Collard greens are a kind of cabbage that grows as loose leaves rather than forming a tight head. They’re eaten widely in parts of Europe and in East Africa, but perhaps most strongly associated with the food of Black people in the southern United States. There are many mysteries surrounding collards, like how and why did they become so popular in the US South. To that can be added the recent discovery of collards in oasis gardens in Morocco, where again they are associated with enslaved people trafficked from West Africa. Bronwen Powell and Abderrahim Ouarghidi have done their best to unravel the mystery of collards in Morocco and how that may shine light on their place in Southern foodways.

Notes

1. Collard Greens (Brassica oleracea var. viridis) in the Moroccan Oasis by Bronwen Powell and Abderrahim Ouarghidi is published in Economic Botany. Fortunately, they also wrote about their work in The Conversation, which is where I first saw it.
2. If you want to see how they prepare collards in Morocco, Bronwen made a video.
3. While reading around the topic, I came across this lovely piece about food and belonging: Snow Falling on Collards.
4. Here is the transcript.
5. Banner photo of the Draa valley by Richard Allaway. Cover photo of collards by Jeff Wright.

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“Food has long served as an instrument of statecraft,” write the authors of a new paper, and it isn’t hard to find examples of food weaponised in international relations and between factions in a single country. It can foment strife, through tariffs and blockades, as easily as it can promote peace through food aid. At the same time, conflict has an outsized influence on food and agriculture, from the mythical salting of a vanquished enemy’s fields to the very real genocidal famines today.

While political scientists are well aware of the ways in which food and agriculture can be used to achieve strategic aims, agricultural economists have tended to take a narrower view, worrying more about the perceived inefficiencies of subsidising farmers. Marc Bellemare and Bernhard Dalheimer want them to expand their vision.

Notes

1. Marc Bellemare shared the paper on his website at The Geopolitics of Food and Agriculture.
2. Rather than list the many episodes Marc has helped bring to life, I’ll let you select the ones that interest you.
3. Here is the transcript, for which you can thank (and perhaps join) the podcast’s generous supporters.
4. Apologies for the rather banal cover art; abstract concepts are hard to illustrate, no matter how important.

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Trevor Warmedahl worked in commercial cheese operations large and small in the USA for about 10 years, becoming increasingly disenchanted with the uniformity of the final products and their dependence on purchased starter cultures and rennets. So he set off to learn about “other, older ways to go about the fermentation of milk and the care of dairy livestock and the making of cheese”.

That took him first to Mongolia, and another commercial cheese plant, but it was making the same, uniform, European-style cheeses that he wanted to leave behind. Nevertheless, that was the start of a six-year journey that he shares in his book Cheese Trekking.

Notes

1. You can follow Trevor Warmedahl’s continuing journey on Instagram and via his newsletter.
2. Cheese Trekking is published by Chelsea Green.
3. Here is the transcript.
4. Photos from Trevor Warmedahl.

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In the previous episode, Carl Ipsen explained how the EU regulations for extra-virgin olive oil include tasting notes, and that if an oil has any of the forbidden flavours, it cannot be classified as extra virgin. So I was very surprised to read (in an issue of Edward Behr’s Art of Eating newsletter) about oils being produced in Provence that go out of their way to develop some — but not all — of the EU’s “defects”. Just as with modern extra virgin, these old-fashioned oils rely on up-to-date equipment and the skill of the miller.

In this episode, the paradox of old-fashioned modern oil.

Notes

1. Old-Fashioned Olive Oil from Provence is the piece that prompted this episode. A few months back, Ed Behr had written about modern olive oil. Both contain fascinating tasting notes and more besides.
2. Here is the transcript.
3. I lifted some images from the Moulin Cornille website.

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Carl IpsenExtra virgin olive oil, as a formal classification, owes its existence to the disastrous state of Italian olive oil in the 1950s. At that time, esterification, a chemical process designed to extract the last drop of oil from the crushed olives, was permitted. It could also be used to extract oils from all manner of unlikely sources, and those too found their way into “olive” oil.

When extra-virgin was first codified, only around 20% of oil qualified. Today, you would be hard pressed to find any oil on sale that does not claim to be extra virgin. Is that any guarantee of quality? Not really, says Professor Carl Ipsen, author of a forthcoming new book tentatively entitled A True History of Olive Oil. In it, he traces the evolution of olive oil from its early role as a lubricant of industrial development, when less than 1% was considered edible, to today, when it is almost exclusively used for food.

Notes

1. Carl Ipsen’s website contains links to some of his publications, including From Cloth Oil to Extra Virgin: Italian Olive Oil Before the Invention of the Mediterranean Diet, the essay that won the Sophie Coe Prize in 2021.
2. Here is a transcript. Thank supporters of the podcast.

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Jan Dutkiewicz (left) and Gabriel Rosenberg

A lot of people who care about these things will tell you that the food system is broken. Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel Rosenberg insist that it is not. Bits of it may not work as well as we might like, but overall it delivers greater abundance, diversity, and nutrition at a lower cost than at any time in history.

They argue the point at length in their new book Feed the People! Why industrial food is good and how to make it even better. Dutkiewicz and Rosenberg write engagingly and the book is a good read. And for those bits of the food system that are not working so well, they offer plenty of evidence-based recommendations that could help fix them.

