Tim Worstall

How is it possible to be a professor and also be this damn ignorant? According to Prof Lang, all assessments of the world’s food systems reach the same damning conclusion, namely that “a big crunch is coming”. Falling oil reserves – needed for fertilisers – climate change and a soaring global population are coming together [...]

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It really does puzzle me how people can make this logical leap: It was revealed earlier this month that our wet winter and freezing spring have led to the poorest potato yield (down 20 per cent on last year) since the drought of 1976. Jersey Royals will be at least a month late because of [...]

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To help, we asked Baena to talk us through the highlights of Portuguese cuisine, which, he insists, don’t include piri-piri chicken: “It’s part of Portuguese cuisine, but it doesn’t represent it. It’s known abroad, but in Portugal we don’t eat that much.” It’s the standard takeaway food. As with fish and chips in England. Not [...]

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but protein and decent vegetables are beyond a food stamp budget. You cannot lecture people about healthy diets when fresh produce is so expensive. What? Sure, out of season strawberries are expensive but basic decent fresh food which you then prepare yourself is vastly cheaper than supermarket Shergar lasagne. As John B regularly says, it’s [...]

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Of course we don’t want to eat bugs. But can we afford not to? Yes. Next question? In more detail Jay Rayner is once again making a fool of himself. But protein from insects will eventually become a part of our diet. As ever the key driver will be economics; Oh dear, this isn’t going [...]

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Watkins draws comparisons with energy. “We need to ask ourselves: where will our food come from in the future? We’ve got to have food security.” Quite true. We don’t want to go to the larder and find that it’s empty, that’s for sure. So, how about expanding English farming then? It is only now becoming [...]

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Britain’s 220,000 doctors are demanding a 20% increase in the cost of sugary drinks, fewer fast food outlets near schools and a ban on unhealthy food in hospitals to prevent the country’s spiralling obesity crisis becoming unresolvable. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges is calling for action by ministers, the NHS, councils and food firms, [...]

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Food poverty ‘puts UK’s international human rights obligations in danger’ Consortium of charities to monitor food poverty in Britain with view to possibility of triggering formal UN investigation Then: Obesity crisis: doctors demand soft drinks tax and healthier hospital food Yes, let’s make food cheaper by taxing it more then.

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The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges is calling for fewer fast food outlets near schools and a complete ban on unhealthy food in hospitals Great, in order to beat obesity the terminally ill aren’t allowed to have a bowl of ice cream in their deathbeds. Because, well, you know, rulz is rulz. Do fuck off.

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Defending supermarkets as a whole, he added: “OK, you can say we haven’t been testing for horse – well, why would we? “We don’t test for hedgehog either.” That is a very interesting point actually. This is analagous to testing for metals. For some metals you can do a simple test and just go “Yeah, [...]

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The collapse of a belief system paralyses and terrifies in equal measure. Certainties are exploded. A reliable compass for action suddenly becomes inoperable. Everything you once thought solid vaporises. Owen Paterson, secretary of state for the environment, food and rural affairs, is living through such a nightmare and is utterly lost. All his once confident [...]

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Meanwhile, there has been a seismic shift in the economics of world food. Expanding middle classes in China, Brazil, Indonesia, India and elsewhere have made producers realise they no longer need to deal with British supermarkets and their thuggish approach to doing a deal. Citrus growers in South Africa are refusing to have anything to [...]

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One of the things that the organics and greenies whine about is that we eat a lot of stuff out of season these days. Apples in February, that sort of thing. This is all a result of the recent globalisation of the food supply chain and is a bad thing. The little factoid is that [...]

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An unofficial spokesman for the Heart Attack Grill restaurant in Las Vegas, which is known for its 9,982-calorie, 3lb Quadruple Bypass Burger, has died of a heart attack.

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Given the amount of Shergar appearing in the nation’s food chain there’s not unnaturally a call for more regulation of said food chain. As EU Referendum keeps telling us, such regulation is an EU competence so don’t expect our homw grown politicians to be able to do anything. However, it’s also a self-solving problem. We [...]

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Findus, one of the most popular brands of frozen foods, has withdrawn 180,000 lasagnes from sale after carrying out tests on meals from a French supplier that had raised concerns. The frozen food company found that 11 out of 18 ready meals, which were advertised as containing 100 per cent beef, were actually between 60 [...]

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And when the Portuguese built up their trading centers on the west coast of India in the 16th century, they threw chilies from the New World into the pot. (Your spicy vindaloo may sound like Hindi, but actually the word derives from the Portuguese terms for its original central ingredients: wine and garlic.) I knew [...]

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War on Want understands hunger, like all forms of poverty, to be the result of political decisions that are taken by national and international elites, and contested through political action. Yup, poverty is something that is caused. Rather than it being not-poverty that is something that is caused by human action. Entire drooling idiocy of [...]

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Quite lovely logic here: While supermarket bosses insist they have stringent systems in place to guarantee product quality, what they will not discuss is the impact of the brutal deals they enforce upon the companies that manufacture those products for them. The manufacturers do not want to talk publicly about it either, for fear of [...]

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The meat posed a health risk because it had not come from identified sources, they warned. “There is no information on how the horse meat came to be in the burgers and so there is no way of telling whether the meat is safe to eat. It could be from diseased or injured animals, for [...]

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