Available in English, Italian, and Korean.
Named one of Smithsonian’s Best Food Books.
Winner of the AudioFile Magazine Earphones Award audiobook for Contemporary Culture.
Winner of the Nautilus Book Award (Gold)
Course inspired by Bread, Wine, Chocolate.

Read a feature in The Wall Street Journal.
Listen to an interview on National Public Radio.
See an op-ed in The Guardian.
Read a review in Science.

“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.

A reading of the bread chapter by the author: 

PRAISE FOR BREAD, WINE, CHOCOLATE:

“… full of wonderfully geeky bits of science, including an excellent section on how memory and culture influences our perception of taste. But Sethi’s friendly, welcoming tone makes serious topics digestible and pleasurable. ‘Eat and drink with reverence and gusto, whether it’s a Big Mac or a mountain of kale,’ she writes, with an admirable lack of foodie pretension.” – Associated Press

“Read this wonderful book and you will become immersed in the intricate worlds of no less than six (delicious) foods and drinks. But this is not really a book about food. Rather, it is about our relationships with the life forms that sustain us—and how we might learn to approach those relationships with far more love, compassion and good taste.”
– Naomi Klein, New York Times bestselling author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine

“Is biodiversity the key to a better cup of coffee? And how sexy can achieving food security really be? Simran Sethi’s answers are ‘yes’ and ‘you’d be surprised.’ In her book, [she] looks at ways in which monoculture and an increasingly standardized global diet put food systems in peril and leave crops vulnerable to blight and climate change. And she does so winningly, by relishing her favorite things to eat and drink, visiting the places they’re produced, digging up their stories and teasing out nuances of flavor unique to individual varieties and landscapes.” – The Wall Street Journal

“Unlike many other recent books that cover some of the same territory, what sets Sethi’s work apart is her joyous, generous attitude toward the human appetite.” – The Boston Globe

“Our tables … are never really of, or for, one, as Sethi elegantly shows us.” – NPR

“A heartfelt lament for the homogenisation of our taste buds.” – The Independent

“We need more investigative journalists like Simran Sethi. She writes with a deep understanding of pleasure and taste to convey her urgent message—we must make uncompromising, purposeful choices when it comes to what we eat before it’s too late! Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love is a loving call to action that we must heed.”
– Alice Waters, chef, author and the proprietor of Chez Panisse

“This absorbing book serves to remind us that biodiversity, through a diversity of species, varieties and breeds of plant and animal foods, including wild food, underpins dietary diversity, good nutrition and health. It also underscores the need to place a renewed emphasis on sustaining the natural varieties of crops and animals contributing to agriculture, including neglected yet nutritious traditional foods, in order to improve food security.”
– Dr. Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, Convention on Biological Diversity

“In this illuminating and impactful book, Simran Sethi sheds light on the dwindling diversity of our diets and our landscapes through the stories of our most beloved tastes. The solution to this global agricultural and culinary crisis, she argues, lies in our collective palates. Bread, Wine, Chocolate calls on all of us to cherish—and thus preserve—the world’s endangered flavors.”
– Dan Barber, New York Times bestselling author of The Third Plate

“A hot new voice of reason in a cold, frightened world, Simran Sethi is the kind of writer who can coat the bitter pill in honey and we all just swallow and say thank you.”
– Linda West Eckhardt, IACP Julia Child Award-winning author of Bread in Half the Time

“The history of how bread, wine, and chocolate entered our lives, related by Simran Sethi, is both inspiring and humbling. Humbling because of the richness and diversity of tastes that we can enjoy and that fill our souls. And inspiring, as it invites us to be curious about their origins and mindful of the hard work of the many men and women that grow, process, and make these delights possible. The diversity is threatened and disappearing fast, and this book wakes us up to value these precious resources and stop this process.”
– Brigitte Laliberté, Bioversity International