Health agency advises no more than two glasses a day to cut down alcohol-related disease risk
“Quoi, just two glasses?” asked the headline on the English page of the rolling news station France 24.
It was the incredulous reaction to a campaign launched this week by French health officials seeking to persuade the public to drink no more than two glasses of wine per day – and not every day either.
Continue reading...A bombshell internal report written for the British meat industry reveals nitrites do not protect against botulism – the chief reason ham and bacon manufacturers say they use the chemicals.
The study, conducted for the British Meat Processors Association (BMPA) by the scientific consultancy Campden, and marked “confidential”, examines the growth of the toxin Clostridium botulinum in the processing of bacon and ham.
Continue reading...For decades, enthusiasts have hoped truffles can follow wine’s path to success in the state. Charlotte Simmonds joins a search for the delicacy
Staci O’Toole is lying face down in the dirt. “I can smell it!” she cries, nose to the roots of a hazelnut tree.
A funky, fungal odor emanates from a shallow hole in the ground of this Sonoma Valley orchard. It hints at a hidden treasure many years in the making: a French Périgord truffle, grown right here in California.
Continue reading...We are now producing and consuming more food than ever, and yet our modern diet is killing us. How can we solve this bittersweet dilemma?
Pick a bunch of green grapes, wash it, and put one in your mouth. Feel the grape with your tongue, observe how cold and refreshing it is: the crisp flesh, and the jellylike interior with its mild, sweet flavour.
Eating grapes can feel like an old pleasure, untouched by change. The ancient Greeks and Romans loved to eat them, as well as to drink them in the form of wine. The Odyssey describes “a ripe and luscious vine, hung thick with grapes”. As you pull the next delicious piece of fruit from its stalk, you could easily be plucking it from a Dutch still life of the 17th century, where grapes are tumbled on a metal platter with oysters and half-peeled lemons.
Continue reading...Pile-up of meats, fries and cheese sauce has become a fast-food phenomenon
At lunchtime on a street near the Gare du Nord in Paris, queues were forming at a fast-food restaurant. Construction workers jostled with schoolchildren for what has become a business phenomenon: the hefty, cheesy slab of indulgence known as the French taco.
France has always had a huge market for takeaways, from kebabs to McDonald’s, and fast food accounts for more than half the nation’s restaurants. Now the homegrown French taco is challenging the burger’s imperialist success and plotting its own global expansion.
Continue reading...Makers of animal-free products aim to revolutionise the very idea of meat – but is their hi-tech approach really the answer?
I bit into the Impossible Burger and was immediately filled with awe. I lifted my head to the bartender and, with my mouth full, croaked: “This is vegan?”
I was just coming off two long days of hearings at the US Department of Agriculture, where the future of food was discussed in great detail but taste was scarcely mentioned. Now, sitting at my favorite New Jersey bar, eating something satisfying that nothing died for, was a relief.
Continue reading...As 29 March nears, fears rise over US demands for greater access to Britain’s supermarkets
Continue reading...Critics say process Woody Johnson called ‘no-brainer’ is ‘harmful’ to nation’s health
The US ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, has come under fire from a leading food critic, a farming union and trade justice campaigners over his push to open up the UK to American farmers post-Brexit.
Jay Rayner, the BBC presenter, Observer columnist and MasterChef critic, said the UK should tell Johnson where he can stick chlorinated chicken, the US’s preferred approach for protecting consumers from pathogens such as salmonella and campylobacter.
Continue reading...Asking about the importance of cocoa in Ivory Coast feels a little like making enquiries about the value of grapes in Burgundy. When I put the question to N’Zi Kanga Rémi, who has for the last 18 years beengovernor of the rural department of Adzopé, north-east of the sprawling port city of Abidjan, he leaned forward in his chair and fixed me with an amused stare.
His booming voice went up a decibel to fill the administrative offices on whose walls his own portrait alternated with that of his nation’s president. “It doesn’t make sense to ask an Ivorian what cocoa means to him!” he said. “It means everything! It’s his first source of income! My education was funded by cocoa! Our houses are built with cocoa! The foundations of our roads, our schools, our hospitals is cocoa! Our government runs on cocoa! All our policy focuses on sustaining cocoa!”
