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Wendell Berry, the American farmer, writer and thinker, famously said that “Eating is an agricultural act”. The quote now has a life of its own, but it is worth remembering that Berry used it to introduce a longer version of his advice to the urban consumer who wants to know what they can do. The short version is “eat responsibly”. To do that, though, you have to understand how agriculture and the food we eat are connected, how they form part of an entire system. My guest on this episode understands more than most people about how the various parts of the food system fit together, and it is a lot more complex than many people can imagine.

For a start, take the label on the apple in the image on the left. In case you cannot read it, it says: “Forget organic. Eat local.” Nice, simple advice. But more or less pointless. There’s so much more to food systems than just the distance the food travels.

Tim Lang – who coined the phrase food miles – agrees. When he visited Rome recently for a conference on sustainable food I took the opportunity to get together to chat about the complexities of food systems. Our conversation ranged from high-level government policy to what you do with the skin of a mango you’ve just eaten, the point being that once you start to look at food systems as a whole, those two aspects of how we eat become closely intertwined.

Notes

1. Gareth Edward-Jones’ paper Does eating local food reduce the environmental impact of food production and enhance consumer health? is a good introduction to some of the difficulties with a simple view of food miles.
2. Tim mentioned the work of Carlos Monteiro, of the University of Sao Paolo, on ultra-processed food, and Barry Popkin, of the University of North Carolina, on the nutrition transition.
3. That quote of Wendell Berry’s is a pithy soundbite, but the whole essay The pleasures of eating is well worth your time.
4. And if you fancy a really deep dive into recent thinking on some aspects of food systems, how about this report from the European Commission: Energy use in the EU food sector: State of play and opportunities for improvement.
5. Banner photo by Duncan Brown.

The owner of a hummus cafe in Kfar Vitkin, a tiny settlement north of Netanya in Israel, is offering a 50 percent discount to mixed tables of Arabs and Jews. Some people have taken up the offer, others refused and said that they wanted to “support the initiative”. Heart-warming stuff. (There are various versions of the story around, but I read it on Al Jazeera, which has the most “context”.)

Meanwhile … Over at Boston University, Ari Ariel, head of the Gastronomy program, delivered a lecture on “Hummus Wars: Buying and Boycotting Middle Eastern Foods”. Citing a long-standing rivalry between Israel and Lebanon for bragging rights to the world record for largest hummus dish — currently held by Lebanon with around ten tonnes of hummus — Ariel “views the hummus record as an extension of the political climate”. Lebanon has been seeking a protected designation of origin for hummus since 2008. Israel, and probably much of the rest of the Near East, objects.

Sounds to me like a recipe for disaster, although I have been unable to discover what has become of Lebanon’s idea.

And finally, there is The Hummus Blog. Dig deep!

20 October 2015

A day late and a dollar short.

1. Small slaughterhouses are perhaps the most important link missing from shorter food chains.
2. An interesting piece from the New York Times about how written recipes are changing, becoming both less prescriptive and more explanatory.
3. A wonderful interview reveals the making of a baker, Louis Lamour. Spend some time watching his videos.
4. Peter Hertzmann – we recently talked about Just Mayo – also has a new video, about tomatoes (and how to slice them).
5. Can you really talk about “how simplicity can often be a chef’s best friend,” when the chef’s cacio e pepe contains extra Manchego cheese and “a generous shower of Oregon black truffles”? I’m not sure, but I’ll try to find out next time I’m in Arlington, Virginia.

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That sink is where Rachel Roddy, an English woman in Rome, prepares meals to share with her partner Vincenzo, their young son Luca, and a horde of appreciative readers of her website and, now, her first book.

Five Quarters: Recipes and Notes from a Kitchen in Rome, features the sink on its front cover. That probably makes it one of the most famous sinks in Rome. So naturally when Rachel and I got home from our meeting in the new Testaccio market, it was the first thing I wanted to see. And photograph. Our conversation ranged widely, from book titles and domain names to the links between the food of Rome and the food of Manchester. And although she says she’s a romantic and prone to nostalgia, it is also clearly the case that Rachel Roddy loves learning about food and cooking, loves sharing what she’s learned, and loves telling stories. Simple ingredients, for a satisfying cookbook and website.

A couple of other links. Rachel mentioned her friend Fabrizia Lanza and the farm and cooking school she runs in Sicily. Here’s what Rachel wrote recently about a wonderful idea called Cook the Farm. If you decide to follow the link, do give yourself time to pursue Rachel down all her intriguing rabbit holes.

5 October 2015

Don’t fear the fungi

1. It’s odd that “cure” has two such distinct meanings, but don’t let the scare mongering of What we know about fungi and cured meats put you off.
2. The life and times of domesticated cheese-making fungi could also put you off, if you let it.
3. More sciencey stuff: a review of The Food Lab, the giant new tome from Kenji López-Alt. I know I’ve given him grief, but the book sounds worthwhile.
4. This is all turning very negative, but sometimes that happens. Stuff like the Future Food District makes me so glad I didn’t get to Milan for Expo 2015.
5. Likewise the Foresight project, which “aims at understanding what decisions do policymakers need to take in the coming decades to ensure that by 2035 food systems deliver high quality diets in low/middle income countries”. Because they really still don’t know?