Listen, I don't want no trouble

There are 66 posts tagged: food & diet

The bubble tea bubble: 6 February 2024; Writing for BBC Worklife, Aysha Imtiaz seeks to explain Why the UK bubble tea market is 'special'. Except she doesn't really substantiate her premiss that it's special in the first place.
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The bad and the beautiful: 1 February 2024; For some reason, this appears under BBC Future, rather than BBC World's Table; BBC Worklife; or BBC Pimping, but Starbucks has a new coffee to keep you regular. Although a little more regular than some of its customers had bargained for, apparently. (poop)
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Of chocolate and vomit: 26 December 2023; British chocolate: you either love it or you hate it. Or you're indifferent. Or you've never tried it. I guess that covers the gamut of possible bases. Personally, I love Cadbury milk chocolate and caramel variants, and their creme eggs. (yummy)
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Feline peckish: 26 October 2023; Just when I thought my opinion of China couldn't go any lower, they pull a stunt like this. Police have busted a ring trading in cat meat for human consumption. The puddy tats were to find their way into pork and lamb skewers and sausages.
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Bringing home the bacon: 25 August 2023; A BBC News story on the arrest of a Canadian accused of assisting suicide, through the sale of kits across the globe, coyly referred only to them including a poisonous chemical, without identifying said chemical. Presumably, this is for our safety.
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Plan(e)t meat: 12 August 2023; Building on the slump in sales of Beyond Meat's plant-based non-meat products, Jemma Dempsey asks whether fake meat has passed its best before date.
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Vegans are cheap, except the ones who aren't: 8 August 2023; Beyond Meat describes itself as a leader in plant-based meat, which is misleading and oxymoronic, because its products aren't meat and meat doesn't come from plants.* The company's trying to make plants look like meat from an animal, without actually being meat from an animal. It's not unlike Dylan Mulvaney claiming to be a woman, simply by making himself up to look like one (kinda); the difference being that, while both are processed with additives to create an unnatural and pale imitation of the real deal, fake meat at least has some substance to it.
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One path to a meet-free diet: 28 July 2023; Bites from the lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum, have been linked to a surge in the number of Americans developing allergy to meat.
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Not all you can eat: 12 July 2023; Efforts to cut down on food wastage in China have brought some characteristically restrictive practices to Pooh's squalid shithole. Including limiting the number of dishes that can be ordered, and even needs-testing patrons:
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Pois(s)on stew: 3 June 2023; What are your thoughts on reading a link to A most perilous fish stew? It's gotta be something dramatic, like pufferfish. Right? The sort of thing that can only be prepared by specially-trained chefs, working in exotic, far-flung restaurants. Right?
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Fusion con: 31 May 2023; When travelling, I like to try local and traditional foods, as much out of respect as curiosity. Besides, you're more likely than not to get a superior dining experience.
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Chinese takeaway: 18 May 2023; Those of us who avoid the vapidity of TikTok will have been blissfully unaware of a ding-dong among its mouth-breathers over British Chinese food. Of all things. Fortunately, Anna Sulan Masing is here to fix that oversight and enlighten us.
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Men in hats: 13 April 2023; I've only visited Munich a couple of times, on business. So I haven't had the opportunity to experience Weißwurstfrühstück: white sausages, served with soft pretzels and sweet mustard, accompanied by wheat beer. For breakfast! But I have more chance of that than enjoying anything at Bacoa, so I'll take it.
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Basse cuisine: 21 March 2023; The BBC's home page teases The 'scandalous' chef the world forgot. Thus, Anna Richards' eulogy to Eugénie Brazier, the first person to be awarded six Michelin stars, was bigged up more than it could deliver. It ended up as interesting, could've been better.
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A splash of body odour: 6 March 2023; It's a fairly lightweight piece of 1200 words on (some of) the wonders of vinegar, which took only three of the BBC's crack(‑smoking) reporters to write. And Zaria Gorvett didn't mention veganism even once!
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Deep-fried anything: turning adversity into opportunity: 21 December 2022; On the death of Ali Ahmed Aslam, the Glaswegian chef credited with having created chicken tikka masala in the '70s, it comes to light that a motion calling for the dish to be recognised as a Glaswegian delicacy was tabled in the House of Commons.
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Health warning...or clever marketing?: 16 December 2022; It's a story that thankfully doesn't require mathematical dexterity, as Tiffanie Turnbull regales us over toxic spinach being sold in Australian Costco stores. The Riviera Farms baby spinach appears to have been contaminated with a weed that induces hallucinations.
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Beat the meat: 6 December 2022; After all the hype and excitement of vegan foods rising to the challenge of tasting like meat, the public's enthusiasm for fake meat is waning in both the UK and US. This appears to be at least in part due to consumers' cost-consciousness in the face of soaring food prices, coupled with Beyond Meat's failure to force the taxpayer or meat buyers to sustain its business model.
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Grazing grass: 16 November 2022; nu3—or is that nu³? I really don't know (shrug)—claims that their exotically-priced, flavoured protein powder is whey from 100% grass-fed milk.
