Dan Saladino

Dan is best known as a journalist and broadcaster who’s made programmes about food for BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service.

Dan joins us in the bookshop to discuss his latest book, Eating to Extinction. In the book, Dan draws on a unique global archive of the world’s most endangered foods. The result is a thrilling and unexpected journey through the history of humankind’s relationship with food, and an urgent book for our times.

From a tiny crimson pear in the west of England to great chunks of fermented sheep meat in the Faroe Islands, from pistachios in Syria to flat oysters in Denmark, from a wild honey harvested with the help of birds to an exploding corn that might just hold the key to the future of food – these are just some of the thousands of foods around the world today that are at risk of being lost for ever.

In this captivating and wide-ranging book, Dan Saladino spans the globe to uncover the stories of these foods. He meets the pioneering farmers, scientists, cooks, food producers and indigenous communities who are preserving food traditions and fighting for change. All human history is woven through these stories, from the first great migrations to the slave trade to the refugee crisis today. But Eating to Extinction is about so much more than preserving the past. It reveals a world at a crisis point: the future of our planet depends on reclaiming genetic biodiversity before it is too late.

Eating to Extinction is an astonishing journey through the past, present and future of food, a love letter to the diversity of global food cultures, and a work of great urgency and hope.

Dan will be joined by the host of Radio 4’s The Food Programme Sheila Dillon. 

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‘This inspiring and urgent book is one of the few food books that has ever given me goosebumps… A story full of both loss and hope.’ BEE WILSON

‘We all need to pay more attention to what we are (and are no longer) eating. Dan Saladino inspires us to believe that turning the tide is still possible.’ YOTAM OTTOLENGHI

‘I love this book… I wish the whole world could read it’ RAYMOND BLANC