Hot on the heels of the Dallas Morning News, mighty NPR has a story about pecan prices and the insatiable Chinese. What can I say? I'm flattered, of course. And also smart enough to realise that my podcast with James McWilliams, author of The Pecan: a history of America's native nut, probably had nothing to do with it.

The Dallas Morning News is warning all good Texans that prices for their beloved pecans -- to make the official state pie, of course -- are likely to be very high this year. This would not normally have caught my eye, had I not earlier talked to James McWilliams about pecans and history. That wa...

The Committee on Food Security is meeting in Rome this week. I'm pretty sure nobody there is thinking about instant noodles. Perhaps they should be.

Because ...

Last year, about 100 billion packets and cups were sold, according to the World Instant Noodles Association—about 14 servings per person.

The idea of eating more of something because it contains some miracle active ingredient is a pointless waste of time. For one thing, it further medicalises our whole view of diet and health and plays into the hands of the supplement wallahs. For another, it denies the pleasures of eating a diverse d...

"Malthus is usually full of it," said an online friend and instead of walking quietly by, I plunged in. The conversation then went down paths as familiar as a night-time trip to the bathroom. He talked about birth control and food-production technology as "disproving" Malthus. I talked about primary productivity and long timescales and tried, unsuccessfully, to say that you couldn't disprove Malthus since the fundamental ideas are axiomatic. Population growth is -- has to be! -- exponential, although with very effective birth control the exponent can be close to zero. And food supply grows geometrically, even with fabulously advanced technology, because it requires surface area to intercept sunlight. As a result, population is bound to outstrip food in the absence of technological and behavioural change, the core of Malthus' argument.