Eat This Newsletter 160: Scrambled
Hello Straying somewhat from the beaten track, I blame the heat here, which has scrambled my brain. I take some solace from the observation that there are...
Eat This Newsletter 159: Fantasy
Hello At last, somewhat authoritative figures on the aggregate costs of cheap food. Will they change anything? You tell me. The cost that dare not speak its...
Eat This Newsletter 158: Cultured, innit?
Hello Some older items this week, which nevertheless are still well within their eat by date. Also, lots of historical contingency. And I'm still looking for...
Eat This Newsletter 157: Almost global
Hello It is so annoying when a headline or link promises a story that ought to be interesting and then fails to deliver. Normally, I just give a snort of...
Eat This Newsletter 156: Cereal
Hello Greetings from sunny Puglia, where some of the dead olive trees have been cleaned up and there are clear green shoots on newly planted trees. This is a...
Eat This Newsletter 155: Counterfactual
Counterfactual Hello This edition is arriving slightly late, because it contains a link to an embargoed scientific paper and I respect embargoes. Other than...
Eat This Podcast: Still hungry after all these years
Hello India, like most places on Earth, suffered its fair share of famines over the centuries. When Indian politicians gained independence in 1947, they...
Eat This Newsletter 154: Hyper-regional and hyper-diverse
Hello Why shouldn’t people in Alaska have strawberries year-round, if that’s what they want? And why shouldn’t students in Delhi latch onto an abominable...
Eat This Podcast: The original global food system
Hello Chris Otter’s book Diet for a Large Planet shows how the British Empire, starting in the late 18th century, outsourced much of its food supply, paving...
Eat This Newsletter 153: Not a prime (but divisible by 17)
Hello This week’s haul has prompted me to mull over how hard it is fully to understand other discourses. It’s good to be reminded how little I know. The cost...
Eat This Podcast: Can Fixing Dinner Fix the Planet?
Hello That’s the title of a new book from Jess Fanzo, a globally-recognized thinker on food systems and professor at Johns Hopkins University. The book...
Eat This Newsletter 152: Unadulterated
Hello If it seems to good to be true, it probably is. An optimistic piece from Puglia Puglia, the heel on the boot of Italy is, as you'll know if you've...
Eat This Podcast: A very modern spice merchant
Hello Arun Kapil first started selling spices from a farmers market stall in Cork, Ireland. That was about 15 years ago. This past month, Green Saffron, the...
Eat This Newsletter 151: Cringeworthy
Hello What is it about countries that makes them want a national dish? Or, indeed, a national myth? Rants from Down Under What a treat to read an Australian...
Eat This Podcast: Coffea stenophylla tastes terrific
Hello A little less than a year ago I talked to Professor Jeremy Haggar about his successful search for Coffea stenophylla in Sierra Leone. A hundred years...
Eat This Newsletter 150: One hundred and fifty not out
Hello Hard to believe this is edition No. 150 of Eat This Newsletter. When I started, in April 2015, I justified myself thusly: “Someone recently said that...
Eat This Podcast: What is agriculture for, really?
Hello Colin Tudge has been writing about food and farming for a long time in a series of thought-provoking books. His latest is The Great Re-Think, which...
Eat This Newsletter 149: Technology to the rescue
Hello Sometimes I get the feeling I’m just spinning my wheels here, as the same topics go round and round. Then I console myself with the thought that that’s...
Eat This Podcast: What is the value of functional foods?
Hello “[B]etween 2011 and 2015 there was a phenomenal 202% increase globally in the number of new food and drink products launched containing the terms...
Eat This Newsletter 148: Impeccable pedigrees
Hello As we in the northern hemisphere round the corner into spring, let’s start this round-up in Australia. At the circus, riding two horses at once There...