The majority of the world’s food systems depend on a relatively small number of food plants, fungi, and animal species—both terrestrial and aquatic—with limited intra-species diversity [Khoury et al., 2014]. Since the Industrial Revolution, only 200 to 300 food species significantly contribute to global food production and consumption [FAO, 2019]. Moderating the ongoing erosion of our food diversity has become a pressing concern worldwide and a key priority during the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016–2025). Alongside the growing consensus on the need to diversify diets while sustainably enhancing the diversity of food resources, increasing attention has been given to assessing lesser-known foods that remain central to the diets of Indigenous Peoples and other communities. Federated under different terms—hidden, neglected, forgotten, undervalued, underutilized, invisible, unseen—these Neglected or Underutilized Species (NUS) are increasingly presented as promising solutions to nourish the world [NUS Community] and to adapt to climate change or mitigate its effects. Numerous research bodies and governmental institutions have called for a greater use and valorization of these species [FAO, 2012; BBC, 2018; ECDPM, 2017; IFPRI, 2023]. However, the persistence of these resources going undetected cannot be explained solely by academic blind spots or the reluctance of political and international market actors to engage with marginalized communities. This invisibility may also reflect a deliberate choice by communities that withhold such knowledge to protect the uses of these resources from external scrutiny. For this reason, we prefer the more neutral term “unseen food species”, which avoids presuming either neglect or valorization. This posture should draw attention to a counterintuitive reality: the intrinsic value of unseen food species lies precisely in the fact that they are not exposed to the outside world, and that one of the counterproductive effects of bringing them to light would be to deprive them of any further interest and to fragilize their sustainability. In other words, we point to the paradox that hiddenness itself can be a form of value.