Transition Earlsdon Events in March

The next two events for "Transition Earlsdon" ... if you want more information, you can contact Jo Rathbone on 024 7667 8735.

- Tonight, at 730pm, at Earlsdon Methodist Church Hall Room 1, Prof Liz Dowler from Warwick Uni will speak on "Local Food Ethics and Alternative Food Networks". Prof Dowler contributed to the Food Ethics Council's report on food distribution networks (published in October 08). How are people bypassing the supermarkets? How well are alternatives working?

- On the 23rd of March, 730pm, at St Barbara's Church hall meeting room (corner of Rochester Rd and Beechwood Ave, in Earlsdon), there will be a film screening of "Money as Debt" -- it's a 47 minute animated film which asks where does money come from? Why have we got ourselves into the mess we're in? What is link between the money issue and environmental sustainability?

Fairtrade Fortnight - Windward Islands Farmers

Renwick Rose, from the Windward Islands Farmers' Association, at the Fairtrade Foundation Conference (19th February) on "The global food crisis and Fairtrade: Small farmers, big solutions?"

Veggie And Vegan Recipes

A diet which includes meat is responsible for annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to driving a mid-sized car for 3000 miles.

A vegetarian diet will generate 50% less emissions (1500 miles).

Going vegan (no animal products at all, no dairy, no fish, no milk) cuts the emissions released by around 87% (to the equivalent of driving just 391 miles).

Organic meat is nice and all, but an organic meat-based diet only reduces your emissions by around 8%.

You can browse some vegetarian recipes here, and some main courses that are vegan here.

From the two lists, the lentil-based recipes jump out: Red Lentil Balls and Spiced Lentils with Cucumber Yogurt.

Also read: 10 Surprising Reasons To Eat Less Meat

Transition Earlsdon - Food Ideas

I went last night to a Transition Earlsdon meeting on "local food alternatives." The guest speaker was Karen Leach, from Localise West Midlands. The meeting was surprisingly well-attended, about 11 people in a small room at Earlsdon Methodist Church Hall. Karen cited a number of examples (notably in Leamington, Stroud and Middlesbrough) of community-supported agriculture. We also talked about using street planters to grow fruit/veg, communal ownership of allotments and using barter to share the harvest. For a follow-up food event, we agreed to have a "seed swap" at 11am, on the 21st of February, at Cafe Desire (Albany Road and Broomfield Road). For more information (if you want to get involved), call Jo Rathbone on 02476 678735.

Cooking And Eating As A Family

Raymond Blanc is also the vice-president of organic gardening charity, Garden Organic, which is just east of Coventry:

"Creating a more caring family - and the best way to create cohesive families is by cooking and eating together - is more likely to create a caring society ... Food harvested and eaten in season tends to be tastier, fresher, more nutritious, supports local communities and, because there is plenty of it, is cheaper, he said."

Photo credit: Telegraph

Pilot Projects For Free School Meals

Green councillors in Brighton have won a vote to ask the Government for funding for a pilot scheme to provide all young people at the city's primary and secondary schools with free school meals. It would be a big help for low income families facing rising food prices.

Fairtrade In The Workplace

Salt, Bread And Heart Disease

Salt = heart disease. The Independent checked 84 breads made by Warburtons, Hovis, Kingsmill, Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury, Waitrose and Marks & Spencer. Warburtons bread has 20% more salt than Sainsbury's. Reducing salt in all our food (especially takeaways) is in our long-term health interest.

Ed Miliband's Shadow Minister

David Cameron has named Greg Clark as the shadow minister for "Energy and Climate Change" ... Clark was the MP behind the Private Members Bill to stop gardens being defined as brownfield land. He is also a former director of policy (2001-2005) for the Conservatives. I don't remember any ideas about feed-in tariffs and microgeneration emerging at that time. His assistants are Greg Barker (shadow minister for climate change) and Charles Hendry (shadow minister for energy).

Other items:

- If you're a roofer, you may want to check out Solarcentury's booth at Interbuild (the NEC, 26th to 30th October).

- UK consumers use food at a rate that represents six times more land and sea than is available to us.

- Sure, ID cars are going to be totally secure.

