What the experts say
Cider vinegar: the hipster’s choice
Pucker up, says Xanthe Clay in The Daily Telegraph: a shot of apple cider vinegar has become “this year’s avocado toast”. In the 1970s, the benefits of a daily dose of vinegar were proclaimed by “socks-withsandal” types. Now the practice has been revived, with proponents claiming that drinking vinegar promotes healthy gut microbiota and reduces “bad” cholesterol. And it has spawned a new generation of products, designed to tick “a lot of hipster boxes”: they’re marketed as alcohol-free “wellness tonics” and invariably produced by “local” artisans. I sampled a turmeric, ginger and horseradish one from The Bath Alchemist, which sells 240ml bottles of flavoured vinegars for £12.95. I’m not hardcore enough to drink vinegar neat, so I added a tablespoon to a glass of sparkling water – and was pleasantly surprised. A “savoury-sweet, mouth-filling revelation”, it was as “satisfying a flavour as alcohol, without the hangover or the calorie load”. And if it boosts my health, so much the better.
Reviving multisensory eating
Eating is the most “multisensory” of activities, says Bee Wilson in The Guardian – and yet today we treat it as though we were “sense-blind”. To tell if a piece of fruit is ripe, people no longer give it a squeeze: they check for the words “ripe and ready” on the label. Although our noses can distinguish fresh milk from sour, we prefer to rely on the use-by date. “We order groceries on a computer, or takeaways on a phone, and they arrive wrapped in plastic, so that we can neither smell them nor see them before we take the first mouthful.” According to food researcher Prof Barry Popkin, this sensory disconnect from food is the product of the “nutrition transition” – a phenomenon of the past half-century marked by a shift from meals to snacks, from savoury to sweet, and from local homemade dishes to homogenised, processed foods. This transition hasn’t been all bad – it has coincided with a fall in global hunger – but it has “ushered in a vast rise in the prevalence of diet-related diseases”. One way to counter its damaging impact is to reconnect with the basics of food, and trust our senses a bit more.
How to cut your food bill
With inflation soaring, how can we continue to eat well without spending far more, asks Ameer Kotecha in The Spectator. My first tip is not to fear the “yellow sticker and the discount aisle”: I’ve always relied on both. Of course, you’ll save money if you waste less. Instead of tossing out that piece of parmesan rind, pop it into a minestrone; use parsley and coriander stalks in curries and stir-fries; and turn stale bread into breadcrumbs – or a panzanella salad. Admittedly, this may be teaching “grandmothers to suck eggs”, but don’t forget the economies of bygone times – such as using tougher, less well-loved cuts of meat, and padding out expensive proteins with lentils or carbs. One way to make expensive ingredients go further is to choose big flavours: use extra-mature cheddar instead of mild, say, or “boisterous smoked haddock” in a fish pie. Modern technology will assist you in all this, whether it’s to find recipes that will use up whatever leftovers you have, or apps such as Too Good to Go, which allows you to “buy food – at a great price – from shops and restaurants that hasn’t sold in time and would otherwise go to waste”.