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....

Eat This Newsletter 163: Food Justice

August 23, 2021

Hello My thanks to the people who wrote to tell me that garlic noodles is indeed a dish worth pursuing, and especially to Lenore, a supporter, who pointed me...

Eat This Newsletter 162: Hyperlocal

August 16, 2021

Hello Is it voyeuristic to want to learn about things you are unlikely ever to experience? Obviously I don’t think so, or I wouldn’t be doing what I do....

Eat This Newsletter 161: Visionaries

August 9, 2021

Hello Nice to have a little uptick in subscribers this past week. Welcome, and thanks to Susan MacMillan, whose newsletter Taking Stock is one I enjoy...

Eat This Newsletter 160: Scrambled

August 2, 2021

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

July 26, 2021

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?

July 19, 2021

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

July 13, 2021

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

July 5, 2021

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

June 28, 2021

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

June 21, 2021

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

June 14, 2021

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

June 7, 2021

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)

May 31, 2021

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?

May 24, 2021

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

May 17, 2021

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

May 10, 2021

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

May 3, 2021

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

April 26, 2021

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

April 19, 2021

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?

April 12, 2021

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

April 5, 2021

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?

March 29, 2021

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

March 22, 2021

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...

Eat This Podcast: Naomi Duguid: Exploring the World through Food

March 15, 2021

Hello Naomi Duguid travels the world — mostly in Asia — and brings back sensitive insights into the people and their food. She’s a photographer, writer,...

Eat This Newsletter 147: This'll warm the cockles

March 8, 2021

Hello The internet has been bountiful once again, so here are the things I have found most interesting these past couple of weeks. Archival cockle collectors...

Eat This Podcast: The cost is too damn high

March 1, 2021

Hello Three billion people couldn’t afford a healthy diet even if they wanted to. How do we know? The World Bank collects a massive amount of data in its...

Eat This Newsletter 146: Unbalanced diet

February 22, 2021

Hello I know we should all be eating just a little animal-sourced food for a balanced and sustainable diet, but sometime, overindulgence beckons. This is one...

Eat This Podcast: Still ticking

February 15, 2021

Hello As a young biology student, one of the things I and my classmates worried about was population. Firebrands like Paul Ehrlich whipped us up, and Limits...

Eat This Newsletter 145: Mixed bag

February 8, 2021

Hello No pictures, no preliminaries; let’s just have at it. A long noodle story Miranda Brown, Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan has...

Eat This Podcast: The importance of yesterday’s heritage breeds for tomorrow's food supply

February 1, 2021

Hello Modern livestock breeds are incredibly efficient, gaining weight at a prodigious rate and supplying astonishing quantities of milk and eggs. That...

Eat This Newsletter 144: What goes around

January 26, 2021

Hello A day late and a dollar short — except that it isn’t short. I won’t whine about why this edition is late, it’s all my own fault. But I will point out...

Eat This Podcast: The International Year of Fruits and Vegetables

January 18, 2021

Hello This is the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables, as designated by the United Nations and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization...

Eat This Newsletter 143: Does contain nuts

January 11, 2021

Hello I’m still enjoying the winter break, and hard at work on the next series of podcasts, so here’s another newsletter, for now. The peanut papers Just in...

Eat This Newsletter 142: Happy New Year

January 4, 2021

Hello Of course marking a new year on one specific day is a cultural artefact, and many cultures are doing their best to maintain their own markers. Throwing...

Eat This Newsletter 141: Too good to waste

December 21, 2020

Hello I’ve noticed in the past how, when I am thinking about some topic, I am much more likely to notice things related to that topic, and so it was with...

Eat This Podcast: Oh, poop

December 14, 2020

Hello It’s time to face an uncomfortable fact. After more than 200 episodes devoted in their various ways to what we eat and drink, I’ve never looked at the...