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6. FOOD

Last updated 27 July 2010

Honey bees are having a difficult time what with climate change and agricultural pesticide use and this is having an impact on the pollination of commercial crops, however, the public's interest in keeping bees is ever increasing. The Wychwood Project invited Shaun Morris to talk about the History of Bees in February. Add your name to The co-operative's petition calling on the UK Government to carry out a systematic review of the impact of pesticides on honey bees. Here are 10 ideas for you to TAKE ACTION about the problem. In October 2009, as part of Plan Bee, The co-operative presented a film called Vanishing of the Bees.

Have a look at the Wolvercote Farmers Market website for lots of interesting news and views about farming and local food issues.

Join the Oxford Organic Group who meet monthly on the last Thursday each month at St Leonards Hall, Eynsham. Non-members are welcome and can pay £2 on the door. They have had some interesting speakers including John Letts the originator of Oxford Local Bread and also Colin Tudge,the founder of the Campaign for Real Farming.

Food Inc is a brilliant new film about the food industry which was launched in February and shown at the Vue Cinema in Oxford. Dogwoof's Food Inc was nominated for an Oscar as best documentary. Food Inc was shown in Charlbury on Saturday 24 July 2010 at the Memorial Hall with a local seasonal meal beforehand provided by The Good Food Shop and local gardeners.

If you want some inspiration about what could be going on in Charlbury, listen to the BBC's Food and Farming Awards with introduction from the Prince of Wales. There are so many good ideas out there we could do some of them here. If you feel inspired after listening to this, please contact us. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall says the biggest heros are the people who grow their own fruit and vegetables and that people are moving to this in droves all over the country! HFW's Landshare project was launched last year, and Charlbury Sharecroppers is our local version of this - if you would like to grow vegetables and don't have the space then contact us, similarly if you have spare garden space and feel you might like to let some share it then please let us know to discuss it further.

Remember to celebrate Apple Day at Waterperry Gardens near Wheatley, where they are holding an Apple Weekend in October and  visit Wolvercote Community Orchard (opposite The Trout Inn), where they hold an Apple Day in early October.

2009 year was a bumper plum year rather than an apple year! Charlbury Sharecroppers picked mainly plums and damsons as well as eating and cooking apples. This year email info@cwag.org.uk if you would like to help pick fruit or if you have surplus you would like to give away.

Look out for and avoid palm oil in the food you eat. Palm oil plantations are fast replacing the natural rainforests of Indonesia - this has dire consequences for the Orang-utan and also for climate change.  Following Greenpeace's public campaign, Nestlé has agreed to the demands! and have come up with a comprehensive 'zero deforestation' policy to identify and remove any companies in their supply chain with links to deforestation, including the infamous Sinar Mas Group which is Indonesia's palm oil and paper giant. This plan still needs to be followed up with action, and The Forest Trust - an independent organisation - will be closely monitoring Nestlé's progress.  Nestlé, Kraft and Uniliver have all cut Sinar Mas out of their businesses but Burger King, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Pizza Hut are still involved - there's still a lot more to do before the destruction of Indonesia's rainforests is brought to a halt. Greenpeace have also actively campaigned against HSBC who were investing in the Sinar Mas Group but HSBC have now dropped all holdings in Sinar Mas from its global asset management groups.

TV and Radio Programmes about Food
Programmes to catch up
Love Food Hate Waste
Top Freezer Tips
Buy Local Seasonal Produce
Grow Your Own
Fair Trade
Fishing
Carbon Labelling

TV and Radio Programmes about Food

Lots of interesting programmes on TV and radio about food and agriculture. Repeats of some are available using the web links and the websites often have loads of the recipes too.  

Farming Today is on weekday mornings on Radio4 at 5.45am and on Saturday mornings at 6.30am. The latest news about food, farming and the countryside. On 1 December 2009 (10.30 minutes into the programme) Anna Hill talked to the scientist who has grown meat from stem cells in the laboratory for the first time. He says it could eventually reach the supermarket shelves in 5-10 years.

The Food Programme is on Sunday lunchtimes on Radio4 at 12.30pm. Sheila Dillon investigates aspects of the food we eat. Listen to the 2009 Food and Farming Awards for inspiration about what CAN be done. Also recommend the programme about Real Bread.