- Give coal the boot!

Finally, Help the Aged and FoE are taking the government to court over their fuel poverty policies.

First Episode Of "Ministry Of Food"

A few reviews of "Jamie's Ministry of Food" in the papers this morning: Indie, Telegraph, and Times. The Sun has some sort of DVD giveaway from Oliver. There's also an in-depth article by Felicity Lawrence in the Guardian.

You can see the programme's website here.

Oliver has set up an information centre in Rotherham town centre (ironically, just beside Mickey D's), with demonstrations, recipe information, and cooking classes to learn the basics (frying, chopping, roasting).

We have an obesity epidemic, so it says something about the lethargy of the political class in this country that it takes a celebrity chef to start something like this up. Sure, he may not get 250 000 people in Rotherham cooking from fresh, but what if he gets 25 000 people cooking for the first time in years?

Tory Conference - Short-Sellers and Perks

New charges of cash-for-access-to-politicians, but it's the Conservatives this time.

The Tories have also taken hundreds of thousands of donations from people involved in the short-selling that has destablised the banking system. Paul Ruddock (Lansdowne Partners) donated over £210,000 since the start of 2006. His firm short-sold to drive down Barclays and Anglo Irish Bank share and is said to have made £100 million betting that Northern Rock would collapse. Michael Hintze (CQS Management) took out short positions on Bradford and Bingley. He has donated to the costs of running George Osborne's office. He's paid for two drinks receptions held by Cameron's office. His company has made loans of £2.5 million to the Tories. He has also supported David Davis, Liam Fox and Boris Johnson, and donated money to support the "childhood review" being carried out by David Willetts.

With all this fundraising talk, it's time to remind ourselves about the Midlands Industrial Council.

Andrew Lansley also presents the Tory plans for health at their conference today, but he's been criticised for backing down on the traffic light labelling guide which helps consumers easily avoid unhealthy foods.

Jamie's Ministry Of Food

"Jamie's Ministry of Food" .. or ... "How Jamie Oliver Realised How Non-Millionaires in Rotherham Live", Tuesday at 9pm on Channel 4:

"'I've seen kids in Aids orphanages in Soweto with better diets than that,' says Jamie after meeting Natasha, sitting in his Range Rover, clearly upset."

"Natasha's family never cooked, she never went to school much, therefore Natasha is bewildered by the kitchen and recipes if Jamie isn't there."

"She has no car and two kids, while the supermarket is on the outskirts of town and the takeaway is next door. She gets £80 a week and she's drowning in unpaid bills; she's got nothing left to sell, she's crying a lot and the kids want cheese-chips so she's bloody well giving them some."

"She's not a bloody idiot, she's just totally poor with no confidence. News just in: these two things are different."

"'The thing with you, Jamie,' another woman tells him, 'is you live in a bubble. You've got no bloody idea what it's like for us.' Well, if he didn't, it's dawning on him now."

"Backyard Sustainability"

Seasonal Recipes For Autumn

- honey-glazed pumpkin wedges
- spiced carrot and butternut squash soup
- stuffed mushrooms with cheese, honey and spicy kale
- pasta with pumpkin and chesnuts (you can substitute veg stock, and drop the bacon)
- honey-glased parnsips, buttered kale, and roast potatoes

Organic Veg Box Report

This morning, we received our fortnightly organic veg box -- 1 yellow pepper, 1 broccoli, 1 cauliflower, 7 potatoes (5 huge, 2 small), 3 onions, 9 carrots, 3 leeks, 5 tomatoes, and a bag of lettuce. That costs £9.95. We also order an "extra" each fortnight - 3 big mushrooms. We get ours from Flights, but Down to Earth here in Coventry do boxes for their customers.

Curriculum Packs And Nutritional Advice

£151 million for food technology" areas, a free cookbook for students to tackle obesity, and compulsory cooking lessons for all 11- to 14-year olds by 2011.

It sounds great.

But what Labour giveth on one hand, it letteth in the private sector on the other.

