Endangered Foods: How Do We Save Them?
According to Forbes.com, Gary Nabhan, who edited a book, Renewing America's Food Traditions, wants serious eaters everywhere to band together to save the more than 1,000 endangered food species and varieties that Nabhan and company identify in the book.
By Nabhan's definition, endangered foods range from the obscure, the Tennessee Fainting Goat, to the iconic, gumbo. That, my friends, represents a large spread indeed, and that's how Nabhan and company arrived at a list of more than a thousand endangered foods.
Forbes.com reports:
The effort was founded by seven organizations, including Slow Food USA, American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, and Chefs Collaborative, which came together in 2004 to help conserve, restore and celebrate North America's unique food traditions. Nabhan compiled his list by working with collaborative members and talking to farmers, fishermen, foragers, herders, chefs, food historians, and folklorists about what foods they've seen dramatically decline over the past few decades.
Why and how do foods become endangered? What can we do about it?
Many reasons. People's eating habits change. Farmers can often maximize yields and make more money by growing fewer crops. Some foods have become endangered because they can't be transported easily. They're too fragile.
Although I do think that the whole notion of endangered foods has become something of an academic exercise, there is no doubt that Nabhan and company have identified a serious problem that serious eaters everywhere should address by seeking out more variety in their diets and keeping iconic American food traditions alive. Goats and gumbo are serious eats, indeed.
The bottom line according to Nabhan: "The real point is that the textures, flavors, and stories behind these foods can really enrich our lives and those of our families."
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4 Comments:
In the case of foods that are "endangered" by rarity, we could not eat them?
For foods that have just fallen out of popularity, maybe it's because people don't want to eat them?
SB (thinks this is silly)
srhcb at 6:48PM on 09/01/08
If we expect to continue to have the food supply we have now, we as a society need to place more inportance on farming. Farming is hard work, and the financial profits are minimal. It requires a huge financial investment, unless you inherit the family farm, and then you have to turn a profit to even keep the farm. Not to mention, there's always some developer ready to buy your land. Essentially, we have created our own impending food shortage, and the only way to remedy it is to grow a new generation of farmers.
beth1 at 8:22PM on 09/01/08
I'm guessing a lot of these are endangered because they require too much actual cooking, and the average person isn't willing to put in the time and effort to make them. Not to mention that some might seem "weird" - goat doesn't appeal to the masses.
Some should be saved, for sure. But some just might not be feasible anymore. And if the problem is that some ingredients are on the verge of extinction, let's start by replenishing our resources before we eat them.
piccola at 9:25PM on 09/01/08
Saving endangered food species is also the struggle to maintain biodiversity, as well as a rich variety of tastes. The maximizing of "yield" is the great fetish of commodity food production - a focus on monoculture (corn, soy, wheat), most often GMOs that heavily depend on oil (pesticides, fertilizers) and subsidies. This type of industrial agriculture destroys the diversity of crops farmers traditionally grew and is non-sustainable (the destruction of soil calls for ever greater amounts of chemical fertilizer). The so-called "endangered foods" - many of them are legumes grown by native Americans - can improve local diets and prevent many of the run-away health problems caused by industrial foods. Yes, many of these foods are fragile but they are not meant to travel 3000 miles and have a shelf-life of 10 weeks or more. They are key to a local agriculture that will be the livelihood of farmers, not corporations. Regarding now rare breeds, this means yes, we need to eat them to save them.
epices6 at 10:51PM on 09/01/08