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Bountyful: 3 November 2022; Confectionary manufacturer Mars Wrigley has announced an interesting social experiment. In the run-up to Christmas, some of its Celebrations tubs will contain no Bounty bars. According to a survey conducted by the company, around 40% of its customers hate the coconut monstrosities.
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Souper: 16 October 2022; Two spotty greebos protesting for Just Stop Oil threw what appeared to be tomato soup over Van Gogh's Sunflowers painting at London's National Gallery. This what appeared to be tomato soup wasn't just any old common-or-garden tomato soup though, but Heinz's cream of tomato soup. The very best of its kind. Fact!
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Beyond meatless: 14 October 2022; Beyond Meat, the company that—for unfathomable reasons—makes expensive plant-based products resembling meat, and whose CEO advocated higher taxation on real meat to make his company's products more competitive, is having difficulty in meeting its growth projections. Or in meating its growth projections hohoho! [tumbleweed]
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The mushroom hunter: 3 October 2022; Nancy Brophy is an author. Of sorts. But also a murderer. Definitely.
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Born-again omnivore: 20 September 2022; The COO of vegan food processor Beyond Meat, Douglas Ramsey, bit another man in an altercation, allegedly ripping the flesh on the tip of the nose.
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Allergic advisory: 23 August 2022; I saw this allergen advice on a bar of Jordans' Frusli—blueberry flavour, if you're curious.
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Rightsize me: 19 May 2022; A New York lard-arse is raising a class-action lawsuit against MacDonald's and Wendy's, alleging that their burgers are lacking in lard-arseness. Specifically, that the companies' marketing suggests that their burgers are 15% larger than they really are.
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Dietary habits of the twig children: 3 May 2022; BBC Future does science. Except, it doesn't really.
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It's not harmful if you treat it right: 27 April 2022; Purveyor of sugar-laden shit, Kellogg's, is taking the UK government to court, over restrictions on the display of nutritionally-deficient, obesity-inducing breakfast cereals in stores.
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Liver hard, die young: 20 February 2022; BoJo's bozos—AKA the UK government—are likely to drop plans to ban the import of foie gras, after several cabinet ministers raised concerns over upcoming dinner parties.
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Journalism or mental torture?: 17 February 2022; Writing for BBC World's Table—another entry into the BBC's pantheon of WTF? subcategories—Richard Morgan asks: Is America's best restaurant in Puerto Rico? It's one of those unanswerable questions, no doubt about that.
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Vegan meat: 28 January 2022; Writing for BBC Future, William Park explores a question that I suspect few have ever pondered: The reason some vegan alternatives don't taste like meat.
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The great egg race: 21 January 2022; Zaria Gorvett explores The race to make a multipurpose vegan egg, for the benefit of those of us who weren't even aware that such a thing existed. The race, that is.
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Me(diterranean): 17 January 2022; I've always been more attracted to the food of Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Greece than anywhere else. But it was only when reading of the Mediterranean diet today, that I realised its similarities to the one that I follow naturally when I just cater for myself.
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Chicken sausage rolls: 29 December 2021; My youngest doesn't eat pig, so I make these sausage rolls for her. And everyone else, since my wife and eldest prefer them to pork.
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Pizza the action: 27 December 2021; Today the girls decided that they wanted pizzas for dinner. My eldest's favourite shop-bought pizza is Trattoria Alfredo's Deliziosa Salame, from Lidl. It costs CHF3.75, for three medium-sized (25cm diameter) pizzas; that's £1.01, $1.36 each!
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Red wine and dementia: 9 December 2021; According to Dr Will Mitchell, there are 3 ways to kill dementia. So it's strange that he's only offering one here. But I guess we all have to start somewhere.
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It must be Thanksgiving: 22 November 2021; To celebrate Thanksgiving, BBC Food asks me How much do you know about American food? And presents a handy-dandy little quiz, to check whether I'm lying or not.
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All-we-can-afford-for-you-to-eat: 18 November 2021; An all-you-can-eat buffet in Changsha, China, has banned a food live-streamer for…eating all he can eat. The owner of the Handadi Seafood BBQ Buffet stated that Mr Kang was losing him money every time he visited.
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Tess Holliday's morning workout routine: 31 October 2021; Gotta keep training!
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Measure for measure: 21 September 2021; According to the instructions, 850 mL is equivalent to 1½ pints, and 425 mL is approximately ¾ pint.
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Pickled nothing: 29 August 2021; I've harvested so many chillis this year that I'm going to have to pickle some of them. I've never pickled anything in my life before now. Except, possibly, my brain and liver. (SMH)
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Meat (substitute) head: 2 August 2021; Ethan Brown, founder of Beyond Meat, is in favour of a tax on meat consumption. No shit, is he really? Who'd've thunk it?
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Mushrooms are tasty: 28 July 2021; Ina Garten (who?) is the Barefoot Contessa (who?). At least, I think she is.
