Eat This Newsletter 112: Depressing

November 18, 2019

Hello Here’s a strange little research result. A group of young people in Indonesia were offered tastes of nine different samples of tempeh. (Tempeh is a...

Eat This Podcast: How capuchin monkeys learn about food

November 11, 2019

Hello Chimpanzees fishing for termites with a slender branch is, by now, old hat. But did you know that capuchin monkeys, much less closely related to our...

Eat This Newsletter 111: Foodstuffs

October 28, 2019

Hello If you're reading this, relax. You're already entered for the prize draw of a copy of Peter Hertzmann's new book, 50 Ways to Cook a Carrot. Probably....

Eat This Podcast: 50 Ways to Cook a Carrot

October 21, 2019

Hello A rainbow handful of carrots graces the cover of Peter Hertzmann’s new book. But you can’t judge a book by its cover. Or even by its title, because...

Eat This Newsletter 110: Porridge (and other) news

October 14, 2019

Hello Another round-up of food-related stuff that I think you may find interesting. Some spurtle thoughts, after last week’s episode. I asked another...

Eat This Podcast: Porridge

October 7, 2019

Hello Normally, I’m the last person in the world to know about the international day of this, that or the other. Not this year. This year is different,...

Eat This Newsletter 109: No news is bad news

September 30, 2019

There's no escape from agricultural policy these days, not even if you retreat to rice in history. You get what you pay for Or maybe you pay for what you...

Eat This Podcast: Radish redux

September 23, 2019

Hello “All the intrigue of a murder mystery and all the painstaking, arduous pursuit of an archeological dig.” For a radish. Well, the quote is from a press...

Eat This Newsletter 108: Govern, please

September 16, 2019

An opportunity to change food for the better I have no idea what Brexit will mean for food in the UK in the short-term. I do know what it could mean in the...

Eat This Podcast: When in Rome

September 9, 2019

Hello Rome was founded on the promise of a food-based prophesy, and over the past couple of millennia has seen a lot of change in what passes for Roman...

Eat This Newsletter 107: microbes!

September 2, 2019

Hello, and welcome to all new subscribers. Lots to chew on this issue. Every month is microbes month Sourdough September is upon us once again. A noble...

Eat This Podcast: A sweet sour story

August 26, 2019

Hello A while ago, I was sitting in O’Seachnasaíth’s public house in Kilfinane, Co. Limerick in Ireland, enjoying a final Guinness after the Hearsay Audio...

Eat This Newsletter 106: restaurants and more

August 19, 2019

Hello Who’d be a restaurant critic? I’m old enough to remember when Bourne & Hollingsworth was a rather dowdy department store in London. Now, apparently, it...

Eat This Podcast: Chronicle of a Death Foretold

August 12, 2019

Hello In 2013, a few olive trees near Gallipoli, in Lecce province in the heel of Italy’s boot, seemed to be dying of drought even though there was water....

Eat This Newsletter 105: junk science

August 5, 2019

Hello There seems to be a dearth of interesting news about food these days. Maybe that’s a summer lull, which would reflect my northern hemisphere bias....

Eat This Newsletter 104: big pictures

July 22, 2019

Hello This edition seems to be all about big pictures. Nothing wrong with that, not at all. But here’s a little dessert before the main course: The...

Eat This Newsletter 103: speaking of which ...

July 8, 2019

Hello I’m racing around a bit this month, having fun, teaching bread-making and preparing for the return of the podcast in three weeks or so. As a result, no...

Eat This Newsletter 102: ne plus ultra

June 24, 2019

Medieval fisherperson Hello As promised, I have finally returned to the topic of ultra-processed food. My jumping off point is a heartfelt comment from...

Eat This Newsletter 101

June 4, 2019

The Hive at Kew, bringing eyesight to the blind Hello Cheesemakers in Scotland are celebrating something of a victory over Food Standards Scotland (FSS). To...

Eat This Newsletter 100

May 21, 2019

Hello I'm in the middle of an exchange with Robert Shewfelt, whose definition of "processed" foods I took issue with in the previous Eat This Newsletter. So...

Eat This Podcast: Housekeeping

May 13, 2019

Hello I’m going to be taking a little break. This episode explains that, and rounds up some of the responses to the show about Eating Alone. Special thanks...

Eat This Newsletter 099

May 6, 2019

Hello Cheese, processed food and wheat. Not too many things caught my eye over the past couple of weeks, which is just as well as the few that did called for...

Eat This Podcast: Eating Alone

April 29, 2019

Hello Eating alone is something we all have to do for one reason or another. In Maureen's case, it was because her husband had died and left her cooking for...

Eat This Newsletter 098

April 22, 2019

Hello Another round up of food-related stories for you, some fresh, some maybe not so fresh. And a little bit of a rant. How did you celebrate World Idli...

Eat This Podcast: Celebrating Passover and Easter

April 15, 2019

Hello I don’t know whether the last supper was a Passover Seder. I do know that the rituals of the Passover dinner have been in place for thousands of years,...

Eat This Newsletter 097

April 8, 2019

Hello I'm on the road, gathering fresh stories and trying to do the nomadic worker thing. To be perfectly honest, though, the wifi is too patchy to be...

Eat This Podcast: A historian of bread

April 1, 2019

Hello William Rubel is a freelance food historian, and he takes a dim view of some of the claims made by modern artisan bakers. I thought it only right,...

Eat This Newsletter 096

March 25, 2019

Hello Something to chew on … Let’s get this out of the way right at the start. You can now buy a “chewable vegetable-shaped baby toy which stimulates baby’s...

Eat This Podcast: Prehistoric food globalisation

March 18, 2019

Hello A new research paper offers a more comprehensive – and more nuanced – view of where agriculture began and how it spread from small, localised centres...

Eat This Newsletter 095

March 11, 2019

Hello With any luck, if these emails were going to your spam folder, they aren’t any more. So, let’s get to it. If you’re the kind of person who really...

Eat This Podcast: We need to talk about meat

March 4, 2019

Hello Meat exercises the imagination in a way no other food can match. Some people have always wanted to ban carnivory. For others it is an essential fuel....

Eat This Newsletter 094

February 25, 2019

Hello I’ve switched to a new mailing-list manager, for reasons that I may go into at some point in the future. For now, I hope you received the email I just...

Eat This Newsletter 094

February 24, 2019

Hello I've switched to a new mailing-list manager, for reasons that I may go into at some point in the future. For now, I hope you received the email I just...