Eat This Newsletter 228: Brave New Year

January 15, 2024

Hello This first substantive issue for 2024 offers a couple of articles that I found thought-provoking because, of course, I had already thought along...

Eat This Newsletter 227: Winner!

January 8, 2024

Hello, and Happy Newish Year Eat This Newsletter 226 announced my Xmas Quiz. Today, we have a winner. Maarten van Ginkel in Amsterdam had the best score...

Eat This Newsletter 226: Xmas Quiz

December 24, 2023

Hello As promised last week, something a little different to round out the year. A quiz, 18 questions, one for each episode. You can find some way to...

Eat This Podcast: Black Stoneflower: A unique Indian spice

December 18, 2023

In 1997, Priya Mani fished something strange out of the cauliflower soup she was served at a wedding banquet in India. She didn’t know what it was, she knew...

Eat This Newsletter 225: The World Turns

December 11, 2023

Hello I cannot tell you how happy I am that we are rapidly approaching the turn of the year. Only a week or so to wait. There’s something soul-crushing about...

Eat This Podcast: A New Story for Maize Domestication

December 4, 2023

Hello Modern maize has long been a puzzle. Unlike other domesticated grasses, there didn’t seem to be any wild species that looked like the modern cereal and...

Eat This Newsletter 224: Life Happens

November 27, 2023

Hello This should have been a podcast episode week, and yet here we are with another newsletter. Life got in the way, as it will occasionally. I do beat...

Eat This Newsletter 223: Enough to Go Around

November 20, 2023

Hello Some strange truths season this collection of food and nutrition stories. War and Chickpeas I’m thankful that I am not teaching a class on “food,...

Eat This Podcast: Honey and Adulteration

November 13, 2023

Hello Honey is the world’s third most-adulterated food. Survey after survey uncovers evidence that manufacturers — not necessarily beekeepers — are adding...

Eat This Podcast: Fat, Salt, Sugar

October 30, 2023

Hello Could Ice Cream Possibly be Good for You? In a word, yes. So why weren't we told? Before he uncovered "Nutrition Science's Most Preposterous Result,"...

Eat This Newsletter 222: Blimey

October 23, 2023

Hello Experts offer odds of food riots in Britain, and this Limey wants to know what to do with his. In between, diverse views on agricultural biodiversity....

Eat This Podcast: Jewish Food in Rome

October 16, 2023

Hello Today is the 80th anniversary of the roundup and deportation to Auschwitz of the Jews of Rome. That much I knew as I was planning this episode. More...

Eat This Newsletter 221: Linked

October 9, 2023

Hello Every item in today’s issue seems to link up with at least one other thing, which I suppose reflects the reality of the food system. Food Fight Back in...

Eat This Podcast: Small Dairy

October 2, 2023

Every aspect of large, industrial food creates a niche for people who want a less standardised alternative, and if the stars align you may have producers...

Eat This Newsletter 220: Mischief

September 25, 2023

Hello Sometimes a big story seems to have been everywhere I look, and I wonder whether it is worth including here. So I ask people not quite as nerdy as me,...

Eat This Podcast: Food Riots in England

September 18, 2023

In her latest book English Food: A People’s History, Diane Purkiss offers just that, an entrancing survey of what and how the English ate, with due...

Eat This Newsletter 219: Renewal

September 11, 2023

Hello Back on the usual timetable, alternating podcast episodes with newsletters, and finding that being more selective produces what I hope is a more...

Apologies

September 5, 2023

Hello Apologies for cluttering your inbox twice in as many days. Apologies too for being an idiot. In yesterday’s email I said that fresh milk was always a...

Eat This Podcast: Milk is not a Superfood

September 4, 2023

Hello Anne Mendelson's new book Spoiled is subtitled The Myth of Milk as Superfood, and at its core argues that while there's nothing wrong with fresh milk,...

Eat This Newsletter 218: Unravelled

August 28, 2023

Hello A few stories here that demonstrate how illuminating it can be to pull on a thread until it has little more left to give. Not Sweet, Bitter A couple of...

ETN 217: Melted

August 21, 2023

Hello We are in the middle of another very hot spell here, but I’ve been keeping cool reading long reports in a darkened room … so you don’t have to. Far-...

ETN 216: Wot Me, Allergic?

August 14, 2023

Hello Sat up late last night looking for inspiration from the Perseid meteor showers, but local light pollution thwarted that plan. Nothing daunted, here are...

ETN 215: Unadulterated goodies

August 7, 2023

Hello Is the world ready to pay the true cost of food? Probably not. Too Costly? It is quite obvious that much of the food you buy, especially in a...

Eat This Newsletter 214: Science!

July 31, 2023

Hello. Delayed delivery today to be able to bring you real science. The Mything Microbiome The study of the human microbiome — the microorganisms that live...

Eat This Newsletter 213: Hot News

July 24, 2023

Hello. No let-up in sight as we continue to swelter. I hope you are doing better. Black Sea Exports Blocked Again The big news this week has been Russia’s...

