Nibbles

November 29, 2007

Unconventional wine-making

Grapes? We don’t need no stinkin’ grapes. To make wine, that is.

November 28, 2007

Bringing back a wild relative

Aurochsen. Tarpans. Nazis. Wait, Nazis?

November 28, 2007

Hittite plague explained

Hittites “used infected sheep as biological weapon.”

November 28, 2007

Record-breaking white truffle

A 1.5 kg white truffle has been unearthedÂ near San Miniato. It is a contender for world’s largest truffle ever.

November 27, 2007

Sacred cows

India has lost half its 27 cattle breeds?

1. Grinding, fermenting, and detoxifying our way to bigger brains — an anthropologist makes the case that food processing, historically women’s work, did as much for human evolution as the mammoth-spearing got credit for.
2. Speaking of transforming raw ingredients into something civilization-defining: a Japanese temple has been quietly perfecting vegan cooking for 700 years, no marketing department required.
3. Meanwhile in the Philippines, Naturland, the international association for organic farming from Germany, is linking up with Global Seed Savers Philippines, to help farmers get their hands on indigenous crop diversity before it disappears.
4. If you want to see what “future-proofing seeds” looks like at scale, the National Soybean Germplasm Collection just turned 100: a century of squirreling away soybean diversity, just in case.
5. Kazakhstan wants in on the squirreling too: plans are moving forward for a new genebank to safeguard agricultural biodiversity across Islamic Organization for Food Security member states.
6. The University of Reading is also 100, and in celebration scientists there harvested beans from its cacao collection (yes, it has a cacao collection) to make Britain’s first homegrown chocolate bar since 1932, a novelty act with a serious undertone: climate change is squeezing cacao’s traditional growing belt.
7. And in Italy, the squeeze is already showing up on the balance sheet: Parmesan’s “Fort Knox” — $350 million of cheese squirreled away as loan collateral — is feeling the heat, with rising cooling costs and falling yields rattling wine and olive oil too.
Published on August 16, 2026