Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love

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.

How can we protect the foods we love and rediscover the rich world of flavor we’re losing?

• The Science of Taste: Join an award-winning journalist on a global journey to understand the biological and emotional connections we have to flavor, and what it takes to save it.
• Genetic Erosion Explained: Discover the shocking truth about our food supply—how 95% of our calories come from just thirty species and what this loss of food diversity means for our future.
• From Farm to Table: Travel from Ethiopian coffee forests to Ecuadoran cocoa plantations, meeting the scientists, farmers, and chefs on the front lines of the fight to preserve our most beloved foods.
• Conscious Consumption: Learn not only what it means to lose the foods we love, but how to become a more mindful eater and play a vital role in the movement for a more delicious and sustainable world.