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Eating to Extinction
- The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them
- Narrated by: Dan Saladino
- Length: 16 hrs and 14 mins
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Publisher's summary
This audiobook is read by the author.
Dan Saladino's Eating to Extinction is the prominent broadcaster’s pathbreaking tour of the world’s vanishing foods and his argument for why they matter now more than ever
Over the past several decades, globalization has homogenized what we eat, and done so ruthlessly. The numbers are stark: Of the roughly 6,000 different plants once consumed by human beings, only nine remain major staples today. Just three of these - rice, wheat, and corn - now provide 50 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.
In Eating to Extinction, the distinguished BBC food journalist Dan Saladino travels the world to experience and document our most at-risk foods before it’s too late. He tells the fascinating stories of the people who continue to cultivate, forage, hunt, cook, and consume what the rest of us have forgotten or didn’t even know existed. Take honey - not the familiar product sold in plastic bottles, but the wild honey gathered by the Hadza people of East Africa, whose diet consists of 800 different plants and animals and who communicate with birds in order to locate bees’ nests. Or consider murnong - once the staple food of Aboriginal Australians, this small root vegetable with the sweet taste of coconut is undergoing a revival after nearly being driven to extinction. And in Sierra Leone, there are just a few surviving stenophylla trees, a plant species now considered crucial to the future of coffee.
From an Indigenous American chef refining precolonial recipes to farmers tending Geechee red peas on the Sea Islands of Georgia, the individuals profiled in Eating to Extinction are essential guides to treasured foods that have endured in the face of rampant sameness and standardization. They also provide a roadmap to a food system that is healthier, more robust, and, above all, richer in flavor and meaning.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Tasty, lethal, hallucinogenic, and medicinal - fruits have led nations into wars, fueled dictatorships, and even lured us into new worlds. Adam Leith Gollner weaves business, science, and travel into a riveting narrative about one of the earth's most desired foods.
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Interesting world...
- By Henry Scalfo on 07-16-08
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Fruitless Fall
- The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis
- By: Rowan Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Rowell Gormon
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Many people will remember that Rachel Carson predicted a silent spring, but she also warned of a fruitless fall, a time with no pollination and no fruit. The fruitless fall nearly became a reality when, in 2007, beekeepers watched 30 billion bees mysteriously die. And they continue to disappear. The remaining pollinators, essential to the cultivation of a third of American crops, are now trucked across the country and flown around the world, pushing them ever closer to collapse.
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Compulsory Reading - Share with Everyone!
- By Charles Koenen on 04-12-20
By: Rowan Jacobsen
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An Edible History of Humanity
- By: Tom Standage
- Narrated by: George K. Wilson
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout history, food has acted as a catalyst of social change, political organization, geopolitical competition, industrial development, military conflict, and economic expansion. An Edible History of Humanity is a pithy, entertaining account of how a series of changes---caused, enabled, or influenced by food---has helped to shape and transform societies around the world.
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Flawed, but worthwhile
- By Ary Shalizi on 12-28-17
By: Tom Standage
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The Soil Will Save Us
- How Scientists, Farmers, and Ranchers Are Tending the Soil to Reverse Global Warming
- By: Kristin Ohlson
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for "our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming. Her discoveries and vivid storytelling will revolutionize the way we think about our food, our landscapes, our plants, and our relationship to Earth.
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Rambling, mile wide, inch deep treatment of a subject
- By Charles Phillips on 10-17-18
By: Kristin Ohlson
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Banana
- The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World
- By: Dan Koeppel
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Banana combines a pop-science journey around the globe, a fascinating tale of an iconic American business enterprise, and a look into the alternately tragic and hilarious banana subculture (one does exist) - ultimately taking us to the high-tech labs where new bananas are literally being built in test tubes, in a race to save the world's most beloved fruit.
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Very Good Book - History, Science, and Economics
- By Jose on 11-08-17
By: Dan Koeppel
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Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?
- The Epic Saga of the Bird That Powers Civilization
- By: Andrew Lawler
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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From ancient empires to modern economics, veteran journalist Andrew Lawler delivers a sweeping history of the animal that has been most crucial to the spread of civilization across the globe: the chicken. Queen Victoria was obsessed with it. Socrates' last words were about it. Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur made their scientific breakthroughs using it. Catholic popes, African shamans, Chinese philosophers, and Muslim mystics praised it.
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Never imagined the volume of bird trivia
- By Neuron on 11-04-18
By: Andrew Lawler
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Slime
- How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us
- By: Ruth Kassinger
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In Slime we'll meet the algae innovators working toward a sustainable future: from seaweed farmers in South Korea, to scientists using it to clean the dead zones in our waterways, to the entrepreneurs fighting to bring algae fuel and plastics to market. Ruth Kassinger takes listeners on an around-the-world, behind-the-scenes, and into-the-kitchen tour. Whether you thought algae was just the gunk in your fish tank or you eat seaweed with your oatmeal, Slime will delight and amaze with its stories of the good, the bad, and the up-and-coming.
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Fairly entertaining and informative...but
- By Timothy on 08-27-19
By: Ruth Kassinger
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Collapse
- How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 27 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion, and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization. Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted.
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Jared Diamond Downs You in Explanation
- By Rob on 07-20-18
By: Jared Diamond
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The Vertical Farm
- Feeding the World in the 21st Century
- By: Dickson Despommier
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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When Columbia professor Dickson Despommier set out to solve America's food, water, and energy crises, he didn't just think big - he thought up. The vertical farm has excited scientists, architects, and politicians around the globe. These farms, grown inside skyscrapers, would provide solutions to many of the serious problems we currently face.
