Measuring agricultural productivity is easy, right? Kilogrammes per hectare and you're done. But that's almost the least interesting thing the land is producing, or so I thought. Then a tweet passed my way yesterday.

Calories per acre - the new metric to follow.

I saw that because someone I...

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In the latest Eat This Podcast, Victoria Young talks about living with, and indeed enjoying, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet™. For those of you who don't know it, this is a very restrictive diet that people claim can reduce the symptoms of ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease and, with time, perh...

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Starch is not the first substance that springs to mind when someone mentions chili peppers. What one is interested in is capsaicin, heat. I mean, who cares about the starch in peppers? Linda Perry and her colleagues, that’s who, because by studying starch grains from chili peppers they have shown th...

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Spam is hateful stuff. It clogs up my email inbox. I have to scan that inbox and deal with it. I have to scan my spambox in case something meaningful accidentally ended up there. Despite the best efforts of my mail service, spam is both a time waster and deeply annoying, not least because it forces me occasionally to dwell on human greed and gullibility.

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With almost two years of regular podcasting under my belt now, three things emerge.

1. I really enjoy doing this. I would like to do it more and better.
2. Despite my love for the work, or perhaps because of it, a larger audience would be rewarding.
3. In the engine room, things need to change.

The three are, of course, commingled.

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