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Jeremy Cherfas"/>

A space for mostly short form stuff and responses to things I see elsewhere.

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Jeremy Cherfas

Latest Eat This Newsletter includes:

Can you talk about the hummus wars when there is an actual war on?

School food in Nairobi

Global — and Californian — production of calories

Silent Doritos

https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/223-enough-to-go-around/

Jeremy Cherfas

Jeremy Cherfas

"You could literally take a hungry climate refugee and put them in the middle of a field of food, and they’d still starve to death." Interesting take, with which I fully agree. I wonder how the writer might feel about Chris Smaje's Small Farm Future?

Jeremy Cherfas

The wholeness of the word: 'Regenesis' as myth, Part II | Chris Smaje

”Plants are energised by zero-carbon, zero-cost sunlight, whereas factory-produced microbial biomass is energised by generated electricity at an energetic cost amounting to at least an order of magnitude more.”

Not going to quibble about that order of magnitude greater than zero. The point is very well made: Proposed ecomodernist solutions to future food supply are not solutions at all.

Jeremy Cherfas

And it's out, the latest issue of Eat This Newsletter https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/linked/

A slew of stories from around the web, each of them connected to at least one of the others because that's the way of the food and agriculture system.

https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/linked/

Jeremy Cherfas

Always feels good to finish tomorrow's Eat This Newsletter a little early. Sign up at https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/ if you would like my take on nice rice, Big Food, gin, tomatoes and brassicas.

Jeremy Cherfas

Jeremy Cherfas

Finished reading: English Food: A People's History by Diane Purkiss, ISBN: 9780007255566



-fiction


Jeremy Cherfas

Currently reading: English Food: A People's History by Diane Purkiss, ISBN: 9780007255566



-fiction


Jeremy Cherfas

Localism, manufactured food and energy futures: thoughts from the Groundswell Festival | Chris Smaje

In other words, there’s no sign of an energy transition out of fossils yet.

Just in case you were feeling optimistic because energy from solar increased by 24% last year ...

Jeremy Cherfas

Just put the finishing touches to Eat This Newsletter 210, with:

* Ur-pizza
* Chinotto, eh?
* Entomophagy? Again!
* Food System Fixes

Subscribe at https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/ now and find it in your inbox tomorrow.

Jeremy Cherfas

Just put the finishing touches to Eat This Newsletter 208. Fancy a pot luck of food-adjacent links? Sign up at https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas

Jeremy Cherfas

Nice to see someone else trying to revive blog carnivals in an IndieWeb context. Sara Jakša's first taster appeals on two levels; it is a blog carnival and it is about food. Count me in.

Jeremy Cherfas

Jeremy Cherfas

Indeed. Currently editing my next episode, from @ECLLD recent meeting in Budapest, celebrating how the new EU reg on OHM is allowing farmers and food producers to be more sustainable and nutritious.

Jeremy Cherfas

Jeremy Cherfas

Jeremy Cherfas

Jeremy Cherfas

Checked into Restaurant

Opposite the hotel, semi basement, and giant music screens. As for the food, we shall see. 

Jeremy Cherfas

What We Owe The Future – A review by Tim Harford

Tim Harford's lukewarm review of William MacAskill's book.

If he is right, how could I justify giving £10 to a food bank today when I could set up a charitable trust, let the money accumulate centuries of compound interest before lavishing the proceeds on future generations? Are we morally obliged to live at subsistence levels to maximise the resources available for investment and research so our great-great-great-great-grandchildren will thrive? Such questions have been discussed and analysed at great depth in the literature on climate change. It is surprising to see them waved away with a few sentences here. 

Is it that surprising, really?

Jeremy Cherfas

Very happy to discover that my episode on Garum, Rome's museum of food and cooking, is peaking this week in Nigeria. What are they hearing that you haven't? eatthispodcast.com/garum-museum/

Jeremy Cherfas

From regenesis to re-exodus: of George Monbiot, mathematical modernism and the case for agrarian localism

George Monbiot illuminates and infuriates in equal measure, although I suspect, after reading Chris Smaje’s review, that I will not be paying much attention in future. I have not read Regenesis, so will say nothing about it myself. Two quotes from Chris (of many others I could have chosen):

“[A]n alternative, perhaps counterintuitive but more plausible argument [is] that low food prices in fact are a fundamental cause of global poverty.”

“[T]here’s no such thing as ‘an inexorable economic logic’, there are just political games with winners and losers – a point the old George Monbiot once understood.”

Yup.

Jeremy Cherfas

Jeremy Cherfas

20/25 on Adactio's Font or Food? quiz. Not too shabby.

Jeremy Cherfas

A little late with the first Eat This Newsletter of the New Year, but my boss says that's OK.

Read it at https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/eat-this-newsletter-172-policy-potato-and/ for thoughts on FOPLs, ag and food policy in the US and the UK, potato bread etc

Jeremy Cherfas

Chuffed to learn that @scotlandbread won @bbcfoodprog award for Food Innovation. If I were in Scotland, I'd be sourcing from Flour to the People. Instead, I gave a donation to the crowdfunder campaign at https://crowdfunder.co.uk/scotlandthebread

Jeremy Cherfas

Eat This Newsletter 171 is out, with Canadian chickens, proletarian food systems, sweetness and dark, and a tribute to NI Vavilov. All connected, even if somewhat tenuously. Read it at https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/eat-this-newsletter-171-proletarian/

Jeremy Cherfas

Jeremy Cherfas

Huge congratulations to Chris Otter, whose fascinating book Diet for a Large Planet has just won the AHA Bentley Prize in World History. We had a great chat about how the British created global food outsourcing and made it was it is today.

https://www.eatthispodcast.com/large-planet/

Jeremy Cherfas

Great fun chatting with Amalia Sacchi for @festletteratura about food, agriculture and the climate crisis, although ashamed not to be able to do it in Italian. It will be streamed on 8 September at 14:10 CEST.

