I stand corrected.

Several New Zealanders chimed in overnight to tell me that in their part of the world “scone” is indeed pronounced as that which rhymes with “gone”. Reader Bronwyn (I love that name) says: Actually, scone rhymes with gone in a great deal of the English speaking part of the world. I.e., New Zealand and Australia, […]

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Just what is a “scone” anyway?

If you’re a Scotsman, you pronounce “scone” as that which rhymes with “gone”, not “bone” as most of the rest of the English-speaking world does. Does that really matter? Well yes, because scones are Scottish breads. Originally they were made from either ground oats or barley (definitive Scottish grains), though very few people eat them […]

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Request #8: Scones

Let’s face it, the scone is a British staple that’s been horribly abused in the America. Go to a chain bake shop, ask for a scone, and you’ll likely be handed a giant, thick-as-a-brick wedge of flour and (probably) shortening. Most often, they’re crumbly, dry and almost totally flavorless. No wonder Americans, by and large, […]

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“Dirt” Pudding?

I’d heard of it before, but until last night, when some friends dropped by for dinner, I’d never tasted any. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s one of those (very American) concoctions of pre-made storebought…stuff! In this case Oreo cookies combined with a whipped topping of some sort, blended with […]

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Neither left nor right.

Reader Lee writes in to say: I consider myself both a foodie and a lefty, but don’t think the two have anything to do with each other. I get annoyed by lefty types who view their essentially sensualist desire to eat well as some sort of political/social virtue; I get equally annoyed by conservatives who […]

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More Information

A lot of folks have written in to ask where they can go for more information on Food Inc.-related subjects. Meat and poultry producers have put up this site, safefoodinc.com as a rebuttal. Then for general reading there’s the Center for Global Food Issues. More as I find out about them!

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Reader Mike suggests…

Maybe next week you can talk about how to get the hornets back into their nest after you’ve finished kicking it! That would be germane, and the possible honey segues are obvious! You may just have an idea there, Mike. You may just have an idea…

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The thing to remember about Food Inc….

…is that it is trying to manipulate you. How? With lots of shocking images of industrial food production. They aren’t pretty, but then there’s no shortage of ugly things in the world of industry. Heck, there’s no shortage of ugly things in the world in general — one of them is blogging at you right […]

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In the end, it’s all about space.

The elephant under the carpet of the organic discussion is and always has been: land. There’s only so much of it on the planet we can grow food on. About a billion and a half sqaure hectares by UN estimates. That’s twice the amount of productive land that was being farmed 100 years ago, though […]

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The efficiency problem.

One of the things Michael Pollan tries desperately to do in his books (and I presume will attempt in Food Inc.) is to make organic farming appear more efficient than conventional or GMO. This he does through various argumentative tricks, some of which I listed below in the Bad Logic post. The reality is that […]

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