Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love
Written by Simran Sethi
Narrated by Therese Plummer
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
Award-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.
Simran Sethi
Simran Sethi is a journalist and an associate at the University of Melbourne's Sustainable Society Institute and the former host of the PBS Quest series on science and sustainability. Her work has appeared on NBC Nightly News, PBS, Oprah, MSNBC, the History Channel, and NPR. She was the national environmental correspondent for NBC News, the anchor/writer of Sundance Channel's first dedicated environmental programming, and the host of the Emmy Award-winning PBS documentary A School in the Woods.
Related to Bread, Wine, Chocolate
Related audiobooks
On Spice: Advice, Wisdom, and History with a Grain of Saltiness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cheese, Wine, and Bread: Discovering the Magic of Fermentation in England, Italy, and France Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Language Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eat More Better: How to Make Every Bite More Delicious Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World's Great Drinks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Infused: Adventures in Tea Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Kitchen Whisperers: Cooking with the Wisdom of Our Friends Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What's the Difference?: Recreational Culinary Reference for the Curious and Confused Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnprocessed: My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fermented Man: A Year on the Front Lines of a Food Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Cocktail Ratios: The Surprising Simplicity of Classic Cocktails Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSalt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Story of Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ancient Brews: Rediscovered and Re-created Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers: The Secrets of Ancient Fermentation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When I Met Food: Living the American Restaurant Dream Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Difficult Fruit: Arguments for the Tart, Tender, and Unruly (with recipes) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Flavor of Wood: In Search of the Wild Taste of Trees, from Smoke and Sap to Root and Bark Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise of Yeast: How the Sugar Fungus Shaped Civilization Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Culinary Reactions: The Everyday Chemistry of Cooking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Secret History of Food: Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Everything We Eat Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What's Good?: A Memoir in Fourteen Ingredients Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women in the Kitchen: Twelve Essential Cookbook Writers Who Defined the Way We Eat, from 1661 to Today Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Devoured: From Chicken Wings to Kale Smoothies -- How What We Eat Defines Who We Are Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Environmental Science For You
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Shelter: A Love Letter to Trees Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Uncertain Sea: Fear is everywhere. Embrace it. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Life on Earth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-made Landscape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Underland: A Deep Time Journey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way of Imagination Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gator Country: Deception, Danger, and Alligators in the Everglades Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The End of the River Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reef Life: An Underwater Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Winter's Kitchen: Growing Roots and Breaking Bread in the Northern Heartland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Silent Spring Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Search of Mycotopia: Citizen Science, Fungi Fanatics, and the Untapped Potential of Mushrooms Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Bread, Wine, Chocolate
10 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I listened to the audiobook while I did chores around the house and enjoyed this book about food and diversity and how corporate farming is concentrated on just a few varieties of crops and what kind of danger that places us if that crop were to fail, think Ireland during the potato famine. The varities favored don't necessarily have the best taste, they are bred for high yield and high profit.
The author travels around the world looking for great tastes that have been achieved by local growers and more diversity. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What's not to like? Wine, Chocolate, Coffee, Beer, and Bread? (Plus one more that I'll get to...) Sethi breaks each examination into three parts...a mix of her personal history with the food and historical history (wasn't sure how else to put that); looks at sourcing and the impacts of high yield hybrids and strains on the higher quality beans, grains, yeasts, grapes, etc. - loss of diversity; and a short section on how the experts suggest enjoying each. She does a good job telling the story of the small farmers, vintners, chocolatiers "operating on the slimmest og magins", trying to make a living.I liked most of what Sethi wrote, highlighting a few quote-worthy segments...On cacao, Colin Gasko of Rogue Chocolatier, who pays premium prices for premium cacao seeds/beans that he has to have shipped, by more costly air, with their shells intact...a 30% waste as the shells are not the cacao he needs, and resulting in low margins:...there's a greater likelihood of reduction in genetic diversity if we don't value a differentiated, specialty market. My value isn't in purchasing power; it's in showing the potential of what good cacao processed in the right way can taste like.On coffee, Sethi quotes Aaron Wood, former head roaster for Seven Seeds Coffee Roasters in Australia:I love coffee because it's for the people. It's social. You wouldn't go out for a bar of chocolate, would you? People drink wine to get out of their day and get into their night, Coffee brings you into your day.On beer, Ms. Sethi says of the tragic species of beer (my term, not hers), "[a]ppropriately known as bottom-fermenting yeast, lager yeasts produce clean and crisp beers, like Corona, Heineken, Bud and Pabst Blue Ribbon. They are considered more commercial because they're uniform, controllable and don't produce the depth of flavor we find in ales." Well, she got that right. and quoting Ben Ott, former head brewer at Truman's brewery, London, If you want to attract a lot of people, then you make the beer as bland as possible.Ms. Sethi nails it with, "It works: Lager is the most popular beer in the world."The subtitle refers to that loss of diversity, resulting in loss of quality. Think about it...junk chocolate vs gourmet chocolate; Folgers vs Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee; Budweiser vs actual beer...Ms. Sethi quotes Caleb Taft, at the time a wine director who introduced her to a specialty grape in a wine called Trousseau Gris:The intention behind big wines is consistency."Meaning the Beringer's etal...but it's more than that. The intention behind ALL big markets is consistency: beer, chocolate, coffee...and we all lose because of that.I thought Ms. Sethi threw in the proverbial TMI about her personal relationships in her narrative a little too often. I'm not sure if she was trying to make a connection with the reader, but given the subjects (and my personal passion for three - chocolate, coffee and beer), that connection would likely be a given for any reader. For her exposure of the problems we face when we allow a declination to the lower denominators of the Big producers, this could be a five star book, but I don't think she made enough of a case. Plus, she added a sixth "food" at the end that put me off; she crowed about a particularly well cooked octopus dish she had in Peru. She followed that travesty with an appropriate segment on overharvesting the sea resulting in, again, loss of diversity, but the damage was done in her sharing her delight in eating such an disturbingly intelligent creature.Regardless, this is still a good book with good information about foods that I happen to like.