How can communities work together to combat the rising cost of living and reduce food waste?

bunch of assorted produce in brown wicker basket

With the cost of living rising and more people than ever forced to use food banks, are there ways in which communities can work together and support each other sustainably? Join us for a special discussion as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science in Northern Ireland. Panellists include representatives from food banks, community fridges and community gardens and the aim of the event is to outline what is already happening across Northern Ireland and to discuss what we …

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Post-Brexit UK Food Industry Is £2bn Worse Off…

spaghetti, tomatoes, basil

You may have noticed that there have been massive issues lately with supply chains. There was a certain amount of schadenfreude on social media about Wetherspoons running out of beer. Wetherspoons, whose founder Tim Martin strongly backed the UK leaving the EU, has been hit by beer shortages caused by Brexit https://t.co/gVoprpOOYF — LBC (@LBC) September 1, 2021 How much of this is due to Brexit and how much is due to the pandemic is hard to tell. What we …

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National Food Strategy Report – Food should make us well instead of sick…

Listening to BBC Breakfast this morning (other breakfast tv shows are available but my choice is the BBC, it’s the least bad option until Frasier starts on Channel 4) my ears pricked up when I heard the headlines “Tax on sugar, salt and GPs to prescribe fruit and vegetables!!!” I could feel the red mist descend as the conclusion that I nearly jumped to on hearing that headline was that the price of food would rocket and make life even …

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ESRC Virtual Festival – Creating a label to help us make more sustainable food choices…

Recent years have been a remarkable increase in interest in our environment. TV programmes such as The Blue Planet and Planet Earth have been credited as increasing our awareness of the environment and even changing our behaviour. From cutting back on meat consumption to ditching single-use plastics, many of us have changed our lifestyles. While there are many ways in which our behaviour affects the environment, the production and consumption of food and drink has a strong impact. Some estimates …

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ESRC Virtual Festival – Kids in the Kitchen: Now we’re cookin’

Childhood obesity has reached global epidemic rates and can have a detrimental impact on a child’s physical and mental wellbeing, with both dietary behaviours and physical activity levels being implicated in its rise. We have highlighted the importance of children and adolescents learning cooking skills for diet quality and cooking can be used as one method for changing children’s food behaviours. From a physical perspective, children may not be developing their motor skills (coordination of their muscle movements) at a …

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Anyone for carbonara?

I was never very good in the kitchen. Despite my own mother’s ability to magic the most wonderful culinary inventions out of a simple pressure cooker, her skills were sadly to remain in the annals of our family history, for they never arrived with me. These gastronomic inadequacies are never more apparent than when my now grown-up children return to the nest hoping for a bit of cosseting but never (ever) assuming it will be of the foodie variety. They …

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Baking in lock down, a welcome distraction…

I am not a domestic goddess. I have spent a large part of my life taking the handy way out of providing food for my family. I can cook and do a delicious Sunday roast, but I would never attempt to compete on Masterchef. Anyway, I like to do my bit to keep unemployment down and eat out when I can. My neighbour, on the other hand, is very much into home cooking, and baking in particular. I nicknamed her …

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Trading Partners Wanted: Looking at Georgia…

As it stands, Ireland’s largest trading partner is the United Kingdom. This has been the case since Independence although the balance has shifted greatly since Ireland entered the EEC in 1973 with the UK no longer wholly dominate although our reliance on the UK in certain sectors such as beef, timber, pork and much more. As Ireland’s reliance on the UK as a trading partner has diminished, it has been able to look to a wider market largely thanks to …

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Describe a great political dish … & win a pair of tickets to BBC Good Food Show in Belfast

Between curried yoghurt, the Speaker’s mints, Boris’ bendy bananas, the European funding gravy train and helpings of revenge served cold, politics and food never seem far away. Describe a great political culinary dish and be in with a chance to win one of five pairs of tickets for the BBC Good Food Show in Belfast Waterfront that can be used on Friday 14 or Sunday 16 October.

“The causes of these two problems are therefore likely to be different…”

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland is conducting further tests at two Irish meat processing factories following the recent identification of pig and horse DNA in a range of beef-based products.  The UK’s Food Standards Agency is also investigating further.  And there’s been a statement from the Northern Ireland Agriculture Minister, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill. Commenting on the Food Safety Authority of Ireland findings of horse DNA which been found in a range of meat products, Agriculture Minister Michelle O’Neill said: “I support …

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“In Ireland, it is not in our culture to eat horsemeat and therefore, we do not expect to find it in a burger…”

So, what did you have for dinner…  The BBC reports the headline findings of the snapshot survey by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland of some beef-based products on sale in Ireland.  From the BBC report Horse DNA has been found in some beef burgers being sold in UK and Irish supermarkets, the Republic of Ireland’s food safety authority (FSAI) has said. The FSAI said the meat came from two processing plants in Ireland, Liffey Meats and Silvercrest Foods, and …

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Irish fusion food for St Patrick’s Day

 For generations, the words “vegetarian” and “Irish” “were an oxymoron as a diet of choice as distinct from grim necessity . Today in a country where food standards have become more ambitious but remain notoriously uneven, Denis Cotter from Cork does the revisionist thing, to graft new ideas upon tradition for the Guardian.  In a country that spent much of the last few hundred years in poverty, it’s a bit rich expecting us to have concocted a food culture that would …

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YR Sauce coming back to a store near you, soon!

Well, it’s good news from Chivers Managing Director Liam O’Rourke, who’s written to Slugger explaining the current hiatus in the ‘food chain’ in Northern Ireland. Pending a new distribution deal covering NI and Britain, you should be able to ask your local shop to order it! From Liam O’Rourke The situation re YR is that we have the product in wide distribution here in ROI it is listed in every major store and most minor stores also. We purchased YR …

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