I am reading a book called “Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them,” by Dan Saladino.
In a nutshell…
Food (plants, animals and marine food) usually evolved from a single area of the planet. Each food developed amazing diversity.
The Macro economy of the global food supply has led to each food being grown in monocultures that are vulnerable to disease and climate change. At the same time the farmers abandon the many diverse local varieties because they aren’t cash crops the way the monocultures are.
There are a few dedicated seed banks but it would take a long time to replace, say, American sweet corn or cocoa or bananas should a virus wipe them out. As for the oceans…it’s heartbreaking how overfishing and hunting has wiped out species.
This is a fascinating book for foodies. Some of the foods sound exquisite (such as the Sicilian vanilla orange which is sweet and juicy without acid sourness). Others sound desperately awful (like the dried year-old mutton leg that is naturally pickled by bacteria and the salt wind of the Orkney Islands of north Scotland).
The greatest danger comes from monocultures of staple foods like wheat, maize and rice.
When I lived in Alaska I learned of a food that the native people’s there enjoyed. They called it stink fish and for good reason. A fish was buried in the ground and covered over with grass, lichens, etc and left there to ferment for weeks.
According to one of our Athabaskan friends it tastes good but you don’t want to be in the same room with someone else who is eating it; the smell was not so great.
Then some people decided to bury the fish in a zip lock bag resulting in some cases of botulism.
My library did not have it, but a abebooks had a used hardback copy in good condition for $4.00 and free shipping. I am always on the lookout for something new to read.
Botulism is caused by the anaerobic bacterium Clostridium botulinum which cannot grow in an environment that contains oxygen and/ or acid. The fermenting bacteria (in the authentic process) were aerobic and probably produced acid as a byproduct of fermentation. Putting the process into a Ziploc bag shut out the oxygen, inhibiting the growth of the fermentation bacteria and enabling the C. botulinum.
This is why the canning process for non-acidic fruits and vegetables (such as green beans) is more rigorous than acidic. C. botulinum makes resistant spores so they have to be heated long enough to kill the spores.
The book describes many traditional processes for preserving food. All of which were developed over time with the unsuccessful processes leading to food poisoning. Violate the precise directions at your peril.