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McRon: 24 July 2021; My eldest daughter asked me why I don't eat McDonalds'. I told her that, other than the food being shit, it's because I cannot abide Ronald McDonald. Which is true.
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Is there a dietician in the house?: 16 June 2021; A couple of idiots on YouTube, claiming to be dietician nutritionists, and spreading misinformation. Who knew? I couldn't watch the whole video, because their voices grated on my nerves.
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Is there a doctor in the house?: 10 June 2021; Ooooh, I've found another crackpot on YouTube. Aren't I lucky?
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Asparagus: too exciting for lawyers: 2 June 2021; Belgian lawyers discovered a six-step recipe for asparagus hidden within the French text of the nation's official journal, Moniteur Belge.
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Quinoa: 16 May 2021; Beyond subsistence, what's the point of quinoa in a modern diet? It doesn't taste of anything, let alone anything interesting, and you can't eat it with a fork. If flavours were colours, it would be something inoffensive and dull, like beige or pale-to-mid grey. Yet restaurants, bistros, and supermarkets insist on including it in salads, where all that it adds is bulk.
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You're gonna need a bigger loaf: 22 April 2021; …and a diet Coke.
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Durian Durian: 7 April 2021; I received a somewhat pedestrian unsolicited commercial email from Danielle Cwalinski today, advising me of the health benefits of ONE exotic fruit. And she doesn't mean Joe Exotic…BA-DA-BOOM-TSCH!
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You aren't what you eat: 25 October 2020; BBC Food asks: How can changing your food shop help biodiversity? The foodie droid starts with a little foreshadowing, before going into the deep dive on the dangers of your sustenance to the planet. You thoughtless bastard!
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Silly sausage: 21 October 2020; One of the, ahem, meatier subjects to be debated by the European Parliament this week is when is a sausage not a sausage?
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It's finger cleanin' responsibly good: 25 August 2020; KFC is temporarily shelving its finger lickin' good slogan, in light of the pandemic.
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Ratatouille tgtnoise: 23 August 2020; I tried the recipe for ratatouille Niçoise that was published on BBC Food and, while it was okay, it wasn't good enough. Perhaps that was related to some of the changes that I made to the published recipe, but I'm not convinced that explains all of the deficits from my expectations—and therein lies the rub, my expectations.
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Today I learned...: 13 August 2020; …not to trust anything you see on the silver screen. Again.
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Eat your heart out: 3 August 2020; One of the criticisms that's been raised against the UK Chancellor's August Eat Out To Help Out initiative is that it extends to junk food outlets. And some people are riling against the signal that sends, and the implications for Britons' waist-enhancement.
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It's a gas: 16 July 2020; We all recognise the dangers of global warming and climate change. Or, at least, those of us who're not Donald Trump.
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Cereal killer: 21 June 2017; In an effort to improve children's health, by fostering healthier eating habits, public health officials in Liverpool have named-and-shamed breakfast cereals with high sugar content. Among the shockers is the revelation that Kellogg's Frosties has the highest sugar load of all. Is this really news? Come on, you can see the bloody sugar on the flakes, it's the main attraction, if you're a kid!
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The Bear necessities: 11 June 2017; Babe and alleged actress, Alicia Silverstone, explains to PEOPLE Magazine that her decision to raise her son, Bear Blu, on a vegan diet was, like herself: such a no-brainer.
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Nuclear doughnuts: 4 October 2015; While on holiday in Portugal, my daughters have become accustomed, if not addicted, to Panrico Donuts [sic]. These things seem to have a shelf-life measured in millennia. And that's without refrigeration. God knows what's in them, but they must be packed to the gunnels with preservatives.
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Doner card: 27 October 2013; Kadir Nurman, a Turkish migrant to Germany who was credited with inventing the doner kebab, has died at the age of 80. Although grilled meat carved from a skewer was already popular in Turkey, Nurman added salad and served it in a flat bread; and thus was born a staple of fast-paced life in West Berlin, and drunken pub chuck-out time the length-and-breadth of England.
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Raspberry Pi(e) II: 28 March 2012; My youngest daughter, Emily, aged 5, came home from her Montessori pre-school. My wife asked her what she had for lunch, to which she replied: ham and raspberry pie.
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'Nutritious' has added sugar?: 19 January 2011; Apparently those mirthless buggers at the UK Advertising Standards Authority have upheld complaints about advertising by those frisky buggers at Coca-Cola.
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Apples 'n' Pears: 15 July 2010; The Bonkers Institute has concluded, from a survey of US fat ladies, that those who deposit their chocolate rations on their hips are more likely to have bad memories than those with wobbly bellies.
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I'd like a 'P' please, Bob: 20 April 2005; Strangely, I was looking for ways to make yummy processed peas, like tinned marrowfat peas, because we can't get them easily in Switzerland. During my research, I happened across guidance from the Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Health Organisation on processed pea standards. I kid you not.
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Vegetarianism as the moral high ground: 22 November 2004; This, on the IMDb boards, made me realise that there's more to vegetarianism than not wanting to eat something that had a face.
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