Continue reading...British maker of Cathedral City cheddar employs more than 1,100 people in seven locations
The British owners of Cathedral City cheddar and Clover margarine have agreed a near-£1bn takeover from the Canadian dairy company Saputo.
On Friday Dairy Crest recommended shareholders accept an offer from Saputo that values the FTSE 250 company at £975m.
Continue reading...Plants, insects and organisms crucial to food production in steep decline, says UN
The world’s capacity to produce food is being undermined by humanity’s failure to protect biodiversity, according to the first UN study of the plants, animals and micro-organisms that help to put meals on our plates.
The stark warning was issued by the Food and Agriculture Organisation after scientists found evidence the natural support systems that underpin the human diet are deteriorating around the world as farms, cities and factories gobble up land and pump out chemicals.
Continue reading...Flabbergasted owner says EU must have been referring to his place when warning diplomats to avoid a Brussels restaurant
Eleven years since opening his restaurant in the shadow of the European commission’s vast Berlaymont headquarters in Brussels, Philippe Weiner can safely boast that the Meet Meat Steak and Wine House is a firm favourite of the better-fed Eurocrat.
Sharp-suited diplomats and officials flock to its minimalist dining room for lunch and dinner. The president of the European council, Donald Tusk, and his team have been known to enjoy the kitchen’s meat offerings, best served à point or saignant.
Continue reading...French research involved more than 44,000 people over a period of seven years
Eating a lot of heavily processed foods is linked to a risk of earlier death, according to a study.
A team in France worked with more than 44,000 people in a study running from 2009 called NutriNet-Santé. They looked at how much of their diet – and calories – was made up of “ultra-processed” foods – those made in factories with industrial ingredients and additives, such as dried ready meals, cakes and biscuits.
Continue reading...Pre-smashed One Hand Chips are far from the first to tailor the dining experience around our phone-centric lifestyles
Among the concerns facing today’s social media maven: how can one scroll through Instagram and enjoy a bag of potato chips without getting their phone all greasy?
Related: Say cheese: cooking in the age of Instagram
Continue reading...Company is accused of adding synthetic chemicals, including one used in tanning lotion, to honey
A mānuka honey company is being prosecuted by New Zealand’s food safety agency over claims it added artificial chemicals to its product.
In the first case of its kind, the company is accused of adding synthetic chemicals – including one commonly used in tanning lotion – to honey it sold as “mānuka”.
Continue reading...A technique developed by a Jesuit priest is producing bigger harvests – and reducing emissions of a crop responsible for 1.5% of greenhouse gases
The fragrant jasmine rice growing on the left side of Kreaougkra Junpeng’s five-acre field stands nearly five feet tall.
Each plant has 15 or more tillers, or stalks, and the grains hang heavy from them. The Thai farmer says this will be his best-ever harvest in 30 years and he will reap it four weeks earlier than usual.
Continue reading...The threat of poaching by foreign trawlers has eased for the nation’s 33,000 local fishermen, who are hauling in the rewards of a coastguard crackdown
Photographs: Nicole Schafer/Sea Shepherd
Scientists say a drastic cut in meat consumption is needed, but this requires political will
It has been known for a while that the amount of animal products being eaten is bad for both the welfare of animals and the environment. People cannot consume 12.9bn eggs in the UK each year without breaking a few.
But the extent of the damage, and the amount by which people need to cut back, is now becoming clearer. On Wednesday, the Lancet medical journal published a study that calls for dramatic changes to food production and the human diet, in order to avoid “catastrophic damage to the planet”.
Continue reading...‘Planetary health diet’ would prevent millions of deaths a year and avoid climate change
The first science-based diet that tackles both the poor food eaten by billions of people and averts global environmental catastrophe has been devised. It requires huge cuts in red meat-eating in western countries and radical changes across the world.
The “planetary health diet” was created by an international commission seeking to draw up guidelines that provide nutritious food to the world’s fast-growing population. At the same time, the diet addresses the major role of farming – especially livestock – in driving climate change, the destruction of wildlife and the pollution of rivers and oceans.
Continue reading...Supermac strips US food giant of trademark across Europe after landmark EU ruling
Pat McDonagh earned the nickname Supermac as an Irish teenager after a barnstorming performance in a Gaelic football match in the late 1960s.
The centre half-back guided his school, Carmelite college of Moate, County Westmeath, to victory over St Gerald’s, a more fancied team.
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