There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

Lost Feast is an engaging exploration of our destructive relationships with our favourite foods. Looking back to the Romans and beyond, Newman tries to understand why, as a species, we seem so dedicated to driving what we love to extinction - and how, perhaps, we might be able to stem this trend before we literally have nothing left to eat. Newman looks at historically popular foods from mammoths to passenger pigeons, silphium to pears, and also clearly demonstrates how the imminent loss of pollinators such as bees will be catastrophic for human diets. Monoculture farming has resulted in widespread availability of cheap calories, but with such restricted choice that if our increasingly poisoned environment could no longer support, say, wheat or maize corn or soy, people en masse could well be one of the next species on the endangered list. It sounds like science fiction, but simply looking back over the past few decades, let alone centuries, shows a trend which should have a lot more of us very worried.



I am lucky to have been in France whilst reading Lost Feast so able to indulge in a spot of terroir cuisine that would have been considerably more difficult in the UK. We foraged enough hazelnuts and walnuts from nearby wild trees for a good nut roast, and a neighbour gifted us home-grown pears for poaching in spiced red wine. The French are still keen on preserving local food varieties and on the whole will pay enough to ensure growers and farmers receive a living wage. As a result I notice a much wider choice of produce available even in national supermarket chains. By contrast UK supermarkets might have thirty similar-yet-different processed pasta sauces, but only three varieties of apples, mostly flown from the other side of the world and tasteless.



I appreciated Newman's focus on not only our ever decreasing choices, but also the poor quality of mass-grown fruit and vegetables and factory-farmed meat compared to their properly nutured counterparts. We have so quickly become accustomed to subsidised, bland food that I see people horrified at the true price of real ingredients.  I remember just thirty years ago a roast chicken was an expensive treat to be savoured maybe once a month. Now I could afford to eat mass-produced chicken for every dinner if I wanted to, but I would say it's over a decade since 'savour' was the appropriate verb!



Lost Feast isn't just a disaster story though. Newman looks to the future of food by trying out laboratory-grown meat and plant-based meat alternatives, and by visiting people who are returning to traditional ways of food production. She shows how each of us really can make a difference through our purchasing choices - and it's not through trying eat a whole turducken! Lost Feast was a fascinating book for me to read. As someone who is already concerned about where my food comes from, I already had an awareness of the current issues, but not how they fit into the historical record. I loved the idea of the Extinction Dinners as a means to demonstrate Newman's research and ideas. Lost Feast is a timely book, especially for foodies such as myself.

<blockquote>Think of a great library of flavours. For the last century we have been recklessly burning all of the books. [loc. 1824[</blockquote>
The author is a professor of culinary geography, a job I had no idea existed: 'combines my love of travel with my love of eating'. Her investigation of species extinction and its impact on cuisine takes her from Iceland to Hawaii, from musings on mammoths -- the wave of their extinction moved at a human's walking pace -- to being eaten alive by mosquitoes in Canada's far north whilst in search of bison. <cut text="more ...">(Newman is Canadian, and frequently contrasts food availability and gastroculture in the US and in Canada.)

Humans have domesticated, farmed or industrialised only a tiny percentage of edible plants and animals. Megafauna such as mammoths, dodos and aurochs have been driven extinct, or bred into safer forms, but there are vast swathes of the invertebrate kingdom left untasted. As Newman's subtitle indicates, this book is not merely a paean to vanished species, but an exploration of alternatives to the resource-intensive, ecologically-damaging agricultural methods that are devastating ecologies worldwide.

<i>Lost Feast</i> is packed with memorable (and often horrifying) statistics, presented in an accessible form. On American farming: "Roughly half of the calories we grow on the 14 percent of the earth’s land surface used for crop farming is actually eaten by people; 36 percent of the remainder is eaten by animals, with the last portion used for ethanol.In the meat-loving United States, only 27 percent of crops are eaten directly by people... it takes one hundred calories of grain to produce twelve calories of chicken; the same grain produces only three calories worth of beef." [loc. 933] Some of the assertions seemed wildly improbable -- were there really no honey bees in North America until 1621? <a href="https://nativebeeology.com/2018/01/26/native-honey-bees/">yes, really!</a>-- but there is a substantial bibliography, and plenty of citations.

Kudos, by the way, to Newman: many of the books she cites as inspiration are the work of female academics, for instance <i>How to Clone a Mammoth</i>, by Beth Shapiro; <i>Defending Beef</i> by Nicolette Niman; and <i>The Sixth Extinction</i> by Elizabeth Kolbert, a key text. 

