Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 077

 

7 May 2018

  1. Sure you can recreate 17th century recipes, but are you using “authentic” ingredients? In a new approach to food history, researchers are sending their raw (and cured) materials across the Atlantic – by sailing ship.
  2. Which is a far cry from how wine crosses the oceans today – in a wine box, but not as we know it. Rachel Laudan writes about another case in which industrial processes deliver better quality to more people.
  3. There are, apparently, more than 460 different “ecolabels” – 59 of which are about food. But guess what? Many of them are so keen to get big players on board that they may well be doing more harm than good, “providing ‘green cover’ for firms that are destroying the environment”. Maybe we need some concentration in the food certification industry?
  4. To soak or not to soak, that’s the bean question. I do, starting with warm water, but Steve Sando says it doesn’t much matter either way. And he should know; he’s the man who started Rancho Gordo beans. You may have seen the profile of him in The New Yorker. I suspect it is all down to freshness.
  5. And a follow up to the article in the previous newsletter, about mothers’ milk offering niutrition to good bacteria. Alison Aubrey did an interesting report for NPR, featuring research from UC Davis. Probiotics are, of course, a huge industry.

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