When you pick up chopsticks and eat a delicious meal, you can't imagine that food is also endangered. According to the "Red List of Endangered Species" compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, 1050,000 species of fragile plants and animals. In a small town in Italy, when people realized that local crops, animal breeds, and traditional cuisines were disappearing, an online list of endangered foods began. Inspired by this move, Dan Saladino wrote the book Food That Vanishes: What We Will Lose More Than Deliciousness.
Journalist and announcer Dan Saladino works for the BBC and has worked on the Food Project. In the past 10 years, he has traveled to more than 30 countries and regions, searching for and documenting more than 40 endangered foods and rare techniques. Thirty-four titles have been carefully selected and written into 10 categories: wild foods, grains, vegetables, meat, seafood, fruits, cheeses, wines, brewed drinks, and sweets.
After tens of millions of years of survival and reproduction, human beings have selected crops suitable for cultivation and livestock for us. In fact, there are many reasons behind this situation, such as the environment, artificial breeding, industrialization, commercialization, capitalist control, and so on. The author also focuses on the relationship between food and people, just like getting Haza honey, which can find the hive but can't escape the bee attack, and the hunter who can't find the hive but can smoke the bee. The collaboration between the two has resulted in one of the most complex and efficient partnerships between humans and wildlife, finding a way to live in harmony with nature.
The value of food is not only to solve the problem of food and clothing, but also to history, geography, genes, science, identity, creativity, craftsmanship and our future. Don't wait until the day when they're all extinct for us to know it in the most regrettable way.