Previously in this space, Alicia Kennedy’s book No Meat Required was offered for your consideration.
Edibles & Potables: Alicia Kennedy’s book “No Meat Required”
During the past few months, Kennedy has discussed two books that I intend to read when time permits. The first is Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them, by Dan Saladino.
Over the past several decades, globalization has homogenized what we eat, and done so ruthlessly. The numbers are stark: Of the roughly six thousand different plants once consumed by human beings, only nine remain major staples today. Just three of these—rice, wheat, and corn—now provide fifty percent of all our calories. Dig deeper and the trends are more worrisome still:
The source of much of the world’s food—seeds—is mostly in the control of just four corporations. Ninety-five percent of milk consumed in the United States comes from a single breed of cow. Half of all the world’s cheese is made with bacteria or enzymes made by one company. And one in four beers drunk around the world is the product of one brewer.
If it strikes you that everything is starting to taste the same wherever you are in the world, you’re by no means alone. This matters: when we lose diversity and foods become endangered, we not only risk the loss of traditional foodways, but also of flavors, smells, and textures that may never be experienced again. And the consolidation of our food has other steep costs, including a lack of resilience in the face of climate change, pests, and parasites. Our food monoculture is a threat to our health—and to the planet.
Kennedy mentioned Saladino’s book again in a column at her website: “What Is ‘Normal’ Food?”
Between Two Waters: Heritage, Landscape, and the Modern Cook by chef Pam Brunton asks us what “normal” means in the context of Scottish food within the first few pages. Is “normal” the food traditional to the landscape, or the food that has come to be ubiquitous through global trade and migration?
I was sent Between Two Waters before its release to consider for a blurb, and I immediately said yes. Brunton’s work at her restaurant Inver gives shape to my hopes and visions for more regional food systems: It’s not about shutting out “new” flavors, but rooting the cuisine in what is nearby. “Local” now has conservative connotations—perhaps it always did—but because my food system brain was forged through reporting on and then living in Puerto Rico, I have always believed that using the local as the foundation can be a way toward self-sufficiency, otherwise known as food sovereignty.
We can all eat everything from everywhere, but can we ground it in where we are to support the infrastructure that will feed us when shit hits the fan? Here, she’s presenting possibilities in the deeply specific that remind me a lot of the ideas about biodiversity presented in Dan Saladino’s Eating to Extinction, which we read to end 2024.
Once I’ve read the books, perhaps there’ll be an opportunity for reviews and discussions. As with my ongoing meat reduction program, which tenuously remains in place, someone will soon remind me that things are as they are, and cannot be changed: We must be dependent on automobiles, slaughterhouses and the whims of engorged corporate entities.
Pfui.
If you’ve already read one of these books, let me know.
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“Edibles & Potables” is Food & Dining Magazine’s Sunday slot for news and views that range beyond our customary metropolitan Louisville coverage area, as intended to be food (and drink) for thought.
Last time:
Edibles & Potables: Recreating the gatefold grub from ZZ Top’s Tres Hombres