Eat This Newsletter 212: Be Cool

July 17, 2023

Hello. Of course it is just a coincidence that today’s issue number is equal to the boiling point of water in degrees Fahrenheit, but it’s a coincidence that...

Eat This Newsletter 211: Nuts, again

July 10, 2023

Hello A couple of weeks ago I was blessed with a couple of nutty stories. Now here I am again with pistachios, baklava and hazelnuts, among other treats....

Eat This Newsletter 210: Ur-pizza

July 3, 2023

Hello For some reason, food from Italy features in this issue. Go figure? Ancient Italian Flat Round Thing It is the purest coincidence, I am sure, that the...

Eat This Newsletter 209: Soup to Nuts

June 26, 2023

Hello A full banquet for you this week, with thanks to my sister for the soup and reader Tom Robinson for the nuts. Soup If you read nothing else from this...

Eat This Newsletter 208: Cheesy

June 19, 2023

Hello We are on the weekly schedule now, with probably fewer items but, I hope, my customary high standards for entertainment and information. In that...

Eat This Newsletter: Rose-scented

June 12, 2023

Hello As the podcast goes briefly dormant for its summer rest, I plan to publish the newsletter every week. That may mean some issues are slimmer than...

Eat This Podcast: Pomegranates & Artichokes

June 5, 2023

Saghar Setareh left Iran in 2007 at 22 years old. She came to Rome to study graphic design and photography. The way she tells it, when she arrived she...

Eat This Newsletter 206: Costs

May 29, 2023

Hello It’s all down to supply and demand, although that says nothing about value. The Cost of Brexit A report from the Centre for Economic Performance at the...

Eat This Podcast: Why Did the Artist Cross the Chicken?

May 22, 2023

“This is not about chickens. This is about humanity” Jill Silverman van Coenegrachts, Curator. In 1999, Koen Vanmechelen, a Belgian artist, embarked on a...

Eat This Newsletter 205: There is no Alternative

May 15, 2023

Hello Today’s issue once again waited hours at the bus stop for a Number 75, when suddenly a whole flotilla of them arrived. Let’s jump aboard. A Bumper...

Eat This Podcast: Feeding the People in Wartime Britain

May 8, 2023

Hello Coupons and ration books during war was a way for the British government to try and ensure that restricted items were distributed as fairly as...

Eat This Newsletter 204: Shade lovers

May 1, 2023

Hello, On a gray and dismal May Morning, with more rain forecast for the next couple of days, it gives me some pleasure to think about solar panels and food,...

Eat This Podcast: What is Wrong with Biofortification

April 24, 2023

Hidden hunger — a lack of vitamins and minerals in the diet — afflicts two billion people around the world, with lasting effects on health and well being....

ETN 203: What if I told you ...

April 17, 2023

Hello Some stories are too good to be true; these are not, I hope, those. Gelato Blues “Precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true,” says one of...

Eat This Podcast: Making Mr Song's Cheese

April 10, 2023

Hello Digging into old Chinese texts, Professor Miranda Brown discovered recipes and advice on butter, milk and cheese. She even managed to successfully...

ETN 202: Pulses are Racing

April 3, 2023

Hello I know the price of everything and the value of nothing, as the great man said. Well, I don’t, but I’m trying. More on the Price of Pulse Protein A...

Eat This Podcast: What Price Chicken Wings?

March 27, 2023

Hello A chicken has two wings, two legs, two breasts; how does the market cope when all people want is wings? Chickens were bred to deliver big breasts;...

Eat This Newsletter 201: Nourishing Information

March 20, 2023

Hello I’ve been digging into databases, with some little success. Never Mind Apples and Oranges, Let’s Compare Chickens and Chickpeas A chart from the USDA’s...

Eat This Podcast: Patrik Johansson, the Butter Viking

March 13, 2023

Ten years ago, the first episode of Eat This Podcast featured Ben Reade talking about some butter that he had buried in a Swedish bog, the better to...

Eat This Newsletter 200: It has been brought to my attention …

February 27, 2023

Hello I regard myself as something of a connoisseur of weasel words, and so for this celebratory edition — 200, can you believe it? — a few choice examples....

Eat This Newsletter 199: Accept no substitute

February 20, 2023

Hello One overarching topic this week; the other couple of things I saved will keep. The Commercial Milk Formula Industry [W]e use the term CMF instead of...

Eat This Newsletter 198 -- A Fresh Look

February 13, 2023

Hello Re-evaluating coffee, Jamaican jerk and industrial food waste. Decolonising Coffee Earlier this week I sat in on a webinar about how the industrial...

Eat This Podcast: Food Security in Egypt

February 6, 2023

The price of subsidised bread in Egypt has not changed in decades, though the bread shrunk. That remains a huge challenge to security, for the government and the people.

Eat This Newsletter 197 -- More or less

January 30, 2023

Hello Efforts to undermine industrial agriculture alongside stories hoping to reverse the decline. Diversity is everything. Eggsorbitent Profits Is it...

Eat This Podcast: Fully Tested Tuna

January 23, 2023

One tin of tuna may contain 10 times more mercury than another, and there’s no way to tell them apart.