We’re only just starting to discover the iceberg that lies beneath our indiscriminate consumption of (to give one example) breads made with profit rather than sustenance in mind, using high-yield wheat bleached of most of its nutrition and super-powered yeasts, leavened in conditions swift enough to bloat anything. As research evolves, I suspect we’ll start to see more and more linkages between the industrial food most people now eat and the surge in these last few decades of intolerances, allergies, and health problems like heart disease and diabetes.

My personal hero, Gary Nabhan, one of the original locavores (and author of Coming Home to Eat) sees the cultivation and consumption of native foods as a solution to other problems, too: an end to our reliance on petroleum-based agriculture, for example, and a reversal of the dwindling of our cultural identity. In his new book, Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods (thanks to the Ethicurean for the link), he recognizes 1,100 native species at risk, from salmon to nuts to maple syrup, and talks about the work people are doing to recover seeds, restore habitat, develop niche market for native foods, and market them according to terroir, much like the Europeans have done under the Appellation d'Origine Controllee (AOC) system.

One lovely thing about heirloom varieties of produce and rare animal breeds is that their finicky nature—a prime reason for their unfortunate endangerment in the first place—prevents their being co-opted by industry, like what purists claim happened with organic food and the AOC system to some extent.

Personally speaking, I’m thrilled that experimentation in agriculture and cultural exchange have allowed us to grow a greater variety of produce than the fruits and vegetables that originated in our given area: think about what America would be without beef or France without wine (which came, respectively, from Europe and Iran). If it’s grown locally, it’s got a carbon footprint small enough for me. But many native foods have gone extinct simply because it’s difficult to make them commercially viable, even though their flavor and character is unique to their place in time and human (world) history.

Yay for progressive chefs, farmers markets, and other “early adopters” working to renew public interest in native foods. Here’s to Crabcake Nation!