Jeremy Cherfas

In case you thought "organic" meant anything more than another way for industrial food to profit with no regard to any costs other than purely financial, Marion Nestle takes apart Danone's decision to abandon small organic dairies https://www.foodpolitics.com/2021/08/24686/

Jeremy Cherfas

Scotland, stop selling yourself shortbread!

Excellent, thought-provoking read on the fall and rise of local food traditions.

Jeremy Cherfas

No favourites from Marion Nestle: Unethical food marketing ad of the week: infant formula, organic no less.

https://www.foodpolitics.com/2021/08/most-egregious-food-ad-of-the-week-infant-formula/

Jeremy Cherfas

@BBCFoodProg Given that more than 50% of food consumed in the UK is imported (more for fruit and veg), have any of the medical associations said anything public about UK food policy over the next few years? Should medical students be visiting Australia, not Oxfordshire?

Jeremy Cherfas

@herdyshepherd1 The pain for British farmers is real. However, outsourcing British food production to the rest of the world is nothing new. The deal is a return to the good old days of Empire, just like, er, Brexit.

https://eatthispodcast.com/large-planet

Jeremy Cherfas

Fun to see @racheleats photo of Bonci Pizza illustrating this article, although that seems to me as far from ordinary pizza al taglio as that is from Mr Go’s pizza vendining machine.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/may/07/dough-to-go-romes-first-pizza-vending-machine-gets-mixe...

Jeremy Cherfas

@theRSAorg I am so disappointed that beyond lip service in the intro there was absolutely no further mention of trade in global food commodities. Even a brief acknowledgement of Brewster Kneen's pioneering efforts to shine a light on Cargill would have added immeasurably.

Jeremy Cherfas

USDA says there were about 2,019,000 farms in the US in 2020. But how many were actually farms in the usual sense of the word, growing food for sale as their primary business. I'm sure @rosenblawg said something about this recently, but I can't now find it. Help, please.

Jeremy Cherfas

Let joy be unconfined: farm share of food dollar up from 14.2 cents in 2018 to 14.3 cents in 2019. Farmers get an even lower share of eating out dollars, and eating out dollars plunged during the pandemic.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=100802

Jeremy Cherfas

In light of @kitchenbee quoting @bittman ‘You will hear, “The food system is broken”. But the truth is that it works almost perfectly for Big Food.' dont get your hopes up for the UN Food Summit.

https://genevasolutions.news/climate/human-rights-overshadowed-by-big-business-in-un-food-summit-say...

Jeremy Cherfas

Finally got round to @DanSaladinoUK Food Programme about Charles Campion, and what a treat it was. So well put together, and a great picture of the man himself. He will be missed. Thanks Dan.

Jeremy Cherfas

2020-05-09

1 min read

I'm not saying I agree with absolutely everything in these two articles, but The Economist has an Editorial and a Briefing on what it calls "the global food supply chain" and "the world's food system". They make for interesting reading.

Spoiler: The Economist doesn't think it's broken.

Jeremy Cherfas

I’ve been getting myself in a right old muddle about taste lately. Not music or architecture -- well, not entirely -- but gustatory taste, the taste of food. Of course, we all acknowledge that taste is subjective. 1/6

Jeremy Cherfas

Untitled

In the latest episode, the incomparable Darra Goldstein tells me about her search for "the true heart of Russian food" and also about some of the surprising rediscoveries and innovations in the foodways of modern Russia.

Listen at https://eatthispodcast.com/russian-food

Jeremy Cherfas

Why can’t food scientists and nutritionists be friends?

For one thing, it's a lot easier to call yourself a "nutritionist". Then again, where do food scientists work except in industry, or training more food scientists?

Jeremy Cherfas

I do not believe that consumers are the main beneficiaries of recent trends in the centralisation and industrialisation of food production. Convenient, perhaps, but safe and affordable? At what price?

Jeremy Cherfas

The big problem with the “all food is processed” and “everything is a chemical” arguments is that they fail to speak the same language as the people for whom “processed” and “chemical” have other meanings. I prefer to ask who benefits from the processing and the chemicals.

Jeremy Cherfas

Where to push for greater food safety as food supply systems change is such a difficult question, as discussed in my podcast with Shirley Tarawali and Delia Grace @ILRI https://www.eatthispodcast.com/in-praise-of-meat-milk-and-eggs/

Jeremy Cherfas

TIL that there is such a thing as a non-food interpretation of 🌮

Jeremy Cherfas

Replied to a post on micro.blog :

Thanks. That's a very small part of his argument, and we've just had another good chat in which I asked specifically whether the UK could exclude or tax food imports. He said, absolutely. Look at Japan. Food is a strategic issue and outside the WTO. My fear remains that after Brexit there still won't be good food system policies.