Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 011 Gleanings

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24 August 2015

A drop more

  1. Steal from one writer and you’re a plagiarist, steal from two or three and you’re doing original research, as Tom Lehrer, hymning the great Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, said. Something new(ish) and something a little older on recipe theft.
  2. Organic food in the US is having to recall more food than ever. Maybe because more of it is being sold?
  3. Speaking of industrialisation in the food system, “[E]ven though the total number of cows in the UK has halved since the 1970s, production has remained steady thanks to the fact average yields have doubled. Farmers are literally squeezing more out of each cow.” Not sure about that “literally,” but the fact is the supermarkets are not entirely to blame for a global glut of milk.
  4. The people of Russia are no strangers to famine. So why are they allowing the government to destroy so much food? The Economist takes a longer view.
  5. Shameless self-promotion: first, read about how the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers tries to strangle individualism. Then go listen to Amy Trubek talking to me about terroir and maple syrup.
Podcasts

100% food insecure: poor people in a rich country How the indigenous people in Northern Manitoba are reclaiming their food sovereignty

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The O-Pipin-Na-Piwin Cree Nation have suffered generations of maltreatment at the hands of various official entities. Moved from their homelands further south, they now occupy small scattered settlements in northern Manitoba, where summers are short and the land infertile. Having adapted to some extent to their new circumstances, large dams, built to supply energy to the rest of the province and beyond, flooded their traditional fishing and hunting grounds, destroying their livelihoods even further. Being so remote, the supply chain for outside foods is tenuous and expensive, with prices way beyond those found further south. No wonder, then, that the people are suffering an epidemic of malnutrition and its attendant diseases. But after years of maltreatment, the people are starting to reclaim their foodways and learning new ways to feed themselves sustainably. Andi Sharma, a policy analyst with the Northern Healthy Foods Initiative, told me about the problems and some of the incipient solutions.

Notes

  1. The banner image is part of a very early map of the area now occupied by the indigenous people and Manitoba Hydro.
  2. The Northern Healthy Foods Initiative is trying to improve food security in a variety of ways.
  3. I didn’t spend much time following up on Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but I’m struck by the historical similarities between Canada and Australia, and, again, by the power of food as a political weapon.
Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 010 Gleanings

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10 August 2015

Crunch down.

  1. Restaurant critics (at least in the UK) cannot be relied upon? Say it isn’t so.
  2. Once over lightly for the eating habits of old Pompeii. Lemonade? Really? I’m waiting for news on that one.
  3. Maybe you saw some of the utter tosh about how the evolution of big human brains depended on potatoes? I can guarantee that it didn’t, and a far more interesting possibility is that all those carb-eschewing palaeo-dieters have got it wrong. Here’s a press release about the research.
  4. More research, on where and when a bitter little gourd started to turn into summer’s perfect expression: watermelon.
  5. More summer fun: bake stick bread over an open fire. (Worth subscribing to the magazine if you are into bread.)
  6. Bonus shameless self-promotion. I moaned about fake truffle oil, now I learn that some truffle odours are produced not by the fungus itself but by the bacteria it supports.
Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 009 Gleanings

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3 August 2015

They’re spreadable.

  1. So enjoyable when science proves what people have known all along: researchers use pigs to root out problem weeds. I particularly like the suggestion that “[t]his method of weed control could be used in organic farms”.
  2. I’m also all for the scientific study of gluten intolerance, and this report on gluten psychosis boggled my mind.
  3. Can it be possible, though, that food-safety scientists refer enquiries to Wikipedia? Yes it can: “FDA officially refers consumers to Wikipedia for information on food pathogens”.
  4. And staying with food safety, what would be a suitable punishment for someone who knowingly sold Salmonella-laced peanut butter? Life imprisonment?
  5. Rachel Laudan plumbs Knight’s New Mechanical Dictionary to consider My Great Grandmother’s Industrially Processed Food. She spoke to me about the benefits of industrial sugar and salt a couple of years ago.