Costing the Earth is on Monday evenings on Radio4 at 9pm. Looks at man's effect on the environment and how the environment reacts, questions accepted truths, challenges those in charge and reports on progress towards improving the world. Often has topics about food and agriculature. A particularly interesting programme was The Great Mineral Heist which investigated the decline in crucial minerals in foods over the past 70 years. The higher yielding varieties that have been developed subsequently have a lower mineral content because the plants haven't at the same time been bred to take up more minerals from the soil, so the same amount of minerals are effectively diluted in the larger volume of crops.

Programmes to catch up

Jimmy's Supermarket Secrets - Crop to Shop on BBC 1. Jimmy Docherty explores the global logistics that bring fresh food from around the world to a shop near you, and uncovers the the science that keeps food fresh for weeks.

Jimmy's Global Harvest on BBC2. Jimmy Doherty sets out to discover if the world's farmers will be able to feed us in the future, he visits Brazil, Australia, USA, and Kenya.

The End of the Line on Tuesday 20 October on More 4 and Wednesday 21 October on Channel 4. True Stories presents Rupert Murray's acclaimed film of Charles Clover's book, which examines the consequences of unchecked, unregulated sea fishing across the globe, not just about the future but what is happening now.

Gone Fishing on Tuesday nights Channel 4 at 8pm and Sunday evenings on More 4 at 8pm. Follow Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on his journey to tackle the issue of sustainable fish.

River Cottage on Thursday evenings on Channel 4 at 8pm. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall goes back to both land and sea in search of an alternative culinary lifestyle. Hugh grows his own vegetables, fruit and herbs - and turns his hand to rearing stock and catching fish.

Jamie at Home on Sunday evenings on More 4 at 7.30pm. This is a repeat of Jamie's first series about growing and cooking your own food. The website has the complete first and second series available to watch again.

Economy Gastronomy on Wednesday nights BBC2 at 8pm. Top chefs Allegra McEvedy and Paul Merrett have devised Economy Gastronomy, a system to slash our food bills and eat better than ever before. The Economy Gastronomy system shows every household in Britain how to save time and money and still create amazing, flavour-packed meals on a budget.

Future of Food on Monday nights BBC2. George Alagiah travels the world to reveal a growing global food crisis that could affect the planet in the years ahead. With food riots on three continents recently, and unprecedented competition for food due to population growth and changing diets, the series alerts viewers to a looming problem and looks for solutions.

Blood, Sweat and Takeaways on Tuesday nights BBC1. Six typical young British food consumers go to live and work alongside the millions of people in south east Asia's food production industries. They must catch, harvest and process food products that we eat every day, seeing behind the scenes of the tuna, prawns, rice and chicken industries for the very first time. They eat, sleep and live with food workers in the poorest regions of Indonesia and Thailand, surviving on the same wages. The average wage for food workers here is around three pounds a day. They concluded that we only have cheap food in the UK because of the exploitation of the workers in these countries. Once they discovered first hand the hidden reality behind these cheap foods they began to campaign for consumers to become more aware and advocated always buying Fairtrade so that the outcome for the workers would be better.

Mud, Sweat and Tractors: The story of agriculture on Friday nights BBC2. Fascinating explanation of agriculture since the 1940s and how we have reached where we are now.

What to Eat Now on Monday nights BBC2. Valentine Warner's guide to seasonal cooking.

Nigel Slater's Simple Suppers on Wednesday nights BBC1 at 7.30pm. Nigel Slater demonstrates straightforward, down to earth cooking, filmed at his home vegetable patch and on friends' allotments. Each programme takes us through a week's worth of simple suppers.

Take Away My Takeaway about fishing off Iceland on Tuesday 10 November on Channel 4 at 11am. Dave Berry surprised teenagers as they waited for their evening takeaway meal. In a bid to offer them nutritional education, they were flown off to the country where their favourite food originates. This series was originally shown in 2008 and previous programmes can be watched again on the website.

Jimmy's Food Factory on Wednesday evenings on BBC1 at 7.30pm. Science series in which farmer Jimmy Doherty asks what really goes into supermarket food.

Dig In back for Spring 2010. BBC's campaign to "Grown Your Own Grub" with Nigel Slater showing how to cook them. The website has a downloadable guide and tips on growing tomatoes, squash, beetroot, lettuce, and carrots.

