Not for the first time, the US ambassador to the United Kingdom, Woody Johnson, last week insisted that the UK must lower its food standards if it wants to trade with the USA post-Brexit. In an article for the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Mr Johnson referred to our existing food regulations as coming from the “European museum of agriculture” before he put forward an unconvincing case for the virtues of chlorinated […]
So much of our food supply is controlled by huge agribusinesses and multinational corporations. As they have tightened their grip over the food industry, so they have become increasingly rich, influential and powerful. Their domination of the various processes that bring food to our plates means we have a food supply heavily reliant on monoculture (where vast areas of land are devoted to growing a single crop), supported by agrochemicals. […]
This is the latest in my monthly series of original recipes created for Suma Wholefoods: roast parsnip with cannellini bean puree and crispy lentils. It’s vegan, gluten-free and absolutely delicious. In this series of monthly recipes I use products from Suma’s extensive range of organic and ethically sourced products. The recipes will appear both here on my blog and on the Suma website. There are a number of different stages […]
Most informed scientific opinion now agrees that we are either heading for or already within the Sixth Age of Extinction. For us humans, as well as many other species, this could well mean terminal decline unless we dramatically change the way we live by embracing a balanced, sustainable existence. And of all the human activities that have brought us to the edge of this precipice, it is the way we […]
The recent appointment of a Food waste Czar is a belated recognition by the UK government of the need to tackle the scandal of food waste. According to WRAP, the organisation which campaigns on sustainability issues, each day in the UK we throw out a staggering 4.4 million potatoes, 20 million slices of bread, 1.2 million tomatoes, 0.9 million bananas and 0.7m oranges, to list but some. Globally, 1.6 billion […]
This recipe, for potato and mint pakora with spicy chickpeas has been created for Suma Wholefoods. I have been proud to have been associated with Suma since 2014, and I was delighted when Suma recently invited me to put our partnership on a more frequent footing by creating one new recipe for them every month. This series of new recipes, using products from Suma’s extensive range of organic and ethically […]
I do hope I can tempt you to try my new recipe, a wonderfully tasty vegan comfort food dish – bean and vegetable casserole with pistou. On the subject of succumbing to temptation, I believe it was Oscar Wilde who first said, “I can resist anything apart from temptation”. A recently published study suggests that this is a human failing we all share. Our inability to resist temptation is also […]
To kick off the new year on this blog here’s a healthy, quick and delicious dish of pak choi and broccoli with soy sauce and garlic. This is a time of year that is full of good intentions, when many of us making resolutions and many of those resolutions are about improving our diet. Whether you are someone who has signed up for “Veganuary” (a month of meat-free and dairy […]
I eat soup most of the year round, but during the dark, cold nights of midwinter it becomes more out of a necessity than choice. This seasonal, hearty and nutritious kale and sweet potato soup really hits the spot. All of the ingredients in this recipe are organic and free from artificial chemicals, which is more than can be said for much of the food we consume in the UK. […]
This week’s recipe is for parsnip, cranberry and nut roast, a delicious vegan alternative Christmas dinner. An enormous amount of meat will be consumed, and discarded over the Christmas period this year. Aside from ethical considerations about the slaughter of other sentient life, there is no doubt at all that our current levels of meat consumption are contributing directly to climate change. The government’s own Committee on Climate Change is […]