Eat This Newsletter 270: Concentrated profits
Hello
Follow the money. Not always easy, always rewarding.
Bird flu is just a convenient excuse
Back at the beginning of March I pointed to a detailed article on the unnatural history of bird flu, for which I tacitly accepted the argument that the recent spread of avian flu was the cause of egg price inflation. Now comes a scathing detailed piece from Cory Doctorow explaining that the lack of competition in the market enabled producers to hike their prices way above what the shortage of eggs would demand and to keep it high long after it should have come down.
Doctorow’s article explains the salient points in an investigation by Basel Musharbash, a “lawyer helping small towns build community wealth & fight monopoly power”. The evidence Musharbash brings to his report is pretty damning.
- Exhibit A: a single company, Cal-Maine Foods, owns many of the brands whose eggs were in such short supply.
- Exhibit B: Cal-Maine’s profits have been considerably higher, like three to six times higher, since the start of the current bird flu epidemic in 2021.
- Exhibit C: Two European companies control the genetics of laying birds and Cal-Maine has a special deal with them that leaves other egg producers scrambling to replace their culled birds.
There’s a lot more detail in the article and germane historical background in the reports it links to, but Doctorow’s conclusion is inescapable: Eggflation is excuseflation.
Not just eggs
Eggs in the UK are are not quite as expensive as in US, but fewer people are buying the sliced bread so necessary for a good toast soldier — and that is prompting more consolidation and less competition. Allied Bakeries and Hovis — the second and third biggest bakers — are in talks to merge. The Guardian had two articles about the merger last week, announcing the news and looking into Britain’s declining interest in sliced bread, which makes the merger attractive.
The articles report that the average price of an 800g branded sliced loaf is now £1.43, up “almost a third” from the price in 2021. As a result, shoppers are preferring supermarket own brands, “which can be half the price” and which now account for just over 40% of the market. So who makes bread for the big supermarkets, and how come it is half the price of Hovis and Allied Bakeries brands, both of which are losing money?
A partial answer to the first question is Fine Lady Bakery and at least one supermarket — Aldi — is not coy about that. The others definitely are, which raises more questions. Are the big branded bakers willing to supply supermarket own brand bread, even at a loss, just to keep their factories humming along? And given that they are already running at a loss, and so would not want to reduce the cost of branded bread, are supermarket own brands simply using cheaper ingredients? Seems unlikely.
The merger — if it goes ahead — won’t answer any of these questions, but it does make them worth asking.
Apocalypse when?
Honestly, I’m not sure what to make of Scientists find the best crops to grow during the apocalypse in Live Science. After all, if a nuclear winter were really to arrive, would you care that sugar beets are more cold-tolerant than peas, if that’s all you are going to eat?
It is quite a fun read to discover how plant scientists used the city of Palmerston North in Aotearoa and a bunch of urban-agriculture production data “to find the most efficient way to feed a person using the least amount of land”. One non-surprise: land within the city would feed only about one in five of the city’s inhabitants. Another: the researchers propose dedicating almost 10% of the land needed outside the city to grow “canola to convert into biodiesel to fuel tractors and other farm machinery”. I would have thought that post apocalypse there would be enough human labour going spare to make biodiesel for farm machinery an unnecessary luxury. Canola oil for frying sugar beets might be worthwhile.
Feeling Hot Hot Hot
Food science scooped the 2025 Dance Your PhD competition, with a fine video from Finnish scientist Dr Sulo Roukka.
Roukka’s dance explored the differing sensations among people caused by food compounds such as the fiery capsaicin found in chili … or the icy menthol found in mint. … Roukka studied how those sensations, known as chemesthesis, influence human experience, such as remembering the pleasantness of certain foods. These insights can help create better foods, such as plant-based products or nonalcoholic drinks.
You can find the winning video, and those of other winners, in the report at Science, which includes this sad note from the competition’s originator, John Bohannon:
Bohannon, who has overseen each year’s contest, notes that European scientists dominated this time around: “This year, American scientists did not seem to be in the mood to dance. Lucky for the world, Europe’s scientists have doubled their creativity and enthusiasm.”
What else the US has lost
Which offers a perfect link to an article by friend of the podcast and Columbia University professor, Jess Fanzo. What We Lost in 90 Days links to some of the reports that give Jess “glimmers of hope”.
Last word to Jess Fanzo:
It’s hard to fathom—let alone fully absorb—the scale of what has been lost, all in just a matter of months. The enormity of rebuilding, in whatever new forms may emerge, is likely to take decades—if it happens at all. What could be lost forever is the extraordinary scientific legacy: the knowledge, the networks, the momentum, and the spaces that once nurtured curiosity, collaboration, and discovery. We can’t keep our heads down, hoping for a miracle. We have to stand up and fight for what truly matters. For me, science is one of those things—worth defending, worth rebuilding, worth mourning.
Take care
