Global Warming Warning

With food waste contributing directly to global warming the issue is becoming a two edged sword.

Species are becoming smaller as warmer and drier conditions affect early development and growth, according to Singapore-based scientists writing in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The scientists say average temperatures could rise by as much as 7C (45F) by 2100 but research showed that for every degree Celsius of warming, plants of various types shrank by up to 17 per cent and fish by up to 22 per cent.

The trend could make the Earth’s growing human population harder to feed and may lead to extinctions as ecosystems are thrown off kilter.

Smaller fish and crustaceans could affect the nearly one billion people who get their main sources of protein from the sea, warned the researchers.

And feeding the billions of additional people expected on the planet by 2050 will become increasingly difficult as crop plants are unable to grow as large in drier climates, they wrote.

The consequences of species getting smaller were ‘not yet fully understood but could be far-reaching for biodiversity and humans alike’.



Healthy or Not?

Food shopping is something we do almost instinctively. We don't have time to carefully consider every purchase every time, so we buy things we feel must be the healthier, without actually considering why.

Supermarkets rely on these instinctive purchases in order to sell us expensive 'healthy' foods. By falling for the healthy food myths, we are wasting a fortune at the supermarket and can actually be damaging our health.

1. Sea salt is better for us

Sea salt can be up to 20 times more expensive than standard table salt, and researchers for Which? found that a third of people think it's better for you. However, the same study, carried out alongside Consensus Action for Salt and Health (CASH), found that it contains exactly the same amount of sodium chloride - which is the stuff you need to worry about.

It has also been found that using flakes of sea salt encourages us to use more, which is even worse for us than a quick shake of 25p table salt.

2. Bottled water is a vital part of a healthy lifestyle

There has been a bit of an uproar recently because the EU has banned manufacturers of bottled water from claiming it can combat dehydration. The reaction has come from those who point out that anyone who has ever drunk water knows it helps with hydration. However, the scientists were concerned that the manufacturers were trying to imply that bottled water was more hydrating than any other kind - which they point out is untrue.

In fact, water is just water. You might want to filter tap water, but after that, you're pretty much drinking exactly the same thing. Of course your bottle of water might have a pretty picture on it, and you may have seen the adverts, but in the end it's still just water.

3. The premium rangers are healthier

In theory this should be true, as with more money to spend on the raw ingredients they shouldn't have to fall back on things like salt to improve the taste. However, things like more meat and more cheese in these products mean that this is not necessarily the case.

In reality it all depends on the exact dish. Take lasagne. Which? recently did a study looking into the healthiest supermarket options. It found some things did conform to the 'premium is healthier' stereotype, so the Tesco Finest Lasagne had a third of the salt of the basic one. However, one of the lowest fat levels it found was in Somerfield's Simply Value Beef Lasagne, with 1.8g of fat, compared with Marks & Spencer's Beef Lasagne with 9.5g

4. The 'healthy' ranges are healthier

Research by Which? has shown that there are plenty of instances where the healthy range is actually worse for you than the standard one.

Its study found Somerfield's Simply Beef Lasagne had less fat than its Healthy Choice Beef Lasagne. Meanwhile Waitrose's Perfectly Balanced Lasagne was higher in salt than its standard one.

Many snack foods are advertised or packaged as healthy options because they are reduced fat, low fat, lower fat, very low fat, light or even lite. But these marketing messages are meaningless, as they don’t tell you the actual fat or calorie content, or whether it is lower in fat than the ‘less healthy’ alternative. So you have to check that food label. For example, Tesco’s own brand digestive biscuits have 19.1g of sugar per 100g, whereas the ‘reduced fat’ option does have less fat as stated, but more sugar - 21.1g per 100g.

The answer, therefore, is not to take these things for granted. We need to be prepared either to cook from scratch or to read the labels beyond the brand message.



Congratulations

The latest figures from WRAP show how that the amount of household food waste has fallen from 8.3 million tonnes a year to 7.2 million. However, we are still throwing away more than seven million tonnes of food and drink away every year. The cost of which is still £12 billion as food prices have been rising. 

