Eat This Newsletter 196 — Invented Traditions

January 17, 2023

Is food more susceptible to invented traditions than other topics? It sometimes seems so.

Eat This Podcast: Biodiversity at Liberty

January 9, 2023

Hello, Since 1966, the European Union has had the most restrictive laws in the world on agricultural biodiversity. To be marketed, a variety has to be...

Eat This Newsletter 195 – New Year

January 2, 2023

Hello Happy New Year? Sad New Year? New Year, for sure. Crisis? What Crisis? I’m taking the opportunity to link to Aaron Smith’s post from early March last...

Eat This Podcast: Feed Your Baby Like a Fascist

December 24, 2022

Mussolini made the trains run on time, but that doesn’t work for hungry infants

ETN 194: Exchanges

December 19, 2022

Hello Not much to share with you at this season, because most of what is being shared with me is reheated leftovers. Here’s to the future. Complicating the...

Eat This Podcast: Some thoughts on markets and more

December 12, 2022

Hello Things have been wild in international wheat markets this year. The price shot up after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, but had started rising well...

Eat This Newsletter 193: Disconnected

December 5, 2022

Hello Taken individually so many things we read about the food system make no sense whatsoever. Perhaps Corinna Hawkes is right, and it really needs to see a...

Eat This Podcast: A Restaurant’s Reckoning

November 28, 2022

Hello There’s a school of thought that says we should judge the art, not the artist. Is the same true for restaurants? Piggie Park serves barbecue in South...

Eat This Newsletter 192: Digested

November 21, 2022

Sometimes it is fun to pull on a thread and watch the unravelling. Other times, it is more fun to read about someone else doing the same.

Eat This Podcast: How to be a good host and a good guest

November 14, 2022

Asking for a doctor’s note when your guest says they are allergic or intolerant is not an option

Eat This Newsletter 191: Lukewarm Takes

November 7, 2022

Hello Feast or famine, in this newsletter as in life. Even after judicious culling of the crooked and blemished ones, 13 items jostle for attention. Russia...

Eat This Podcast -- Feeding children well

October 31, 2022

Hello A wet nurse (for that is what Hera was in all tellings of the story) created the Milky Way when her divine milk sprayed across the heavens. Today’s...

Eat This Newsletter 190: Inundated

October 24, 2022

Hello Feast or famine, in this newsletter as in life. Even after judicious culling of the crooked and blemished ones, 13 items jostle for attention. Russia...

Eat This Newsletter 189: Inauthentic

October 10, 2022

Hello Authenticity is big again this week. I’m not against that, I just don’t feel like doing it myself. Whodunnit Who Invented Mac and Cheese? asks an...

Eat This Podcast -- Mothers and Milk

October 3, 2022

Hello A wet nurse (for that is what Hera was in all tellings of the story) created the Milky Way when her divine milk sprayed across the heavens. Today’s...

Eat This Newsletter 188: Tasting Menu

September 26, 2022

Hello Things seem to be picking up again after the (northern) summer lull. A bumper crop these past couple of weeks, even after some judicious weeding, so...

Eat This Podcast -- Fad diets are too good to be true

September 20, 2022

Hello Eat This Podcast is back with new episodes. And they really are new, unlike most fad diets, which are usually just an old fad diet with a new wrinkle....

Eat This Podcast -- No surplus calves

September 12, 2022

Hello I've just listened to a very interesting podcast episode about the growth of the dairy industry in the US, and I'm pretty sure I will have more to say...

Eat This Newsletter 187: Legends

September 5, 2022

Hello I’ve been hard at work on the next series. ETA: 19 September. But that hasn’t stopped me scouring the internets in search of additional sustenance....

Eat This Podcast -- Fresh old salame

August 29, 2022

Hello There’s no use pretending otherwise. Today’s foray into the back catalogue is inspired by National Salami Day, which is not until next week and which...

Eat This Newsletter 186: Nutritious news

August 22, 2022

Hello A quick confession; I have finally uploaded transcripts for the four episodes on wheat and human history. Sorry it took so long. Supporters of Eat This...

Eat This Podcast -- Mother of God

August 15, 2022

Hello By a happy coincidence, today I can point you to a short episode that first saw the light of day exactly four years ago, as part of my lunatic attempt...

Eat This Newsletter 185: Heat

August 8, 2022

Hello Little did I know last week, when I resurrected the episode in which Harry Paris explained watermelon names, that 3 August was National Watermelon Day....

Eat This Podcast -- Watermelon Madness

August 1, 2022

Hello The only thing keeping me from a complete meltdown these days is watermelon. Two slices from the ripe, crimson quarter-slice, replete with spittable...

Eat This Newsletter 184: Catching up with reality

July 25, 2022

Hello Was I happy that Russia and Ukraine appeared last week to have agreed a deal to allow some grain exports to leave the Black Sea ports? Of course I was....

Eat This Podcast -- Grain and Empire

July 4, 2022

Hello In the final part of my conversation with Scott Reynolds Nelson, author of Oceans of Grain, we move on to empire. The earliest city states in...

