Bread, Wine and Chocolate in a Warming World

Jonathan Foley, Executive Director, California Academy of Sciences 

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

The industrialization of food has caused much of the food we eat to taste the same, whether you are nibbling at a farmer’s market in San Francisco, a Midwestern barbecue or a fast food joint in China. Ninety-five percent of the world’s calories now come from only 30 species, and Simran Sethi says a closer look at America’s cornucopia of grocery store options shows that our foods are primarily made up of only corn, wheat, rice, palm oil and soybeans. Sethi traveled to six continents in search of delicious and endangered tastes and how we can save the foods we love. Jonathan Foley is an expert on the environmental and human health benefits of a diversified food system and the perils of industrial monoculture. In an influential National Geographic article, he outlined a vision for feeding 9 billion people. He says the answer doesn’t need to be factory farms versus small organic ones; there’s another way, and researchers at the California Academy of Sciences are busy working on ways to feed the people without destroying their home.