Love Food Hate Waste

• Every year in the UK we throw away £10 billion worth of food which could have been eaten. Love Food Hate Waste is a campaign from WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) which shows that by doing easy practical everyday things in the home we can all waste less food, which ultimately benefits our purses and the environment too. If we all stopped wasting food that could have been eaten, it would have the same environmental impact as taking 1 in 5 cars off UK roads. lovefoodhatewaste.com has lots of delicious recipes to use up leftovers, handy hints and tips for storing food to make it last longer, a portion calculator to help you cook the right amount, and information on what food date labels mean. There is something for everyone, whether you are a keen cook, or simply want to reduce the amount of food which you throw away.

• Don't be confused by Use By and Best Before dates on food. Use By is a safety date, it is for perishable food with an immediate health risk if it goes off, it is illegal for a retailer to sell food past its Use By date. Best Before is an advisory date set by the manufacturers to do with the taste and texture quality of the food and often has recommended storage conditions. Best Before dates are generally very conservative and food might actually taste fine several years past that date - check that the packaging isn't damaged and use your common sense to tell whether it is OK.  It is not illegal for a retailer to sell food (except eggs) past the Best Before date, but it is illegal to sell food that is poor quality. Eggs have a Best Before date 28 days after laying and it is illegal to sell them after 21 days after laying (i.e. 7 days before the Best Before date).

• Do you really need to buy it? The BBC reports that one third of the food grown for human consumption in the UK ends up in the rubbish bin, each adult wastes £420 of food a year. WRAP undertook a detailed survey of household food waste and reckon that if people stopped throwing out one third of the food they buy this would have the same effect on the UK's carbon footprint as taking 1 in 5 cars off the road. Stop being so wasteful with food, think twice before falling for BOGOF (buy one get one free) you might not be able to use that extra bag and end up throwing it out. The British Journal of Nutrition reports the total food and drink available for human consumption in the UK provides 3,100 kcalories per person per day compared with the recommended intake of 2,300. If you stop wasting food you will reduce your food carbon footprint and reduce your impact on global warming. Understand the food chain more and realise the true cost of wasting meat and dairy food.

• The most frustrating thing is that most of what we throw away could have been eaten – it's not just peelings, teabags and bones. The Love Food Hate Waste website provides delicious recipes to make the most of the food in our fruit bowl, fridge and cupboards, handy hints for storing food, surprising facts on what can be frozen and much more... there is something for everyone, whether you are a keen cook and organiser or more spontaneous. Visit Love Food Hate Waste for more ways to love food and reduce our food waste.

• The company Approved Food is the biggest online seller of clearance food and drink. They buy food at knocked-down prices from wholesalers, suppliers and supermarkets who are trying to get rid of food reaching the end of its shelf life, this means that it sells food past its best-before date. The company has been running since 2000 but hit the press in January 2009 because of its popularity in the economic crisis. A spokesman for the Food Standards Agency said best-before food would not be dangerous to eat. He said: "Best-before is an indication of quality rather than safety. Eating food past the best-before date does not necessarily put someone at risk from food poisoning."

• In June 2008, CAWAG launched Charlbury Sharecroppers to help put people in touch with each other so that locally grown food does not go to waste and so that as many local people as possible can be involved with growing, picking and eating fresh, healthy food. This will reduce food miles, reduce packaging and reduce food ending up in landfill.

• Tasty treats hit the streets - this was a series of cookery demonstrations during September and October 2009 which highlighted simple and tasty ways to use up leftovers with the aim of saving the average family around £50 per month on their shopping bill.

Top freezer tips from Love Food Hate Waste

• Watch Sue Perkins as she takes part in her very own Love Food Hate Waste Freezer Expedition discovering practical tips as she goes Sue says: "The freezer is just like a pause button to help save foods – it’s no longer a dark, distant place to me."

• Perishable food can be frozen at any point up to the end of the “use by” date.

• If you defrost raw meat and then cook it thoroughly, you can freeze it again. Just take care to defrost thoroughly and re-heat until piping hot.

• Freezing fresh foods and home-cooked meals is a great way to save food for later, sealing in the goodness until you are ready to eat it – freeze in portions or “meals”.

• Almost any food (including hard cheese, milk, mashed potato, bread, homemade meals and cakes) can be frozen – check the website for more information.

• Cooked food should be cooled before transferring into the freezer.

