While the world is gathering around the subject in Montreal as part of COP15, Bernard Lavallée is looking at the erosion of biodiversity on our plates. With a new book that explores the causes and concrete repercussions, and in his skilfully digestible way, the nutritionist issues a cry of alarm that nourishes reflection and makes you want to protect what can still be protected.
“As a nutritionist, if I had to sum up my career in two words, it would be ‘eat diversified’”, affirms Bernard Lavallée with a recommendation that resists any dietary trend. Counseling is essential not only from a nutrition and health perspective, but also from an environmental perspective, he stresses. “We need mixed fields, a diversity of ecosystems and a reduction in the pressure currently exerted on certain species. »
Of the thousands of species that once fed mankind, only a handful feature prominently on our menus today: nine plants and five animals.
The time is paradoxical, observes the nutritionist. If, in industrialized countries and when we have the means, we can often have access to a greater diversity of foods than in previous generations, this diversity is in free fall on a planetary scale.
A little everywhere on Earth, we eat the same things, we homogenize. The range of foods available is narrowing more and more.
Bernard Lavallee
A disappearance of species at high speed
The planet has experienced mass extinctions, including that of the dinosaurs. It is now facing the sixth mass disappearance of living species that inhabit it. And the cause would be humans literally devouring their natural resources. “We took very diversified ecosystems which we transformed into fields and pastures which themselves are very little diversified in terms of biodiversity”, explains Bernard Lavallée.
The rate of extinction is normally around one species every 1 to 10 years, counterbalanced by the birth of a new species. The rate of extinction is currently 100 to 1000 times higher, according to studies.
Flavors of yesteryear
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ILLUSTRATION BY SIMON THE ARCHBISHOP, PROVIDED BY LA PRESSE EDITIONS
Vast colonies of passenger pigeons once populated the forests of North America. Perceived as an inexhaustible manna, the pie died out with its last representative at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.
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ILLUSTRATION BY SIMON THE ARCHBISHOP, PROVIDED BY LA PRESSE EDITIONS
The iva annua, a large annual whose seeds could measure up to 9 millimeters, was once consumed by several indigenous populations in North America, before being relegated to the status of weed.
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ILLUSTRATION BY SIMON THE ARCHBISHOP, PROVIDED BY LA PRESSE EDITIONS
For thousands of years, the American Chestnut dominated the forests of North America and fed local people and their pigs. A fungus native to Asia got the better of the colossus now considered functionally extinct.
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ILLUSTRATION BY SIMON THE ARCHBISHOP, PROVIDED BY LA PRESSE EDITIONS
The craze for the Gros Michel banana spread at the end of the 19e century because of its aromatic taste and its thick peel which allowed the fruit to withstand boat trips. That was before it was affected by a fungus and abandoned in favor of other varieties… also produced in monoculture and just as vulnerable.
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ILLUSTRATION BY SIMON THE ARCHBISHOP, PROVIDED BY LA PRESSE EDITIONS
Represented on Cyrenaic coinage, in present-day Libya, and exported around the Mediterranean, silphium was once popular as a spice and for its therapeutic properties. Its excessive picking and inability to regenerate quickly enough for demand could explain its demise.
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Today, the overwhelming majority of all mammals on earth are humans and their farm animals. In the oceans, the picture is not much better. “About 90% of fish stocks are overfished or fished at capacity, which means that we are fishing faster than the renewal rate. As we have done for terrestrial ecosystems, we risk emptying the oceans of their wild biodiversity for the next generations, deplores the nutritionist. Among these species that we let go, there are foods that contain genetic baggage and properties that we do not yet know and that we need for the future. »
And the future?
If nothing is done, the future does not bode well in terms of nutrition, fears Bernard Lavallée. Around a million species are currently threatened with extinction and for some the end will come in the next few decades.
The portrait has something to demoralize. It is with avowed nostalgia for the incalculable number of lost flavors that the nutritionist presents certain foods that have already been on the menu.
Because beyond the numbers and the rational, I wanted to talk about the emotional… that people know these foods, that they learn their history and connect with them.
Bernard Lavallee
However, the author goes beyond the spleen to explore possible solutions. “I think we individually have some responsibility and some power to stop the bleeding. Since a large part of the demand for resources is not used to feed humans, but the animals and animal products they consume, reducing our meat consumption, encouraging plant-based diets and reducing the waste of these resources are among the avenues explored by the author.
“But I think the situation is much broader,” adds Bernard Lavallée. It should be a priority for governments, which is not currently the case. Biodiversity issues affect all levels of the food system, he says. It is clear that they will have to be accompanied by a variety of solutions.
In defense of food biodiversity
Bernard Lavallee
Editions La Presse
272 pages
Learn more
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- 38%
- Surface of the continents once covered with natural ecosystems now devoted to agriculture. Nearly three quarters of the fresh water on the planet is used to irrigate fields.
Source : In defense of food biodiversity