This piece in The Guardian caught my attention (you have to scroll down for the fruity part). Explaining the British love of the satsuma is another matter. Martin Dunnett, Capespan’s procurement director (the man, incidentally, responsible for the seedless lemon), suggests that it is a combination of our national love of a slightly bland, sweet…

It’s cruel and unusual punishment, I tell you. This evening TVB Pearl screened a program called “Cheese Slices”, all about cheddar cheese. Not the horrible mass-produced stuff you can buy in a supermarket, but the real thing made in a traditional way. They showed Jamie Montgomery making the cheese, and Randolph Hodgson from Neal’s Yard…

I recently mentioned one of the latest health scares, over farmed salmon. These type of stories appear regularly, and they intrigue me for a couple of reasons – firstly because you sometimes need to check who is behind the scare stories, and secondly because you can almost guarantee that another study will appear later that…

Having mentioned the Atkins diet on Saturday, I was watching a BBC documentary on TVB Pearl on Sunday night (“Fit for Life” I think it was called) where an overweight cab driver was trying the very same diet. I assume the reason he was featured was because his wife was a fitness instructor (and, yes,…

There’s an interesting letter in this week’s Spike magazine, responding to an article a few weeks back by Ross Edwards Marks extolling the virtues of the Atkins Diet. I have watched in amazement as the Atkins diet has become so popular and even respectable, even though it greatly restricts what you can eat and the…

According to a story in yesterday’s Guardian, scientists say that farmed Scottish salmon has dangerously high levels of toxins, and the advice is that most people should only it once every two months, and the more vulnerable should avoid it altogether. Wild salmon is OK, and fish from other parts of the world is much…