The Lost Supper Quotes

“PREDIMED, a Spanish study of 7,500 adults at higher risk of heart disease and stroke, found that those who consumed four tablespoons or more of extra-virgin olive oil – that's a quarter cup a day – showed 30 percent fewer cardiovascular events compared to those who consumed a low-fat diet.”
― Taras Grescoe, The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past

“Everybody who eats cheap, factory-made meat is eating suffering.”
― Taras Grescoe, The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past

“If this book has one message, it's this: diversity is resiliency.”
― Taras Grescoe, The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past

“This loss of diversity is taking a toll on human health. In Mexico, a vast variety of landraces of corn, each with its own distinct flavor and nutritional qualities, has been usurped by transgenic yellow corn, deficient in micronutrients, imported from north of the Rio Grande.”
― Taras Grescoe, The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past

“The latest research shows that dietary diversity ¬– eating a minimum of thirty different kinds of plants a week ¬– is more predictive of good health and freedom from disease than whether or not you follow a vegetarian or vegan diet. Yet of the 10,000 plants that have nourished Homo sapiens over the millennia, only 150 are cultivated for food today, and just 14 animal species provide 90 percent of the calories we get from livestock.”
― Taras Grescoe, The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past

“Viewed from the aisles of a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, plummeting nutritional diversity might seem like an overblown threat. We live in a time, after all, when you can find calzone in Tokyo, fajitas in Rome, and sushi in the Mall of America, and when high-end supermarkets stock organic beef, micro brews, heirloom tomatoes, kale, matcha smoothies, and once-exotic cereals like quinoa, amaranth, and spelt. But this apparent embarrassment of riches obscures a poverty of nutritional content and genetic diversity.”
― Taras Grescoe, The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past

“This book makes the case that the future of food lies in the past, including such lost, forgotten, or nearly vanished foods as emmer wheat. The fact that bread, the age-old staff of life, has lately come to stand for all the ills of civilization is a basic mistake and an indication of how much we need to learn – or relearn.

Don't blame the grain, in other words, blame what we've done with it.”
― Taras Grescoe, The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past

“To my father Paul Grescoe (1939-2023), who taught me that to tell any story well, you need curiosity, attentiveness, and compassion.”
― Taras Grescoe, The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past