Extra Matter

What’s up with Belgian coffee exports?

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I’m working on a complex story that includes the trade in coffee, so when my chum Luigi linked to resourcetrade.earth, from Chatham House, I rushed on over to see about coffee, not roasted, not decaffeinated.

Click to embiggen

The thing that mainly caught my attention was weird little Belgium. ((Not counting the absurd display of arrows going to and from the centre of the countries, rather than the big container ports.)) Exports of coffee, not roasted, not decaffeinated to France, greatest decline of all in 2015, down 15%. And yet, exports from Belgium to Netherlands in 2015 were up by 24%, the 2nd greatest increase.

I wonder what happened? And does it matter for my story?

Podcasts

Changing Global Diets: the website A fascinating tool for exploring how, where and when diets evolve

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:39 — 14.2MB)

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Foodwise, what unites Cameroon, Nigeria and Grenada? How about Cape Verde, Colombia and Peru? As of today, you can visit a website to find out. The site is the brainchild of Colin Khoury and his colleagues, and is intended to make it easier to see the trends hidden within 50 years of annual food data from more than 150 countries. If that rings a bell, it may be because you heard the episode around three years ago, in which Khoury and I talked about the massive paper he and his colleagues had published on the global standard diet. Back then, the researchers found it easy enough to explain the overall global trends that emerged from the data, but more detailed questions – about particular crops, or countries, or food groups – were much more difficult to answer. The answer to that one? An interactive website.

Notes

  1. The Changing Global Diet website.
  2. The original research paper is Increasing homogeneity in global food supplies and the implications for food security.
  3. Colin and I first talked about the Global Standard Diet in 2014.
  4. And I wrote up the bigger story of food globalisation for NPR.
  5. The hashtag, should you find anything interesting, is #changingglobaldiet, and you can follow Colin Khoury @ColinKhoury.
  6. Images snagged from the website.

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Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 053

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  1. In celebration of Ēostre, a round up of food and farming photos and a fifth question.
  2. It never rains but it pours: unprecedented typhoons in Hokkaido, Japan, last year have resulted in a potato chip shortage and hoarding, not least because although imports from elsewhere are available, one of the main Japanese potato chip manufacturers has decided that “a majority of the American spuds are of insufficient quality and cannot cover the deficit”.
  3. James Wong explains how “mustard gives broccoli superpowers”. I always thought broccoli already had superpowers. Having read the caveats in the original research paper, he may be jumping the gun slightly. Broccoli remains delicious under all circumstances.
  4. Ian Mosby had a lot of fun writing a special article about Canada’s culinary history and contributions to food culture. Yes, Virginia, it goes beyond poutine and Tim Horton’s. Could repay further study, in which case …
  5. Culinary Historians of New York invites submissions for the 2017 CHNY Scholar’s Grant in support of research and scholarship in the field of culinary history.
  6. Bonus shameless self-promotion: Previous winners have appeared on Eat This Podcast.
Podcasts

Australia: where healthier diets are cheaper … ... but people spend more to eat badly

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:36 — 18.4MB)

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No country has solved the problem of how to ensure that all of its people have enough safe, nutritious food to eat year round, and the variety of approaches is both bewildering and informative. Australia, for example, has a welfare system that doesn’t make any specific provision for food. But it does exempt certain healthier foods – such as fruit and veg, bread, fresh meat, milk and eggs – from the Good and Services Tax. That makes them cheaper than they might otherwise be, a sort of thin subsidy. And yet, Australians prefer to spend more to eat an unhealthy diet. They devote almost 60 cents of every dollar they spend on food to unhealthy stuff.

What’s going on? Professor Amanda Lee looked at the cost of what Australians actually eat, based on a large survey, compared to the cost of the country’s national guide to healthy eating. The results were pretty surprising, so surprising that for a while journals refused to publish. Less of a surprise, perhaps, was that people give the answers they think researchers want to hear: among the poorest communities, fully a quarter of the calories actually consumed are missing from reports, and people say they eat eight times more fruit and veg than they actually do.

Notes

  1. The research paper that prompted our conversation was Testing the price and affordability of healthy and current (unhealthy) diets and the potential impacts of policy change in Australia.
  2. Another important paper is Are Healthy Foods Really More Expensive? It Depends on How You Measure the Price, from the USDA.
  3. I gave up trying to find a picture of Australian junk food; it looks just the same as more less all junk food, except for the Cherry Ripes. The banner photograph is a detail from Lizard Dreaming 2 by Sue Atkins, a descendant of the Boandik People from Adelaide in South Australia. The image took some tracking down, because the original site had been hacked in various horrible ways, and I have not asked for permission.

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Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 052

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3 April 2017

  1. If you’re in the least bit interested in “the truth” about African agriculture, this special issue of the journal Food Policy is for you. I haven’t read it all yet, but I really should try to do an episode with Luc Christiaensen, who edited the special issue.
  2. If you want to keep up with the academics (even if you are an academic) you need to speak the lingo. Rachel Laudan offers useful insights into “food systems”.
  3. To him that hath, shall be given: The League of Kitchens in NYC sounds fun and rewarding. I found out about it from a column on Mark Bittman’s site.
  4. Dan Etherington has also been learning about breads, in his case Mamoosh pita, in Newhaven in Sussex (England).