First up, setting the table with Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance, November 25:
Eat Less Meat Is Message for Rich World in Food’s First Net Zero Plan
The world’s most-developed nations will be told to curb their excessive appetite for meat as part of the first comprehensive plan to bring the global agrifood industry into line with the Paris climate agreement.
The global food systems’ road map to 1.5C is expected to be published by the United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization during the COP28 summit next month. Nations that over-consume meat will be advised to limit their intake, while developing countries — where under-consumption of meat adds to a prevalent nutrition challenge — will need to improve their livestock farming, according to the FAO.
From farm to fork, food systems account for about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions and much of that footprint is linked to livestock farming — a major source of methane, deforestation and biodiversity loss. Although non-binding, the FAO’s plan is expected to inform policy and investment decisions and give a push to the food industry’s climate transition which has lagged other sectors in commitments.
The guidance on meat is intended to send a clear message to governments. But politicians in richer nations typically shy away from policies aimed at influencing consumer behavior, especially where it involves cutting consumption of everyday items.
“Livestock is politically sensitive, but we need to deal with sensitive issues to solve the problem,” said Dhanush Dinesh, the founder of Clim-Eat, which works to accelerate climate action in food systems. “If we don’t tackle the livestock problem, we are not going to solve climate change. The key problem is overconsumption.”
The average American consumes about 127 kilograms of meat a year compared with 7 kilograms in Nigeria and just 3 kilograms in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the FAO data. The Eat-Lancet Commission recommends people consume no more than 15.7 kilograms of meat a year....
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And from The Guardian, November 26"
‘I slow-cooked the fox overnight’: my day living on foraged foodThe flavours are intense, our ancient ancestors lived on it, and it is remarkably good for you. But could you feed yourself on foraged food? Charlie Gilmour goes in search of herbs, berries, roots – and some roadkill…
I’ve been preparing this breakfast for days. Collecting acorns from the local park; rosehips from the graveyard; dandelion roots from the patch of weeds in the garden. It’s like the Mystery Box round of MasterChef, if the show was produced by squirrels. On the subject of squirrels, there will be more later.
Foraged food has been in fashion ever since eating began. It’s the diet we evolved on and, according to a newly published study, we should all be getting more of it. The study – organised by ethnobotanist and author Monica Wilde, in partnership with Zoe, the nutritional science company – challenged a group of 24 experienced foragers to spend up to three months dining like hunter-gatherers. The results? On almost every single measured health marker, the group showed dramatic improvements: the obese dropped kilos, blood pressures normalised, inflammation fell and gut biomes bloomed. But is it a diet any of us can hope to follow? I decided to try it for a day and see.
The rules are simple: anything growing – or running – wild is fair game. Mushrooms, hawthorn berries and sloes are in. Butter, eggs, cream, milk, sugar, coffee, pasta, rice, tofu, lentils and their ilk are all out. So, what’s for breakfast? For morning coffee, I roast and grind dandelion roots. They smell as fruity as the finest Ethiopian beans. They taste good, too. I have just enough to brew a single cup, which I savour while mulling over my mound of acorns. My stomach rumbles just thinking about them. I’ve wanted to try acorns ever since I was a child, reading the famously lush descriptions of meals eaten by the mice and badgers of Brian Jacques’s Redwall novels: acorn salad, acorn scones, soft acorn bread, acorn dumplings “with honeysuckle sauce” and, most intriguing of all, “devilled barley pearls in acorn purée”.
Raw, acorns are so bitter that if you tried to eat one, your tongue would writhe and curl like one of those fortune-telling fish. To make mine palatable, I’ve roasted them, shucked the nut meats and boiled them in several changes of water to leach away the tannins. That’s the first lesson. Wild food takes time. The second is: don’t expect it to look pretty. The hearty acorn porridge I opt for comes out as a grey and gloopy gruel. The taste is bland but comforting, like unseasoned congee. I’d eat it again, but only if I really had to.
As soon as breakfast is over, it’s time to start thinking about lunch, so I head out into the wilds of south London with a copy of Richard Mabey’s 1972 classic, Food for Free, in hand. He promises beech nuts, blewits and blackberries, but all I find are fag ends and fox turds. And what about protein? With no feral beans to speak of, realistically the only source is going to be animal. On my way to the station, I scan the pavement for roadkill, or a friendly pest-controller. City pigeons elude me, so I board a train to Kent, where I’m met by curly haired foraging instructor Michael White and his two lurchers, Willow and Vesta. White, 42, was one of the foragers in Wilde’s wild food study. Throughout its three-month duration, he dined like a medieval baron, tucking into rook, jay, magpie, woodpecker and even a fox.
“I slow-cooked the fox overnight,” White says as we drive along a country lane to a nearby wood. “It smelled like wet dog. Tasted like it, too. The dogs turned their noses up, which is never a good sign.” Mouse, on the other hand, he claims is very tasty. He recommends them spatchcocked, fried until crispy in venison fat, and then eaten whole, bones and all. “The only problem is that you need a lot of them to make a meal.” Reader, a word of caution before you run to grease your tiny frying pan. Some rodents carry diseases, such as leptospirosis, lymphocytic choriomeningitis, plague and typhus, and so should be handled in the kitchen with caution....
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Also at The Guardian:
Mushroom pickers urged to avoid foraging books on Amazon that appear to be written by AI
