The Lost Supper

July 24, 2023
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.

Starred review from July 1, 2023
A surprising, flavorsome tour of ancient cuisines demonstrating how the way forward involves looking back. This is not just another slick volume about cooking exotic food. Montreal-based Grescoe, author of a number of award-winning books, including Straphanger and Bottomfeeder, loves food and is an adventurous diner, but he also has serious points to make. He is deeply concerned with the shrinking biodiversity of food production and the lack of real nutrition in processed foods. The answer, he believes, is to look at what earlier civilizations ate. In the course of his research, he visited ancient sites and met with farmers and Indigenous peoples who are resurrecting preindustrial methods of agriculture. He sampled axayacatl, an important insect in the Aztec diet. In Greece, he indulged in oil from very old olive trees, which leads to a discussion of the role that olives played in the spread of civilization. He tasted a salty fish sauce called garum, which has been around for centuries. On Vancouver Island, Grescoe tried the native camas, "a tuber that was widely consumed on the Northwest Coast before the Europeans came." Along the way, the author learned that pigs were brought to the Americas by the conquistadors and that the first cheeses were made more than 7,000 years ago. Grescoe has tried to re-create some of the dishes he discovered in his own kitchen, with a surprising degree of success. His final effort involved making bread using ingredients and methods gleaned from the study of a Neolithic site in Turkey. Grescoe advises readers to look beyond the supermarket shelves, think before they buy, and take some culinary chances. "For those who champion the Earth's dwindling nutritional diversity," he concludes, "the message is as simple as it is urgent: to save it, you've got to eat it." Grescoe writes with color, energy, and humor, and the result is a fascinating book that leaves you hungry for more.

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