Eat This Podcast -- Grain and Finance

June 27, 2022

Hello Having moved your wheat from where it grew to where it was needed, there was a matching need to transfer the money to pay for it. Bills of exchange,...

Eat This Podcast -- Grain and Transport

June 20, 2022

Hello Cereals provide their offspring with a long-lived supply of energy to power the first growth spurt of the seed. Thousands of years ago, people...

Eat This Podcast -- Persephone's Secret

June 13, 2022

Hello Many people take the myth of Demeter and her daughter Persephone to be just a metaphor for the annual cycle of planting and harvesting. But maybe there...

Eat This Newsletter 183: Authentically awful

June 6, 2022

Hello I had a very enjoyable time during the Oxford Food Symposium’s Kitchen Table talk on how can we find reliable sources of information about food. I’d...

Eat This Newsletter 182: Hot news, cold comfort

May 23, 2022

Hello A quck reminder of the Oxford Food Symposium’s Kitchen Table on Wednesday of this week. Join Elizabeth Yorke, Anusha Murthy, Ken Albala and me for an...

Eat This Podcast -- Peanuts, Senegal and Slavery

May 16, 2022

Hello Senegal, on the western edge of Africa, was an ideal base for the transatlantic slave trade, although the European powers that established themselves...

Eat This Newsletter 181: True, that

May 9, 2022

Hello There is a kind of thread tying most of today’s newsletter items together. More on that in the final piece. Wheat worries A lot of people have talked a...

Eat This Podcast -- Garum: Rome's new library and museum of food

May 2, 2022

Hello You cannot avoid the past in Rome, but if you're interested in the history of food there's been nothing to see since the pasta museum shut its doors. A...

Eat This Newsletter 180: Novel food debate

April 25, 2022

Hello No apologies for devoting a lot of space to protein in one form or another. It is an important topic that we need to understand better. Insect meal and...

Eat This Podcast -- Tomatoes: domestication and diversity

April 18, 2022

Hello The discovery of truly wild tomatoes in Mexico recently allowed researchers to finally tell a story of tomato domestication that fits all the available...

Eat This Newsletter 179: A fresh look at farming

April 11, 2022

Hello I have a problem with podcasts that goes way beyond making my own. It is that I can really only listen when I am walking, flying, boating or training....

Eat This Podcast: Aaron Vallance — 1dish4theroad

April 4, 2022

Hello Aaron Vallance's writing at his website 1dish4theroad has twice been shortlisted by the Guild of Food Writers, not bad for someone who admits to having...

Eat This Newsletter 178: Damned if you do and damned if you don’t

March 28, 2022

Hello Things have been a bit topsy-turvy lately, so please accept a newsletter instead of a podcast episode this week. Normal service will be resumed as soon...

Eat This Newsletter 177: Watchamacallit

March 21, 2022

Hello I'm still bleating on about the naming of things, and I suspect nothing will ever stop me. Cattle denazification There was an unfortunate, but all too...

Eat This Podcast: Yes, we have no plantains

March 14, 2022

Hello Jessica Kehinde Ngo recently wrote an impassioned piece bemoaning the fact that “the plantain has long been eclipsed by its banana cousin”. That...

Eat This Newsletter 176: Could be ...

February 28, 2022

Hello This newsletter is half hypothetical and half rooted in reality. Which is which? I couldn’t possibly say. What price patriotism? If there is a label on...

Eat This Podcast: Food Philosophy

February 21, 2022

Hello Discussions about food often “bump up against philosophy,” according to David Kaplan. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of North Texas,...

Eat This Newsletter 175: A wing and a prayer

February 14, 2022

Hello In last week’s podcast, I asked whether we should distinguish food poverty from poverty, pure and simple. Following up, this week’s newsletter is...

Eat This Podcast: Unconditional cash to improve nutrition

February 7, 2022

Hello Give Directly is a charity that was started by students at Harvard and MIT after their research showed that a lot of philanthopy was both very...

Eat This Newsletter 174: Bitter and dark

January 31, 2022

Hello Back in the swing of things now, alternating podcast episodes and newsletters. STOP PRESS: This just in (see item 3 below): An African immigrant's...

Eat This Podcast: New season, old food!

January 24, 2022

Hello Way back when, Neolithic people discovered that they could eat milk that had gone sour with impunity, even though ordinary milk upset their digestion....

Eat This Newsletter 173: January's point-counterpoint: "So, this is bacon!"

January 17, 2022

Hello I had fully intended to release a podcast today, but the honest truth is that I’m not ready. I am still trying to get more guests lined up for the next...

Eat This Newsletter 172: Policy, potato and Pleurotus

January 11, 2022

Hello I hope you had a good break over the holiday season, if you had a break at all. I know I did. So, here we go again, with my hand-picked selection of...

Eat This Podcast: High Art

December 20, 2021

Hello The 5th edition of the Biennial of Photography on Industry and Work in Bologna focussed attention on food. All of the 11 exhibitions were really...