Interspersed with Newman's explorations are 'extinction dinners', in which her friend Dan creates a meal that approximates the extinct, or problematic, food that Newman has discussed. Some of these dinners are more appealing than others (pears with fish sauce? I don't <u>care</u> if it was a Roman delicacy) and some -- such as the feast of invasive species Dan prepares during their Hawai'ian trip -- are mouthwatering. Perhaps most germane is the 'Burger 2.0' meal, in which Dan explores alternatives to the traditional beefburger. ('recent studies suggest that each cow is more damaging in terms of climate change impact than the average car.' [loc. 753]). The 'taste testers' include enthusiastic carnivore Dan, and a vegan friend: their consensus was that the Beyond Burger (pea protein, yeast and coconut oil) is a serious contender, and also waaaay too meaty for the vegan.

This is a marvellous read, reminiscent of Margaret Visser's <i>Much Depends on Dinner</i> in its discursive approach, its weaving together of social, geographical and historical factors, and its occasional wry humour. Highly recommended.

Thanks to NetGalley for a free ebook in exchange for this honest review!

Food and extinction.   Everyone doesn't necessarily think those go hand and hand.  Lost Feast is an ambitious book by Lenore Newman that explores the various ways in which we humans have driven some species to extinction or the brink of extinction.   Newman covers the whole gamut from large wild animals to small birds, insects, fruits, etc.      Each chapter of the book covers a different type of food where Newman and her friend (and fellow scientist) Dan have "extinction dinners".  At these meals,  they cook up food related to the area she is discussing.  These could be reflective of food we have lost to extinction or meals we could be eating in the future due to endangered food.    Newman also takes deep dives and discusses the history of a particular type of food and what has driven that food-source to extinction or the endangered list.    For example ,the theory of mammoths being driven to extinction by hungry humans who saw them as an easy source of food. 

This book combined two of my passions: science and food, so I found it very interesting.   I learned a lot of new and fascinating facts from this book.  The book isn't all doom & gloom;  it left me hopeful for the future of our planet and food.  

 I recommend this to anyone who has concerns about the future of our planet as it offers up a different take than the typical "the weather is changing and ocean levels are rising".

When it is hot as heck outside and there is nothing cool to do but reading as everything else makes you end up a sweaty mess, it is the perfect day for a speed reader.			
			
I received a temporary digital Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  			
			
From the publisher, as I do not repeat the contents or story of books in reviews, I let them do it as they do it better than I do 😸.			

 When we humans love foods, we love them a lot. In fact, we have often eaten them into extinction, whether it is the megafauna of the Paleolithic world or the passenger pigeon of the last century. In Lost Feast, food expert Lenore Newman sets out to look at the history of the foods we have loved to death and what that means for the culinary paths we choose for the future. Whether it’s chasing down the luscious butter of local Icelandic cattle or looking at the impacts of modern industrialized agriculture on the range of food varieties we can put in our shopping carts, Newman’s bright, intelligent gaze finds insight and humour at every turn.

Bracketing the chapters that look at the history of our relationship to specific foods, Lenore enlists her ecologist friend and fellow cook, Dan, in a series of “extinction dinners” designed to recreate meals of the past, or to illustrate how we might be eating in the future. Part culinary romp, part environmental wake-up call, Lost Feast makes a critical contribution to our understanding of food security today. You will never look at what’s on your plate in quite the same way again.

I love books about food and its history in regards to people like me who love to eat but DO NOT CALL ME A FOODIE ... that ship sailed when Instagram ruined food for me. I love reading about food in the past (Mrs. Beeton rocks!) and I found this book fascinating as it discussed food in the past and what is coming in the future. I don't think that I would necessarily enjoy an "extinction dinner" but I would love if cilantro and parsley disappeared forever. 	It is a fun book to read and totally enjoyable - it's a culinary romp!
			
As always, I try to find a reason to not rate with stars as I love emojis (outside of their incessant use by "Social Influencer Millennials" on Instagram and Twitter) so let's give it 🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑

Foodies. I admit to being one, somewhat. I'll try any food at least once (no thank you taste). But some foodies can actually behave like locusts. The rarer the better. The more expensive and exclusive the better. It's why caviar is so expensive and potentially devastating to the sturgeon that produce it.  Foodies are killing off species and plants. Weather is also devastating land and killing off crops. It's a timely book. We all like to eat, maybe we should learn to eat a bit more responsibly. Lenore Newman's book is an interesting look at how humans and the climate have driven species extinction. It's an interesting book.