

What if there were no more chickens? Newman looks back to find now-vanished foods that were taken for granted by the people of their time. So doing, she delves into the history of culinary extinction, and what it could mean for our dinner tables now and in the future. From the disappearance of the dodo to the disastrous environmental effect of the more than one billion cows and nineteen billion chickens that are on the planet at any one time, Newman walks readers through the past, present, and possible future of food. Can we back breed the indomitable aurochs? Why is the passenger pigeon extinct? Has science created a meatless burger that's indistinguishable from the real thing? Newman's jaunts through the animal kingdom alternate with themed meals with her friend Dan as she ponders how historical extinctions are linked to our current food systems, what we can do about it, and how humans must follow the example of the famed New York ""pizza rat,"" and adapt to the food that comes their way.--Alice Burton Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

To understand these culinary extinction threats, imagine a feast. It can be any feast: a Las Vegas buffet, a family holiday dinner, a South Pacific pit BBQ, or an Indonesian rijsttafel, the classic meal of many small dishes, served for special occasions. Imagine a meal with many dishes and more food than can possibly be eaten at once. There are two things in that feast, aside from a great deal of hidden labour. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of species of plants and animals, a sort of culinary menagerie. There is also a huge body of culinary knowledge, the accumulated knowledge of growing, harvesting, processing and preparing foods handed down and improved upon over generations. A feast is a bit like a book, but a tasty book we read through eating. Now imagine that the dishes start to disappear one by one. The raspberries for the waffles, the sage on the Thanksgiving turkey, the poi or the pisang goreng. Gone. Slowly the table becomes less interesting, less captivating, and as each species disappears, the accompanying cultural knowledge vanishes with it. This is the paradox of the lost feast. Even as we enjoy a time in which food is cheaper, more diverse and more available than ever before, the spectre of extinction threatens to radically challenge how we eat. In fact, it is already happening. Excerpted from Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food by Lenore Newman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.