Eat This Newsletter 240: Enriched evidence
Hello
In this roundup, some truths about potash, qualified health claims for yogurt, gastronationalism now and then, and the hoops some UK plant breeders must jump through. Enjoy!
An Enriched Understanding of Potash
JSTOR often has interesting round-up articles about papers in its “nonprofit library for the intellectually curious”. This week, A Potash Primer piqued — and satisfied — my curiosity. The article provides some context to the demand for potash and how Britain both banned the export of homemade potash and imported it from further and further afield as an essential ingredient.
[F]rom the start, the Industrial Revolution had an ecological impact far from the sites of manufacturing.
What was it used for? Soap, glass, ceramics, saltpetre, leavening agents for baking, bleaching linen and to clean and dye wool. And what has that to do with food? Well, the very first patent in the infant USA was for an improved method of making potash for plant fertiliser, possibly the dominant use today and one that is imperilled.
I cannot remember when I first heard about a looming shortage of mineral potash; at least 30 years ago, I’m guessing. All agriculture depends on potash to maintain productivity and previous price spikes have shown how vulnerable supply is. The problem has not gone away. In February, Nature Food published Global food security threatened by potassium neglect, which diagnoses the problems and offers some solutions. That’s behind a paywall, so I’m happy to point you to an article by some of the authors and this press release from University College, London.
Faint Praise for Yogurt
Big Yogurt has wrested a kind of victory from the Food and Drug Administration’s protective grasp. In March, the FDA announced that it would not object to “qualified health claims” about yogurt and type 2 diabetes. As a result, you’re likely see such claims on Danone yogurts (and maybe others), but if I weren’t already a yogurt fan, I’m not sure they would persuade me.
For one thing, the claim is for “yogurt as a food rather than related to any single nutrient or compound and thus is independent of fat or sugar content”. That seems, er, confusing. High-sugar is protective?
For another, the two wordings approved by the FDA make it clear that the evidence is less than convincing. “FDA has concluded that there is limited information supporting this claim” says one, and the other that “Eating yogurt regularly … may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes according to limited scientific evidence.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
You may remember my chat with David Johns who shared the story of how ice cream too might protect against type 2 diabetes. I asked him what he thought. “This is mostly about marketing, IMO.”
War on Chickpeas
Back in November 2023 I linked to David Beriss’ article about the difficulties he faced teaching a class on food and nationalism in Israel in the wake of the October 7 attack by Hamas and Israel’s response. How much harder that would be today. Even so, I feel a duty to link to an article by Divya Ravindranath in Goya magazine.
She looks at How Food Is Weaponised as a Tool of Settler Colonialism and after some niceties about sambar and kedgeree blasts Israel. Recasting Arab foods as Israeli, she says, “normalises a pattern of genocide and colonialism” and at the same time “weaponises food”. I find both claims a bit of a stretch. Gastronationalism is a curse for sure, but the leap to genocide (which, don’t get me wrong, is probably going on) falls short. As for weaponised food, again I think it is actual weapons that have created starvation in Gaza.
War on Chickpeas, part II
All of which raises another conundrum. How do traditional hummus makers view such things as “Barbecue, Buffalo (as in wings), and Southwest” flavoured hummus? And what about dessert hummus, like Brownie Batter and Snickerdoodle1?
If they’re Israeli, we know. “Phony imposters,” was Yotam Ottolenghi’s verdict. Arabs, we don’t really know, but GastroObscura reckons they would have welcomed these innovations as modern manifestations of ancient hummus recipes. There’s a lot in the article to enjoy, for and against exotic ingredients in what today we think of as a simple dish, and it stays resolutely away from politics of any description.
Breeding Heck
If you’re in the UK and fancy taking advantage of Brexit to breed and market new crop varieties, especially population varieties, you’re probably already familiar with The Seed Marketing (Heterogeneous Material) (Temporary Experiment) (England) Regulations 2023. If not, or if you are just curious, you will want to take a quick peek to see what they are up against.
Take care
“A type of cookie made with flour, fat, sugar, and salt, and rolled in cinnamon sugar, M’lud”