Bread, Wine, Chocolate - Simran Sethi

“Brimming with information and amply footnoted, Bread, Wine, Chocolate is a revelation throughout.” – Science

In the last century, we have lived—and eaten—through the most dramatic shifts ever experienced in food and agriculture. While much of this is invisible, what we do know is that food is beginning to look and taste the same, whether you’re strolling through a San Francisco farmers market, at a Midwestern potluck—or a McDonald’s in India. Ninety-five percent of the world’s calories now come from only 30 species, and a closer look at America’s cornucopia of grocery store options reveals that our foods are primarily made up of only corn, wheat, rice, palm oil and soybeans. Food itself – the most delicious, diverse varieties of food—is being lost, slowly and irrevocably.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Join award-winning journalist Preeti Simran Sethi as she travels from wild coffee forests in Ethiopia to cocoa plantations of Ecuador, from the brewery to the bakery and the temple, to meet scientists, farmers, chefs, wine makers, beer brewers, coffee roasters and chocolate connoisseurs to discuss the reasons for this loss in biodiversity in food and agriculture and learn what it means to experience food in a whole new way, tasting foods more deeply through each one of our senses in order to savor—and save—the foods we love.

Bread, Wine, Chocolate was featured on The Splendid Table, CBS News, Forbes, in The Wall Street Journal and on their podcast, PRI’s The World, The Guardian, Civil Eats, NPR, USA TODAY and Quartz. The book was reviewed by Science, Orion Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Independent, Experience Life Magazine, Organic Life Magazine and The Wall Street Journal.