I strongly recomment a listen to The Inquiry – How did we mess up antibiotics? A part of the story involves chickens. The figure below is from businessinsider. Clearly, there is something not natural going on here. Back in 1989 I went on a trek in the far north of Thailand. In the villages, chickens… Read more
Category:
Food
Realistic Fishing
This is an excellent 50 seconds by the SNP MP, Dr Philippa Whitford, on the disastrous control of the UK fishing industry. Many fishermen all over the UK (and some to my personal knowledge) were fervently in favour of Brexit, whilst seemingly ignoring the fleets of trucks taking their catches, not to inland Britain, but… Read more
Seventh Day Adventism in your Cornflakes
The widespread adoption of Cornflakes as a breakfast cereal spread quickly from the US to the UK post war. But how many know that it was originally a vegetarian cure for invalids based around Biblical belief from the all American Seventh Day Adventist Church founded in 1854? An old article in ‘The Smithsonian’ shows how… Read more
Food – Project Fact
Some very worrying research has come from the University of Liverpool and Imperial College London, which suggests that the shortage of fresh food which would certainly be caused by the disruption engendered by any no deal Brexit and also, importantly, a free-trading agreement with the EU and even with third-party countries. All scenarios would necessitate… Read more
Vegan meat problem
A short pointer towards a suggested read – Joanna Blythman’s concise article here (in the food trade Bible – ‘The Grocer’) ‘Why we should resist the vegan putsch’ on the suggestion that we should eat very little meat from the Eat-Lancet Commission. Surprisingly and worryingly to me, it seems to have the chemical company, Monsanto,… Read more
Playing chicken in lots of different ways
There is a just published article in ‘The Grocer’ stating that food suppliers are running out of space to stockpile goods. the price of storage had risen by 15% per pallet per week in recent weeks, with inflation across the third quarter as a whole of 8%, but all of the chilled space in London… Read more
Sweet failure
According to the FT the amount raised so far by the sugar tax is ‘rather disappointing’. That is understandable. Because, to do the job properly, what the tax should have been targeted at is not sugar, but sweetness. Soft drink manufacturers have been congratulating themselves on how they have managed to reduce their sugar content… Read more
Why we shouldn’t tolerate Palm Oil
Iceland is the only grocer to have removed Palm Oil entirely from their own label products and they’ve managed it in less than a year. Not unreasonably they wanted to shout about this, but their Christmas advert has been banned for being ‘too political’. After all, there have been worries about private equity and other… Read more
Amazon Fresh thinking?
This week’s ‘Sunday Times’ business carried an article suggesting that Amazon are still anxious to improve their presence in the UK grocery market. ‘Retail Insider’ reckons: The UK and especially Tesco will also represent the real challenge for Amazon Fresh, if it wants to become internationally accepted. If Amazon can really challenge Tesco in its… Read more
US regulatory food incompetence
Just in case anyone was subdued into acceptance of the idea that the USA food system functions well – never mind even better than the UK or EU systems, we should just take on board, that here is the world’s largest meatpacker recalling 6.9 million pounds of beef linked to antibiotic-resistant Salmonella. So input antibiotics… Read more