Two very interesting reports have kicked off the year for anyone interested in food, health and sustainability. Which should be anyone who eats, really. The first was a piece of research from Otago University researchers, looking at the links between fibre intakes and health. The research found a link between higher intakes of dietary fibre…
It’s always interesting to look at food trend predictions, which come around every year telling us how and what we’re going to be eating in the next year. It’s fun to look back, too, to see which predictions have stuck. I remember when I was a kid being pretty keen on the idea of those…
“November means new potatoes”, as the catchy slogan goes, and that means lovely potato salad in all its guises. Traditional potato salad – dressing-heavy, gluggy, rich – leaves me a bit cold (pardon the pun). Those old-school potato salads – while they have their own appeal – to me don’t really celebrate the flavour, texture…
Two reports were released recently which should have sent us all into an urgent, we-have-to-do-something-now panic. The first was a warning from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says we’ve got ten years in which global leaders will have to make unprecedented action in order to stop the planet’s average temperature from rising…
Everyone has food blind spots; things they don’t go near or never cook, for reasons of fear, indifference, ignorance or simple bloody-mindedness. For me until about 18 months ago, gnocchi was on my list of blind spots, along with poached eggs, which I avoid cooking if I possibly can (I’m inexplicably bad at it) and…
How much do we care where our food comes from? If a recent survey by Consumer NZ and Hort NZ is anything to go by, we care a lot: around 70% of people agreed or strongly agreed buying NZ-grown fruit and veges is important to them. A slightly higher proportion (72%) agreed it’s important for…
Hash browns are one of the main reasons to go out for breakfast, in my opinion. Along with their crispy, crunchy, starchy friends: rosti, hash, bubble and squeak, potato fritters etc, there’s something magical about fried spuds in all their forms. It seems like as long as people have been eating potatoes, they’ve…
Last week came the news, widely reported, that humans love foods that combine carbohydrates and fat. My first reaction was that this seemed to come from the ‘no s—, Sherlock’ school of research. To be fair, this was a slightly new twist on it; brain research has shown our rewards centre lights up at this…
These days we are bombarded with so much information about what and how we should (and shouldn’t) eat. It comes from everywhere: mainstream media; social media; friends; family; strangers. There’s so much information; so much advice, that healthy eating has, it seems to me, acquired a veneer of difficulty. It can feel that if…
What are the world’s best potato dishes? Niki Bezzant asks in her latest Potato Chat Blog… I’ve written here before about the marvel that is the Tartiflette – an extravaganza of potato, cream, onion and garlic topped with a round of gooey washed-rind Reblochon, a cheese from northern France. At an event recently I mentioned…