Notes

1. Feed the People! is published by Basic Books.
2. How the New Food Pyramid Fits Into the Broader Conservative Project is their nuanced look at the vexed topic of food guidelines in the United States.
3. Gabriel Rosenberg has a newsletter, The Strong Paw of Reason, and there’s more of Jan Dutkiewicz’s work at The New Republic.
4. Here is the transcript.
5. Banner photos of the authors by Tim Atakora and Harris Solomon.

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Bird’s Eye View of United States Penitentiary Lewisburg, PA

One of the things I found most interesting about the previous episode, Cooking in Maximum Security was that prisoners in Italy not only cooked pretty elaborate meals, but that it was their right to do so. The ability to make at least some food for themselves seems to be taken for granted among prisoners in Italy. Not so in the United States, where Hollywood has made us all aware both that food is often the spark that ignites a riot and that some prisoners can get away with cooking much more elaborate meals. It surprised Edward Hasbrouck too, who shared memories of his brief time in a federal prison with a friend we have in common. He agreed to talk to me about his experiences of food in prisons gained at Lewisburg Federal Prison in the early 1980s, long before ramen became the bedrock of prison food systems.

Notes

1. Edward Hasbrouck’s main website contains loads of information about travel and more besides. The non-profit he mentioned is Papers, Please! – The Identity Project.
2. I’m grateful to Peter Rukavina, who shared a link to Matteo Guidi’s episode, which is how Edward Hasbrouck found it and where he commented.
3. Here is the transcript.
4. Banner photo from an old postcard of Lewisburg Penitentiary.

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Matteo GuidiAn extremely unlikely source (see note 3) tipped me off to the existence of Cooking in Maximum Security. In some respects, it is completely ordinary; a book of recipes — Starters, First Courses et cetera — along with handy tips for making the dishes. In others, it is eye-opening, because all the recipes, and the inventions necessary to make them, were contributed by prisoners in Italian maximum security prisons. Not only that, but cooking is an essential and integral part of the prisoners’ everyday lives. Matteo Guidi, an anthropologist and artist who teaches in Italy and Spain, guided the process of compiling the book.

Notes

1. Matteo Guidi has built a website for Cooking in Maximum Security that gives a lot more information.
2. Matteo’s site has purchase details, but you might do better going directly to Half Letter Press.
3. It was Cory Doctorow’s fabulous Pluralistic that sent me in search of Matteo Guidi.
4. Banner and cover images by Mario Trudu, taken from the book.
5. Here is the transcipt.

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Miriam Laker Oketta, left, and Esnatt Gondwe Matekesa

I’m proud to revisit an episode from 2022, in which two country directors of the charity Give Directly told me how cash transfers in Rwanda and Malawi make a real difference to the lives of poor people there. The reason is Give Directly’s Pods Fight Poverty campaign, which aims to raise $1,000,000 for families in Rwanda. They’re more than 10% of the way there, and I hope this podcast can add to the total.

The reason I made the episode in the first place was to ask whether cash enables people to improve their food security and nutrition. As I heard, it does, which is why I am happy to be part of the campaign.

Notes

1. Please consider making a donation.
2. Miriam Laker Oketta and Esnatt Gondwe Matekesa both stressed how evidence guides Give Directly’s activities. The website’s section for research on cash transfers provides summaries.
3. The specific study Miriam Laker-Oketta referred to is Benchmarking a WASH and Nutrition Program to Cash in Rwanda.
4. Here is the transcript.
5. There’s a lot of economics literature on the problems of gift giving. Tim Harford offered some guidance.

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Luisa WeissIt can be hard to remember the food blogs of yesteryear, when everyone knew everyone and the actual recipes were usually easy to find, unencumbered by endless cruft. Luisa Weiss discovered blogs relatively early, and soon became one of the most-read food bloggers. She was also part of a lively, supportive community, regularly reading and conversing with more than 40 other food bloggers. One thing led to another and she found herself first in cookbook publishing and then with a contract to write her first book, a memoir with food. Two cookbooks followed. We met in Berlin to talk about all that and more.

Notes

1. Here’s a link to Luisa Weiss’ website.
2. She also, and this is both impressive and useful, managed to salvage all of the original The Wednesday Chef when it’s original host, Typepad, decided to close everyone down earlier this year.
3. Here is the transcript.
4. Banner image liberated from an archive copy of The Wednesday Chef.

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Robert Spengler IIISettled agriculture produced the food surpluses that enabled the development of civilisations. No wonder, then, that scholars have been keen to understand the origins of agriculture, as a way of starting to understand the origin of civilisations. The general view is that humans actively domesticated plants and animals, selecting the traits that made them more reliable producers of food. What if that’s all wrong? What if the traits that mark domestication are not the result of selection but instead an inevitable evolutionary response to changes in the environment? Changes wrought by humans, to be sure, but unconsciously and without any forethought.

That’s the central thesis of a new book, Nature’s Greatest Success: how plants evolved to exploit humanity, by Robert Spengler III.

Notes

1. Nature’s Greatest Success: how plants evolved to exploit humanity is published by University of California Press.
2. If you want more details but less than a book, Seeking consensus on the domestication concept by Spengler and colleagues is part of a journal issue devoted to domestication. There’s also the Spengler Lab website.
3. Here’s the transcript.
4. Image of a Neolithic sickle from the Museum Quintana

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