Archaeology

Nibbles: Pretty, Peak soil, Wine history, Ancient foodways, Offal, Durian, Exotic plant foods, Cassava, Mozzarella, Nutrition report, Superfoods

Jules Pretty meditates on the impermanence of things.
Like soil. And bumblebees.
Ah, well, let’s not get maudlin. Pass the bottle. Well looky here. The French got wine from the Italians. I feel better already.
And Canadians had clam gardens a thousand years ago. Probably still do, actually.
Along with offal, no doubt. Which did not, however, seem to play any role in a recent Mesolithic dinner. Though French wine did. Which is weird.
The best fruit in the world gets the Kew treatment.
And is included in a weird list of the 100 weirdest food plants.
Cassava‘s pretty weird too.
The best cheese in the world is not French either.
All of which foods no doubt feature in FAO’s new report on nutrition. Which is really important, so don’t let the flippancy fool ya. The Lancet agrees. And you can do your bit too.
Ah, but does quinoa feature in that FAO report? The backlash continues…

Nice piece from NPR on the coffee genebank in Costa Rica and the importance of breeding for resistance to coffee rust. Where’s the diversity for that going to come from, you ask?
Weird piece from NPR on why humans took up farming. Hard to swallow.
At least in India and Uganda, men and women use trees differently, and have different access. Good to know.
“David Byrne receives national 2013 Carroll R. Miller Award for peach research.” Settle down! Not that David Byrne.

Genebank saves beer!
Not so fast…
So, lets get back to basics shall we, and the dawn of brewing, recreated (again).

Iron Chef edition:

Preserve Amalfi lemons. (No, not that kind of preserve.)
Ist International Quinoa Research Symposium comes to Washington. (No, not that Washington.)
Sago before rice in Ancient China. (A remark about sago being dessert isn’t going to fly, is it?)
Know your onions and, er, “make love to them”?

System of Rice Intensification increases yields, not incomes, because it takes time away from other jobs. Caveats apply.
Which does not deter Rajendra Uprety, an SRI activist, in Nepal, where rice farmers “hydridize technology”.
In reviewing the global march of GMOs, a plea for policies to promote “much more crop diversity”. Well of course we agree.
US food company executives fear “weather extremes” more than anything else in 2013.
The same fears may have driven Chinese people to food processing 23,000 years ago. A grind not being able to access the PNAS paper.