Hello

Just because something has been said before is no reason not to say it again, right? So here are a couple of overarching strategies, along with some hard truths and some soft options.

Mo’ better veggies

There’s no shortage of advice that we should all eat more vegetables. They are undoubtedly good for long-term health, and not eating enough vegetables is one of the top five dietary risk factors for disease. And yet, despite all the exhortations and official guidelines, globally around the world people eat only 60% by weight of the vegetables they should. What to do?

The facts above are just some I lifted from a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science: Reversing vegetable biodiversity loss to diversify diets. The authors are a who’s who of agricultural biodiversity and nutrition (many of them familiar to Eat This Podcast). They offer a four-pronged solution, avoiding the whole fruit-vegetable schism with a wise reflection: “Because culinary traditions and nutritional perceptions vary across regions, the specific edible parts and species considered vegetables can differ across cultures”.

Prong 1: Secure vegetable biodiversity for the future. Collect more vegetable diversity and make sure that existing diversity in collections is kept in good working order.

Prong 2: Harness vegetable biodiversity to deliver new varieties. Give farmers, researchers and breeders access to the collected diversity and information about it so that they can improve varieties across the whole range of vegetable species.

Prong 3: Promote vegetable biodiversity to diversify diets. Include more and more different vegetables in meals at school and at home, primarily by linking local growers to school feeding programmes and local markets.

Prong 4: Integrate vegetable biodiversity into policy frameworks for long-term impact. Of course, as night follows day, policy frameworks follow suggestions for action.

The paper is a really interesting read. It emerges from a three-year pilot project in four African countries and summarises a lot of thinking over the years. I’d love to see all countries grasp the four prongs and run with them. But, NGL, and with the greatest respect to the authors, that seems unlikely. Please, prove me wrong.

In the UK too

Not entirely by coincidence, drought in the UK has brought ideas about food security out into the open again. Most recently, Neil Ward, a professor at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, took to The Conversation to point out that the severe drought increases the need to change the UK’s food system. That in turn leads to an earlier article by Ward outlining three ways to improve UK food security. Give farmers clear direction (and support), manage land use change, for example by planting more trees, and encourage dietary change to build demand for fruit, vegetables and legumes that can be grown in the UK.

All this is set out in a Roadmap produced by Root + Reason, a new name for “the food resilience network” that Ward co-founded.

Once again, fine ideas, none too revolutionary, could have been started a decade ago. I note, in passing, that Neil Ward proclaims his membership of the Labour Party. Surely the UK’s current government will follow his roadmap? Right!

Wheat news, strait outta Ukraine

Wheat prices are currently 25% higher than they were in January, their highest level in two years. Ahah, you say, that’s because the Strait of Hormuz is “open”. In fact, at the moment that’s only a small part of the story.

Perhaps more important in the recent rise is a different strait, the Kerch Strait. That’s the connection between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, through which much Russian wheat flows. Attacks by Ukraine have disrupted Russian wheat exports, and at the same time Russian drones have hampered Ukraine’s exports from Odesa. Together, and despite the war, Russia and Ukraine accounted for 32% of global wheat trade in 2025/26. Right now, shipments through the Black Sea are 40% down on this time last year.

All this I learned from a thoroughly-researched article published by IFPRI, the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC. The disruptions in the Black Sea could yet have further consequences because Russia is also a major exporter of fertilisers. But there’s more.

As you may have noticed, lots of places around the world are suffering from drought, and that is depressing the wheat harvest. Across the top seven wheat exporters, harvests are expected to be 11% down on 2025/26, with exports down 7%. Things could get even worse with the strong El Niño expected next year, especially in Australia and Argentina.

All this is quite different from the price shocks immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine. “The factors driving price increases and volatility are different — more modest in impact, perhaps, but more numerous and interacting with each other in ways that are difficult to predict,” the article argues. “Global market prices are increasing and could increase at a faster clip in the months ahead if shipping continues to be disrupted.”

Please don’t take this as investment advice.

And for dessert …

OK, it isn’t all doom and gloom here. Well, it is, but that’s no reason not share a little history of yogurt from JSTOR.

I confess, I didn’t go read the paper that JSTOR summarises. But I did note this paragraph:

As late as 1972, a Wall Street Journal article identified yogurt consumption with foreign countries including Russia, Turkey, and India. It claimed that “most people really dislike yogurt—at least at first.” ([Perin] Gurel [the author of the paper] notes that “most people” here refers to white, middle-class Americans.) The story attributed a rise in American yogurt-eating to hippies and cosmopolitans who appreciated the sour, healthy, foreign stuff, and to manufacturers producing sweet, mild versions that don’t “taste like yogurt.”

That, right there, is all you need to know about industrial food, although you could also go and read Nobody Knows What Ultra-Processed Food Is in The Atlantic. There you will learn that

flavored yogurt is an ultra-processed food under the Brazilian system and a moderately processed food under the UNC system. Under the French system, the classification depends entirely on the yogurt itself (even though a paper from the group found that 95 percent of flavored yogurts in French grocery stores were indeed ultra-processed).

Toodle pip, and take care