The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past

Grescoe (Shanghai Grand) sets out an illuminating analysis of “dwindling nutritional diversity,” what a more sustainable, nutritionally varied future might look like, and how food systems should change to get there. Factory farming, genetic modification of foods, and a lack of agricultural biodiversity due to pollution and habitat destruction have led to a “sharp drop” in naturally occuring essential micronutrients and a spike in “civilization diseases” including hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes, according to the author. Seeking to discover “what our ancestors ate, and what our prehistoric and historic diets could tell us,” Grescoe embarked on a global trek in which he washed down “wok-fried silkworm chrysalids with Queen Ant wine” at a bug-tasting event in Montreal; hunted wild, acorn-eating pigs on an island off the coast of Georgia; sampled the “oldest named cheese” in Britain; and attempted to recreate the original diet of the Indigenous Cowichan people in British Columbia. While some of the author’s experiments are plausible only for the most adventurous (for example, chowing down on high-protein bugs), his advice for consumers is sensible (grow one’s own food when possible; learn about the “economy and technology” of food production), and his suggestions for agricultural systems persuade (for instance, farming corporations can learn from the “traditional ecological knowledge” of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, including the Aztec system of “chinampas, or floating gardens... which allow several harvests a year” and are currently cultivated in some parts of Mexico). This is worth a look. (Oct.)