Food for Thought: an essential earful, a knead to read & more

by Nick Saltmarsh December 16, 2019

We include a round-up of reports, publications and broadcasts that have caught our eye - or ear - in our monthly (or thereabouts) newsletter, along with recipes, news and the occasional special offer - sign up for our newsletter here.

If you haven't caught up with them yet you really mustn't miss the new Cereal podcast series from Farmerama Radio and Wendell Steavenson's Guardian long read Flour Power:

• Cereal #1: Flour, Water, Salt
  In the first of this brilliant series of podcasts from Farmerama Radio, Katie Revell explores how the needs of industrial bread production have come to dictate the way that seeds are bred, grain is grown, flour is milled, and bread is baked and eaten - and meets campaigners, famers, millers and bakers showing that there's another way.
• Flour power: meet the bread heads baking a better loaf
  Wendell Steavenson's Guardian long read explored the story of Professor Martin Wolfe's YQ wheat population and its adoption by bakers, inspired by Small Food Bakery's Kimberley Bell. We've been coping with a run on YQ grain and flour ever since its publication thanks to a mention of our small role in this!

More food for thought we've digested recently has included:

• Increased lifespan from beans (video) - Dr Michael Greger considers research suggesting that high consumption of beans and other pulses may be the most significant indicator of longevity.
• Multiple health and environmental impacts of foods - an examination of how the consumption of 15 different food groups is associated with 5 health outcomes and 5 aspects of environmental degradation.
• Behaviour change, public engagement and Net Zero - Committe on Climate Change report on the potential for people to make choices that can contribute to reducing emissions, and what this means for policy.
• Country-specific dietary shifts to mitigate climate and water crises - an evaluation of national variation among diet footprints concludes that reducing animal foods in general was more climate-friendly than eliminating meat.
• Farming could be absorber of carbon by 2050 - Guardian report on a paper describing how restoration of degraded land, preservation of forests and more tree plating, reducing waste and shifting to more plant-based diets could lead to agriculture becoming carbon negative.

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