Back in 2006/07 we were throwing away over 8 million tonnes of food and drink a year, just from our homes, most of which would have been perfectly edible if only we’d managed it better. This has now reduced by around a fifth of all the food we buy, to 7.2 million tonnes!

The reduction of 1.1 million tonnes has saved councils up to £80 million a year by sending less food to landfill.

We still throw away enormous amounts of food and drink and due to the price of food going up it is still costing us £50 a month, around £680 a year for families or £480 a year for the average household!

The recession has of course helped. Shoppers are now more careful about what they buy and shopping lists are coming back into fashion with people actually sticking to them! Hopefully when the bad times end the good habits we are re-learning will continue as they did after the World Wars.



No such thing as a free lunch?

FOOD campaigners have hit out over the millions of tons of fruit and vegetables dumped each year — because they are misshapen. Supermarkets insist that shoppers will not buy them.

Campaigners say nearly 50 per cent of UK carrots end up in the bin and they claim the scandalous waste helps keep prices artificially high.

Food industry analyst Tristram Stuart said stores must start letting shoppers decide whether to buy wonky produce.

He added: "We've got to stop this madness. We must tell shops we want to buy good-tasting fruit and veg regardless of how it looks."

On Friday 19^th Nov 2011, campaigners will highlight the scandal by cooking a meal for 5,000 in Trafalgar Square using discarded fruit and veg.

The event will feature guest speakers such as Tristram Stuart, and activities including apple pressing and wonky veg sorting. You can even visit the enclosure of real waste-eating pigs!

Feeding the 5000 will show how easy it is to reduce the unimaginable levels of food waste in the UK and internationally, and how governments, businesses and individuals can help.



Welcome to the Anthropocene Era

As the human population of the Earth hits 7 Billion, welcome to the Anthropocene era. Scientists are no longer classifying our timescale on geological criteria but instead using the long-term alteration of the natural world by humanity.

We now occupy or manipulate most of the land in nearly every continent except Antartica and are steadily killing off or emptying vast tracts of the oceans. We appropriate anywhere from 24 percent to nearly 40 percent of the photosynthetic output of the planet for our food and other purposes, and more than half of its accessible renewable freshwater runoff.

Space is not the problem, we could all fit into Greater London with room to move. It is because our population is so large and growing so fast that we must care, ever more with each generation, how much we as individuals are out of sync with environmental sustainability. Our diets, our acquisition of new technology, our means of transport, and our urge to keep interior temperatures close to 22C no matter what is happening outside, doesn’t make us bad people, but the collective effect on our planet is simply not sustainable.

Action means doing a lot of different things right now. We can't stop the growth of our numbers in any acceptable way immediately. But we can put in place conditions that will support an early end to growth, possibly making this year's the last billion-population day we ever mark.

Simultaneously, we need a swift transformation of energy, water, and materials consumption through conservation, efficiency, and green technologies. We shouldn't think of these as a sequence of efforts, dealing with consumption first, because population dynamics take time to turn around, but as simultaneous work on multiple fronts.



www.whatsinmycookbooks.com



When was the last time that you searched through all your recipe books? Most people will have a couple of books that they flip through for specific recipes but who has the time to check a number of books for inspiration of what to do with your leftovers?

Whatsinmycookbooks.com is a search engine that works with your own book collection. Simple to use, you click on the books that you own to personalise your own library. Then type in an ingredient and it comes up with all the relevant recipes with the book and the page numbers of where to find them. All for FREE.

It really is a useful tool to make the most of cook books that have been sitting on your shelves, untouched and unloved, for too long.

Bid for your supper





Hopefully you are all saving the left over portions from meals and if they are not incorporated in the next day’s menu then they are being frozen.

So what to do with a family to feed and lots of individual portions?

Well, if you serve them up to people’s choice you have the extra work of the individual servings. Extra dishes to wash up, etc..

Probably there will be certain dishes that are more popular than others. This could lead to arguments.

So how do you come out of the situation on top?

Why not auction off the dishes in exchange for chores?

Write out a list of the food available and then take bids for each. Someone might be happy to clear the dishes and wash up for their choice. Another might be happy to sort out the recycling, mow the lawn or clean the windows.

You might find a regular weekly evening for leftovers?