Labour hasn't taken action on a "range of potentially misleading claims and poor nutritional advice" contained in so-called curriculum packs sent to schools by food companies and trade associations ... advice such as bakers saying pupils should eat six slices of bread a day ... or the British Soft Drinks Association telling pupils that refilling water bottles was unsafe and "can lead to contamination."

The Department of Health, dieticians, and the Food Standards Agency have dismissed many of the statements as not based on independent evidence, as highly selective, or plain ol' misleading.

Christine Blower, acting general secretary, the National Union of Teachers: "We are concerned that children are not exploited or misled by marketing of food products which make claims that are at best ambiguous or open to interpretation."

Smart Food Packaging

Tim Lang has a good idea: food packaging that is embedded with computer chips to instantly link your mobile phone to an online sustainable food guide.

"Do I eat green beans from Kenya, because they are good for me, or do I say no because there are four litres of water embedded in each stem of green bean?" asked Professor Lang, from City University, London. He outlined a number of criteria that consumers should consider when buying food: how much energy and water are used to produce each calorie of food; what is the impact of the food item on climate, biodiversity, and the labour-force of the country it was grown in, and what are the health and financial costs of food.

Real Bread Campaign

After watching The Hairy Bikers start a new series on bread-making and cakes the other day, I've ran across news of the Real Bread Campaign.

It's a joint effort between Sustain and Andrew Whitley, an organic baker and author.

Britain produces almost 12 million loaves a day, but only 3% are produced by regional artisan bakers. The campaign's definition of "real" bread is bread made with flour, water, salt (not mandatory) and some yeast, either naturally occuring or industrial -- with no additives or added enzymes.

Most industrial bread is made by the Chorleywood Bread Process (CBP). Traditionally, most bread was fermented (allowed to rise) for many hours, often overnight. The CBP uses high-energy mixers and "a slew of chemicals" to make a very white loaf in double-quick time.

"In contrast, if you let dough ferment for long enough, natural and beneficial bacteria work to make the bread more digestible, nutritious and tasty. Most British bread is made too quickly for these bacteria to have a chance. Fermenting dough for six hours as opposed to 30 minutes removes around 80% of a potentially carcinogenic substance called acrylamide found in bread crusts, and long yeast fermentations conserve the highest levels of B vitamins in dough."

The Real Bread Campaign aims to inform people about the state of modern bread and where to find the real thing.

"It will encourage bakers to improve their methods and to reward (with new customers) those who are already making great bread. We'll be campaigning for honest labelling of all ingredients. We want individuals, schools and other institutions to make their own real bread ... It's even been calculated that making a loaf in a home breadmaker uses less energy than buying one in a supermarket. Bake your own and save the planet? I see the beginnings of a joyful and healthy domestic economy."

Five-A-Day Fruit And Veg

The average person in the UK eats less than 3 portions of fruit and vegetables a day, instead of the recommended 5. You can download a handy chart on what qualifies as a portion here.

The Times has a top 8 list of "pick your own fruit" farms.

For August, greengages, plums, early damsons, and blackberries are coming into season. Apricots, gooseberries, blueberries, cherries, loganberries, rasberries, peaches, and redcurrants are still in season.

Food Security And "Expended Energy"

This was a thought-provoking piece on BBC News yesterday:

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is about order; the Universe is inexorably heading to increased randomness and disorder. For practical purposes, this does not have to be a problem because we can increase order locally by hard work, by expending energy. But in the process we create greater disorder (heat and waste) elsewhere. If there is plenty of energy and plenty of "elsewhere", then we don't have to worry. Indeed, for our whole existence, we largely haven't worried; in fact the whole world order, built on trade and economics, hasn't worried.

A recent study looking at Nicaraguan coffee production and processing showed that the total energy embodied in coffee exported to several countries - though not all - was not compensated by the dollar price paid for that energy. Essentially, the conclusion was that the country is exporting subsidised energy.

The orderliness required to plant, grow, harvest, process, pack, store, monitor, administer, transport, display and sell the produce in a supermarket is simply staggering, and the expended energy intense. As an example, tomato production in the US consumes four times as many calories as the calorific value of the tomatoes created.

Surely at some point, let's say between $50 and $500 per barrel of oil, it no longer makes any sense to simultaneously export and import food high in embodied energy.