• It is safe to defrost food at room temperature, provided you intend to eat it as soon as it’s thawed. Or defrost in the fridge overnight and plan to eat within 2 days.

• Labelling and dating foods before you put them in the freezer will help avoid ‘UFOs’ in the future.

• You can prepare ahead for Christmas by parboiling your potatoes and freezing them.

• If you’re going away this Christmas don’t forget you can freeze any unused milk before you go.

• If you’re struggling to get your portions right why not go to Love Food Hate Waste and use their portion calculator to find out exactly how much you need to cook dinner.

Buy Local Seasonal Produce

• Buy local produce, particularly from Charlbury. Local produce involves less transport and less packaging - packaging in supermarkets is primarily so that food can be transported long distances. The Good Food Shop tries to source items locally - look out for the "Look for Local" stickers on food sourced within 30 miles from Charlbury, they are also a collection point for Riverford organic vegetable boxes. The Good Food Shop will also sell excess produce from local gardens - please phone Lynne at the shop first (811157) to discuss what you have and the price arrangement. 

• Visit the CAMRA award winning pub, the Rose and Crown and buy take-away real ales in 2 pint cartons that can be recycled as Tetra Paks. Buy Cotswold Lager from the Three Horseshoes and from Charlbury Farmers' Market.

• Reduce the food miles in your diet by buying local meat and growing your own vegetables. In Charlbury we can eat venison from nearby Wychwood Forest and local rare breed pork, beef and lamb. Read the article Local Meat and Two Veg published in The Charlbury Chronicle March 2009.

• Visit the Farmers' Market which comes to Charlbury every three months (2nd Saturday in March, June, September, December from 9am-1pm on the Playing Close). At the market, buy Halcyon Farm Honey, Lee's Rest Farm eggs, Cornbury Park venison which can also be bought from Densham's the butchers in Witney High Street, also Callow Farm meat from near Stonesfield.

• Visit the New Barn Farm Shop by the garage in Nine Acres Lane for local rare breed pork, lamb, beef from Conygree Farm (hung for 3 weeks), together with eggs, pickles etc.

• Buy whole lamb from Conygree Farm (01608-810250) where you can also buy turkeys at Christmas.

• At Christmas, buy your Christmas trees from the Halcyon Honey Farm on the Woodstock Road. Also think about have a reused real tree - Orinoco in Headington are selling last year's trees growing in pots, they cost £10 and after Christmas they will buy them back for £5.

• In December 2008,  all of Charlbury's shops and local market stalls were awarded the Oxfordshire Green Bauble Award for providing local facilities which enable Charlbury people to reduce their carbon footprint by shopping locally.

• 19 July 2009 saw the launch of The Big Lunch, an idea by the Eden Project to encourage local food and community spirit. Charlbury's was a Bring & Share Picnic which would have been on the Playing Close but the weather was awful and it was relocated to the Memorial Hall. Local food available in local shops was listed on the advert - the Co-Op sold out of Matthews flour before the event!

• Buy produce in season from the UK rather than imported goods which will have involved more transport and more packaging. However, as the Guardian reported in June 2007, the whole ecological footprint of what you buy is very complex. 

• November 2009 saw the launch of a new local food network in Oxfordshire buy-LOCAL Oxford (part of buy-LOCAL.net). This supplies a range of Oxfordshire grown or sourced goods, including pork, lamb and beef, fresh fruit and vegetables, artisan biscuits and chocolates and even turkeys. They deliver to your home on Fridays, the same day they collect from the local suppliers.

• Organic fruit and vegetable boxes can be tailored to your needs or ordered on-line from Chipping Norton Organics and delivered to your door in Charlbury on a Thursday. They have operated since 1992 and source as much as possible from the Vale of Evesham, any imported produce is carried by boat and not flown. Riverford Organic Vegetable boxes are also available from The Good Food Shop in Sheep Street.

• There are lots of benefits from buying local produce, research shows that for money spent on local produce stays in the local economy, so there is evidence that buying local isn't more expensive.

• Oxford Local Bread baked at Wheatley from medieval wheat varieties can be collected from various drop-off points around Oxfordshire (including one in Charlbury). Grains of wheat were salvaged from old thatched roofs and grown on over 8 years to get a commercial crop. Contact the Oxford Bread Group to find out more. Read about Oxford Local Bread in the Oxford Mail 29 December 2009.

