It's to the best of our knowledge from PRX.

I'm Anne Strain Champs.

Walk through the largest supermarket chain in America.

20 different kinds of potato chips.

153 flavors of ice cream, an acre of cold cereal.

Why do we have so many choices?

Or, do we have so many choices? Or do we?

Good morning. I did go with today.

At Walmart, I went through all the dairies. Our ice cream, our yogurts, our

butters, our milks, 90, 90% of them come from one breed of cow.

Simran Seati is a food journalist, and where you and I see hundreds of varieties, she sees a scary sameness.

When I first started writing my book, people looked at me like I had two heads.

You're writing about the loss of diversity?

We have more than we've ever had.

But a lot of that is an illusion.

A lot of it is in diversity of flavors.

When we look behind those labels, we usually see a tight handful of ingredients. So many things that we consume and partake of have been consolidated.

We look to the produce aisle over to the bananas.

We can grow over a thousand different types of bananas in the world,

but we see one on store shelves, and that's the Cavendish banana.

It has succumbed to a different strain of the same fungus

that wiped out his predecessor, the big Mike banana.

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