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Excellent Brainstorming - Not reality
- By Texas Community Project on 01-25-11
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Milk!
- A 10,000-Year Food Fracas
- By: Mark Kurlansky
- Narrated by: Brian Sutherland
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Mark Kurlansky's first global food history since the best-selling Cod and Salt; the fascinating cultural, economic and culinary story of milk and all things dairy - with recipes throughout. According to the Greek creation myth, we are so much spilt milk; a splatter of the goddess Hera's breast milk became our galaxy, the Milky Way.
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Horrible narration nearly kills Kurlansky
- By Scarlatti's Muse on 05-15-18
By: Mark Kurlansky
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Guns, Germs and Steel
- The Fate of Human Societies
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Doug Ordunio
- Length: 16 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, he highlights the broadest movements both literal and conceptual on every continent since the Ice Age, and examines societal advances such as writing, religion, government, and technology.
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Compelling pre-history and emergent history
- By Doug on 08-25-11
By: Jared Diamond
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The Taste of Empire
- How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World
- By: Lizzie Collingham
- Narrated by: Jennifer M. Dixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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In The Taste of Empire, acclaimed historian Lizzie Collingham tells the story of how the British Empire's quest for food shaped the modern world. Told through 20 meals over the course of 450 years, from the Far East to the New World, Collingham explains how Africans taught Americans how to grow rice, how the East India Company turned opium into tea, and how Americans became the best-fed people in the world.
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Overall really interesting and informative
- By Amazon Customer on 01-01-21
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Meathooked
- The History and Science of Our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession with Meat
- By: Marta Zaraska
- Narrated by: Emily Durante
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
One of the great science and health revelations of our time is the danger posed by meat-eating. Every day, it seems, we are warned about the harm producing and consuming meat can do to the environment and our bodies. Many of us have tried to limit how much meat we consume, and many of us have tried to give it up altogether. But it is not easy to resist the smoky, cured, barbecued, and fried delights that tempt us.
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A very interesting book on why we crave meat.
- By Amazon Customer on 05-23-16
By: Marta Zaraska
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I don't think I'm the intended market for the book
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We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff and staff of life, supporting diets, economies, and civilizations around the globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and the humble peppercorn drove the Age of Discovery, so did coffee beans help fuel the Enlightenment and cottonseed help spark the Industrial Revolution. And from the fall of Rome to the Arab Spring, the fate of nations continues to hinge on the seeds of a Middle Eastern grass known as wheat.
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Delightfully simplistic!
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They should have hired an actor
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What listeners say about Eating to Extinction
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- KK
- 04-16-22
Very Interesting and So Necessary
The history and relevance of our foods, the humans who have tended them and what can be done to save an ailing earth is well written and read. The narrator was the author and he did an excellent job.
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- Susan
- 05-16-22
Homage to Oysters
Who knew we owed so much to oysters? Thank you, excellent creatures of the sea!
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- Leslie
- 04-06-22
Really makes you think 🤔
This book will have you reevaluating how you enjoy a simple meal. What was once something tasty can now connect you to history in an almost religious way. It had me thinking about my own heritages and thinking about trying childhood meals again, but from scratch. It also had me rethinking about my garden this year. Definitely will be going some different things if I can get my hands on them.
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- Robert
- 02-09-22
A hard copy of this book will be on my shelf.
This book has earned a spot on my shelf at work. Each chapter hammers home the importance of our attention to the world around us. It reminds the reader how impactful we are on the environment around us, and the importance that we need to pay to our past experiences. If one chapter does not reach you at a primal level, another will. If you are plant based, your eyes should be opened to the monoculture that likely allows you to actually live the way you are choosing to live. If you love your steak, it will make you think more about buying farm-to-table or eating more local, different meats. If you are passionate about cheeses, wine, beer, spirits, your morning coffee....this book is a call to arms for everyone. We are all involved with food, we all eat, we are all responsible for our sustainable future.
Most importantly, the book is approachable, giving enough detail, but never going so deep in a topic that you lose interest and feel overwhelmed.
I can not say enough about this book and have recommended it to pretty much everyone who I have spoken to during the week or so it has taken me to digest the book in its entirety.
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- Dave R.
- 09-26-24
The content
Very interesting. Really enjoyed all that I’ve heard it was very well read also. This should be required reading.
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- Craig Kibbe
- 05-21-22
To Know our self inflicted vunerability
This is a superb book detailing our foods, where they have come from and how, in a short time, humanity has so simplified our diversity that we now stand exposed to great shortages and starvation...
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1 person found this helpful
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- NPS
- 08-06-24
evidence is everywhere
One example after another how human interaction with the diversity of nature has squandered many opportunities to live a life in balance next to mother earth.
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- Auskan
- 04-01-23
Well worth the time
Absolutely fascinating deep dive into why the food we eat today became what it is and what other varieties used to enjoy popularity, as well as why they are no longer favored. Sometimes it made me sad, often helpless as one person, to do anything to change the situation. But at the same time, knowledge is power and the more people who have the information, the greater the chance someone who can change it, will listen.
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- Kindle Customer
- 04-04-22
Fantastic!
A very interesting and compelling read regarding human culture, the world we live in and the crazy complex interface that is how we sustain and nourish ourselves. The tone stayed light despite some serious subject matter and the examples were fascinating.Yet another reason to fight to preserve biodiversity amongst others!
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- Maria Florencia Linares
- 05-06-24
Eye opening ingredient and foods review
Appreciate the global angle to ingredients and foods that the author brings. The value of biodiversity in an area “functional” and “cultural” to humans, layers on top of other kingdoms widely covered and researched.
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