• Worton Farms of Cassington have a farm shop selling their own organic fruit and vegetables and also have a stall every Sunday at Wolvercote Farmers Market held in Wolvercote Primary School from 10am until 1pm.

• Millwood Gardens - new market gardeners in Long Hanborough - sell their organic fruit and vegetables every Saturday morning from outside the Emporium at Eynsham.

• Eynsham have a country market every Thursday morning from 9am-10.30am at St Leonards Hall. They sell fruit & veg, home-made cakes, honey, eggs and some locally made crafts.

• September 2009 saw the Local Flavours Festival - a celebration of food and drink in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire and various events were held in Oxfordshire - look out for the festival in 2010.

• British Food Fortnight was from 19 September to 4 October 2009, and Daylesford Organic held a Harvest Festival on Saturday 26 September. Download a copy of “What’s British and in season during British Food Fortnight”.

Grow Your Own

• Local gardens could provide more food for more people. With the increasing cost of oil and food, there is nothing better than growing your own food, maybe you don't have a big enough garden to do this, maybe you have some space in your garden that someone else could use? Maybe you grow fruit and veg but let some of it go to seed, maybe you don't have time to pick it or you're on holiday just when it's ready for picking? Maybe you'd like to volunteer to pick fruit and veg that's going to waste? Register with CAWAG's Charlbury Sharecroppers who will put you in touch with each other. Check out favourite recipes from Charlbury residents and tips on what to do with apples.

• Save money on fertilisers by composting your own kitchen and garden waste and use it to grow your fruit and veg the following year.

• If you want inspiration about growing food, watch Gardeners' World on BBC2 on a Friday evening. Carol Klein's Grow Your Own Veg in August 2008 was brilliant. Look at Hugh Fearnley–Whittingstall's River Cottage website for why to grow vegetables and for ideas about what to grow in your vegetable garden. Also try the Seed To Plate website which helps you plan what to grow according to what you like to eat and what space you have available.

• With 60% of food being imported, the Soil Association recognise  that food security is a key issue for the nation and that more people need to grow their own food. In July/August 2008, Radio 4 broadcast four excellent thought provoking programmes called Our Food, Our Future which examined the impact of the global food crisis.

Fair Trade

Charlbury Fair Traders have a stall each week at St Mary's following the main morning service.  Anyone is welcome to call in to the church to buy things from 11am to 12 noon.  Alternatively you could contact Cara by phone (811284), they keep a stock of most of the foods available in the catalogue which Cara can also provide.  No postage or packing costs are charged when goods are ordered locally. There is also a weekly Fair Trade stall at the Friends Meeting House following the Sunday morning meeting from 11.40am until 12 noon.

Fishing

The new film The End of the Line was released on 8 June 2009 to coincide with World Ocean Day. The world’s first major documentary about the devastating effect of overfishing premiered at Sundance Film Festival. Imagine an ocean without fish. Imagine your meals without seafood. Imagine the global consequences. This is the future if we do not stop, think and act. 

Charles Clover's book The End of the Line can be borrowed from the CAWAG Bookshare Library.

The End of the Line film was shown on Channel 4 in October 2009 and can be watched again on the Channel 4 website.

The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) is the UK charity dedicated to caring for our seas, shores and wildlife. For the past 25 years, MCS has been campaigning for clean seas and beaches, sustainable fisheries, and protection for all marine life. They have produced a handy Pocket Good Fish Guide to help consumers choose fish from healthy stocks, that are sustainably managed, and caught using methods that minimise damage to habitats and wildlife - these pocket guides are available at all CAWAG events.

During September 2009, watch Gone Fishing on Tuesday nights Channel 4 at 8pm and follow Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on his journey to tackle the issue of sustainable fish.

Carbon Labelling

In August 2009, The Guardian reported that Tescos has launched a carbon label on its milk products - it is the first of 500 carbon labels they hope to put on their products by the end of 2009. Dairy cows are a significant source of methane (CH4) emissions, a greenhouse gas 23 times as potent a carbon-dioxide (CO2). Tescos chose milk because of its prominence on our breakfast table - so now you can munch on your cornflakes contemplating its climate impact.

Cadbury's has been working with its dairy farmers to reduce cow's methane emissions by providing guidance on what feed and management practices lessen burping!