Hello

Was I really complaining last time about there being scant news? Maybe everyone was conspiring to delay their gift giving ... Speaking of which, I hope you listened to last week’s repeat of the episode about Give Directly and maybe even gave, directly.

Spiralling Out of Control

Some years ago, in a land far away, I first encountered a spiral cut ham. It made an enormous impression on me. How dare this mysterious meat devalue my hard-won carving knife mastery? But it was tasty and easy, I’ll give it that. So I was delighted to read Ian MacAllen’s recent newsletter about how he turned his leftover spiral-cut ham into ham soup, not so much because I need a recipe to use up a spiral cut ham (which I don’t think has penetrated the Mediterranean basin, yet) but because it led me to an extensive New York Times article that may be the last word on spiral cut hams.

Just the job to get over any awkward silences at the festive table.

The Stuff of Life

I was trying to think of something witty to say about the news that Gabi Meier, a Swiss woman, had become the country’s first “bread sommelier” and the first woman admitted to Basel’s bakers’ guild. But the facts speak for themselves.

The guilds of Basel opened their doors to women just three years ago, and only 7 of the 23 have actually admitted women, “as few women apply”. On sommelier, I learned that the word is derived “from Old French sommaille ‘baggage’”. Still, if you care to join Gabi Meier, here you go.

Grow Your Own, All of It

An article on the BBC’s Science Focus homes in on the South American country Guyana because it is “the only country that can entirely feed itself”. That is pretty astonishing in the modern world, and the article explains just how Guyana has made better use of its farmland than its neighbours, most notably by intercropping more than one species on the same piece of land.

All fine and dandy, and to be emulated where possible, but not simply for the sake of being independent. That’s the sting in the tail of the otherwise fulsome article. Luminaries like Tim Lang warn against the “draconian repression of internal populations and liberty” that often accompany attempts at autarky. If all countries were to become self-feeding, that would probably result in less productive food supply globally.

Meaty Matters

Speaking of autarky … what do you do when you’re a huge rancher with thousands of head of cattle and yet you can’t find meat to buy in the stores? You build your own butchery, obviously, at least if you are one of the Native American tribes in Oklahoma. Offrange explores how the Osage and four other Nations built their own plants in the wake of Covid’s supply disruptions.

There are many benefits, quite apart from ensuring themselves of a meat supply, including good jobs in rural areas, the ability to supply their other enterprises, such as casinos, and being able to give tribe members food. The article traces the trend — at least 18 tribes are doing this — to the 2017 decision by the Quapaw Nation to open a plant to deal with the bison they had reintroduced to their lands, a decision that turned out to be prescient and far-sighted.

At the other end of the meat-rearing scale, Vox reports an unpleasant truth: “sales of antibiotics for use in livestock surged by an alarming 15.8 percent in 2024 from the previous year”. As the article explains, the increase was not the result of either raising more animals or facing more outbreaks of disease. Bird ’flu, a viral infection, should not have called for more antibiotics. Overall, nobody seems able to explain the increase, except, probably, as a way of preventing disease, rather than dealing with the overcrowding and unsanitary conditions that make intensively reared animals so susceptible.

Fed Up With Feeds

Before the algorithm, before the broadcast signal, before the printing press—hunger chose your next meal. You ate what was available. What you could grow, hunt, or afford. The question wasn’t “what do I feel like eating?” It was “what can I get?”

Mike Lee’s latest newsletter goes to town on the way trends in food as in everything have become even more rapidly self-amplifying with the rise of algorithmic feeds. They don’t care at all about what it is they are feeding you, only that lots of people seem to be paying attention to it, whatever “it” may be. Dubai chocolate is only the latest manifestation (and for all I know may already be over and done with).

Lee discusses the transition from the good old days, when you bought the public’s desire for your mass produced miracle with huge PR budgets, to now, when “A single person with a phone could potentially command the same audience as a corporation spending millions on advertising”. And industry? Industry took it in its stride and bought influence instead. He concludes:

The feed will keep manufacturing cravings. The algorithm will keep rewarding whatever captures attention. But food literacy lets you see the invisible fork. And once you see it, you can take it back.

Evergreen Effervescence

You can understand why Dining and Cooking chose to publish French find claim that English invented champagne hard to swallow in the run-up to corks of all manner of sparkling wines popping.

The claim — that English merchants added sugar and had the stronger bottles that could withstand the pressure of secondary fermentation — came at a meeting the week before in which Jean-Robert Pitte, a former president of the Sorbonne, expounded on the research he had conducted over the past 20 years. That meeting is a handy peg, but the story is nothing terribly new. A couple of years ago an article in The Conversation gave some of the background — stronger glass, corks, etc. — and a little later James Crowden in The Spectator explained how the whole fizzy business started with Hereford cider.

Cheers

p.s. Here’s a little something extra — not specifically about food unless you’re planning to give some to someone — from Tim Harford, who each year manages to find something new to say about gift giving. Details of the spiralizer patent here.