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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...
Eat This Newsletter 171: Proletarian
December 13, 2021
Hello Lots to get your teeth into in this issue, from public relations idiocy to the idiocy of ideology. Oh Canada, about your chickens Here are some jaw-...
Eat This Podcast: Visit an ancient Roman bakery
December 6, 2021
Hello Down the River Tiber from Rome is the huge archaeological site of Ostia Antica, which used to be the main port for the city. It’s all ruins now, of...
Eat This Newsletter 170: From science to satire
November 22, 2021
Hello In general, things that delight, instruct or entertain are the order of the day here. Occasionally, though, I find it necessary to point to stuff I...
Eat This Podcast: The true history of the potato in Europe
November 15, 2021
Hello Perhaps you’ve heard stories about the history of the potato in Europe. Ignorant peasants shun the potato until a wily aristocrat — or even the monarch...
Eat This Newsletter 169: Turning back the clocks
November 1, 2021
Hello It was nice to wake up this morning with the sun shining, although it will be awful to drink my tea this afternoon in the dark. Still, I do love the...
Eat This Podcast: Twenty-one letters, fifty shapes, unlimited possibilities
October 25, 2021
Hello Rachel Roddy’s new book is An A-Z of Pasta: Stories, Shapes, Sauces, Recipes. She wisely recognised that there was little point in trying to be...
Eat This Newsletter 168: Nobody expects …
October 18, 2021
Hello A mixed bag, and that’s the way, uh-huh uh-huh, I like it. I hope you do too. An app to measure starvation … … but not to fix it This article – A new...
Eat This Podcast: Midnight’s chicken
October 11, 2021
Hello After the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, a young chef brought the tandoor oven and his tandoori chicken from Peshawar to a new restaurant he...
Eat This Newsletter 167: Clear, simple and wrong
October 4, 2021
Hello Advanced technology is a wonderful thing — how else would I be able to communicate with you all? — but there are some problems that just aren't...
Eat This Podcast: Sushi: From Necessity to Ubiquity
September 27, 2021
Hello The California Roll was only the beginning. Or at least, the beginning of global domination, after a couple of thousand years of quiet evolution. In...
Eat This Newsletter 166: Interconnected
September 20, 2021
Interconnected Hello It isn’t possible to fix complicated problems with simple solutions. It’s all connected Are you worried about too much carbon dioxide in...
Eat This Podcast: How coffee ties Italy, Brazil and Italian East Africa to one another
September 13, 2021
Hello And we’re back, after a terrific summer break. Diana Garvin, an historian, recently published a paper that examines what she calls the Italian coffee...
Eat This Newsletter 165: A Podcast Delayed
September 6, 2021
Hello An unforeseen circumstance dashed my hopes, and perhaps yours too, of a new episode of the podcast today. But there’s no point in being your own boss...
Eat This Newsletter 164: Food News in Person
August 30, 2021
Hello The temperature suddenly dropped by about 10 degrees C a couple of days ago, a sure sign that I need to get back to producing episodes of the podcast....
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