Lost Feast Extinction culinaire et avenir de l'alimentation

“Edifying and entertaining.” — Foreword Reviews, starred review

Taste Canada Silver Award Winner and Finalist for the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada Award

A rollicking exploration of the history and future of our favorite foods

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 humor 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.

• Featured on NPR’s Science Friday SciFri Book Club
• Starred review from Foreword Reviews: “Edifying and entertaining… Never didactic and cautiously optimistic, Newman recognizes that there is hard work ahead to recalibrate the North American diet. She builds a compelling case for us human superpredators to rethink our food choices, and to be healthier for the environment and our fellow inhabitant species. Lost Feast is enjoyable reading about a serious topic.”
• Winner of 2020 Taste Canada Awards, 2020 Science Writers & Communicators of Canada award, 2019 Foreword Indies Award
• An entertaining book with scholarly chops — but not a scholarly tone — about the foods we have loved to death.
• Lost Feast includes chapters covering passenger pigeons, megafauna, the dodo, lab-made meat, the loss of 464 varieties of lettuce, and the history of beekeeping.