5 Foods We’ll Never Get to Taste Again Without Science
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Eli Yudin
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- June 19, 2024
The idea of “eating something to extinction” is morbid and also, very funny. Obviously I’m sad it’s happened, but the fact that humans have occasionally finished off a whole-ass species with a napkin tucked into their shirt collar is hilariously dumb.
Now, it’s not always entirely our fault, like some sailor snuck the last donut out of a box only to find the factory had closed forever. Non-human-influenced environmental factors and disease have contributed, too. It is, though, usually a little bit our fault, all simply because a brand new organism proved to be shockingly toothsome. Which makes the fact that we’ll never have the chance to taste that same little fella here in the future even sadder.
Here are five foodstuffs that we’re never tasting again without a scientific breakthrough…
5The Dodo
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The Dodo
Perhaps the most famously extinct animal of all time is the dodo. Saddled by humans with both extinction and an incredibly unflattering name, there’s no question we did this guy a little dirty. It was found on an island by the Dutch, who ushered in its end in remarkably quick fashion. From the first time a dodo heard Dutch to it being wiped off the map was a mere 80 years in time, in part due to hunting.
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Even worse is the fact that dodo meat reportedly tasted awful. Specifically, “offensive and of no nourishment.” Sure, they taste bad and they're not filling, but what are we going to do, not slaughter them wholesale? It’s the human way!
4The Steller’s Sea Cow
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The Steller’s Sea Cow
The Steller’s sea cow met a similar fate to the dodo, though it does have the questionable distinction of being pretty damn tasty. Not much solace for the hordes of sea cow ghosts looking down from the big ocean above, but at least their only crime wasn’t “being around.”
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It turns out the Steller’s sea cow is, in fact, positively swimming in unpleasant honors, being that it’s the first marine mammal to be made extinct by human action. The problem of opportunity the Steller’s sea cow suffered from was that all you had to do was double-tap a single one, and you were rewarded with 11 tons of delectable meat and oil. The meat reportedly tasted like corned beef, and the oil like almonds. Once we figured this out, they were hunted with impunity like buffalo in a fifth-grader's copy of Oregon Trail.
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3The Gros Michel Banana
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The Gros Michel Banana
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No need to run to Trader Joe’s, regular old bananas are still around. You didn’t miss a news update. The banana you know and love, however, is verifiably a worse banana than the ones old humans and apes had a taste for. The bananas we eat today are overwhelmingly the “Cavendish” banana, instead of the past’s preferred “Gros Michel” banana. The Cavendish tasting notably not as flavorful, but tougher, something that proved important when a certain fungus took over. The “Panama disease” all but wiped out the world’s store of Gros Michel bananas and the plants that fruited them.
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And so, unless you get incredibly lucky, you’re going to be stuck with a taste that is, well, second banana.
2Silphium
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Silphium
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The ancient herb silphium was a bona-fide marvel. Not only did it have a huge host of medicinal uses, it was also delicious. Now, if plants had sentience, and understood the rise of humans to apex predator, they would know that being useful and tasty are two terrible defense mechanisms.
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From the very beginning, silphium wasn’t a plant set up for long-term survival, partly because it only grew in an incredibly limited area. If you wanted silphium, even as far back as the birth of Christ, you had only one option: a 125-by-35-mile strip of land in Cyrenaica, now Libya. With such limited real estate, it didn’t take long for silphium to be harvested into extinction.
We have records of the last known silphium plant, and they were written by Pliny the Elder, to give you an idea of how long it’s been gone. That plant was reportedly given as a gift to Emperor Nero, who popped it straight in his mouth like a Krispy Kreme.
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1Thomas Jefferson’s Favorite Apple
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Thomas Jefferson’s Favorite Apple
Modern apples are plenty delicious, except for, ironically, the Red Delicious. But crack into a Fuji, a Gala, even a Honeycrisp, and it’s hard to deny that they approach natural candy. Unfortunately, there’s one famously tasty apple that’s lost to time. One that was specifically grown, and praised, by Thomas Jefferson. The Taliaferro apple was grown by Jefferson at his home Monticello, but sadly, his orchards didn’t survive, and neither did the apple.
That’s highly unfortunate, given that he claimed they made the best cider he'd ever tasted.
