What’s really behind a medal anyway? I should know. I judge them, after all. Mostly for spirits and the occasional liqueur. I think it’s important that a medal should mean something. Something hard to achieve or that recognizes valour and effort. Sometimes I walk into...
Opinion
Every week The Feed interviews the movers, the shakers and the makers in the New Zealand food industry. Check out the interviews on The Feed Weekly podcast or in a Q&A format below. And if you’ve got a story to tell or an opinion to share, drop us a line at editor@thefeed.co.nz
It’s time to rethink how we grow and ship food
Alan Renwick, Lincoln University, New Zealand Supermarket customers around New Zealand are noticing gaps in the grocery aisles that have nothing to do with the global pandemic or Ukraine war. It’s clear domestic food supply chains have been increasingly challenged by...
Matariki: An Aotearoa New Zealand food story emerges
Lesley Chandra, head chef and owner at Sidart. It’s remarkable what just two years and a public holiday can do for catapulting an under-valued part of our cultural and food story into mainstream acceptance. We should be jumping and whooping from the rafters to see the...
‘A waste of money’ what the press are saying about the Countdown rebrand
News comes to us this week of Countdown’s plan to spend $400,000,000 rebranding their supermarkets as Woolworths, a name most of them were trading under as long ago as 2009. Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a rebrand for a company that has no meaningful...
How to grow apple trees underground – gene editing for climate change
In an ongoing series of profiles of science leaders from Plant&Food, Vincent Heeringa talks to Dr Revel Drummond If scientist Revel Drummond was in a television commercial, he’d probably reprise the role of Madge, the Palmolive lady: “GMOs? You know you’re soaking...
Not so cut and dry July
I don’t believe food virtue gets us anywhere when it comes to healthy dialogue or constructive conversation about the way we consume – whether it’s plant proteins, seafood, MSG or alcohol. It’s Dry July and the presses are pumping with stories about celebrities...
EatKinda eyes export as cauliflower ice cream goes bananas
Change It Up: In the latest of our innovation series brought to you by Everybird Coffee, Ben Fahy meets the couple behind ice cream sensation EatKinda Back in 2019, Rocketlab’s Peter Beck chided New Zealand entrepreneurs for aiming too small. Why just create a million...
The trouble with our food: an extract from Emily King’s new book Re-Food
We live in a world shaped by the spaces around us that are influenced by private companies and also the public sector. Food is a major part of this. Think of the places we buy our food. But there is a wider network of influences on us at play, and these come together...
Diamonds in the dirt: New Zealand truffles ready to shine
Truffles have long been known as the diamond of the culinary world due to their intoxicating aroma, their scarcity, and the extreme prices they can command. They are notoriously difficult to cultivate. Traditionally associated with France and Northern Italy, truffles...
Hamilton Gardens’ entrance fee will put Aotearoa’s culinary history behind a paywall
Hamilton City Council has announced that, as of next year, Hamilton Gardens will charge a fee of $20 for out-of-towners to enter the enclosed gardens. For readers not familiar with the world renowned destination, the enclosed gardens are where you’ll find superstar...
Can lamb fetch super premium prices? Headwaters reckons so
Change It Up: Headwaters is reviving an old project with its newly branded Lumina premium lamb. Ben Fahy profiles a transformative project in the latest of our Change It Up series, brought to you by Everybird coffee. Cast your mind back to 2006: Germany hosted...
Leaft Foods – the end or the friend of dairy?
They’re both in the white powder business. Both produce protein for export. And they both love occupying flat, rain-drenched New Zealand pasture. So is plant-protein pioneer Leaft Foods a competitor or a complement to the dairy sector? The irony of the question is not...
Digging up the past: what secrets lie beneath your vege garden?
We tend to look at our backyards as unremarkable plots of soil. Good for growing a bit of fruit and veg, a few flowers if we're fancy, a tree or two. Pakeha New Zealanders like me have a tendency to think of the land we live on as being a product of recent history:...
Pinoli Pine Nuts: a special company growing a very special nut
In the latest in our series, brought to you by Everybird, we meet the couple behind Pinoli Pine Nuts, the award-winning novel nut farm from Nelson. One fateful day, Andrew Wiltshire was looking around a block of commercial pine forest near Nelson when a colleague...
‘Glitch fruit’ and growing up: LILO ready to take their cheesecakes to the world
When a brand starts growing, it also needs to start growing up. A good idea at the outset might create the momentum required for it to take off, but that idea often needs to be refined, the right people need to be found and the right processes need to be developed to...
Getting fresh in the field: a day with The Fresh Grower
It’s a miraculously sunny Monday morning and I’m standing in a field in Pukekohe. No, it wasn’t a crazy weekend gone awry, I have purposely turned off the motorway to be here. In fact, I love the chance to don my gumboots and quite literally get out in the field. ...
Is a thriving alcohol industry compatible with Te Tiriti o Waitangi?
New research from the University of Otago suggests that New Zealand teens are drinking less than they did twenty years ago. While binge drinking is still prevalent, alcohol is no longer seen by young people as a mandatory part of their social lives. Perhaps older New...
Food is cheaper than you realise: but can it get lower still? With difficulty, says agri expert Aidan Connolly
Food prices seem high right now. And they are. But take a step back to look at the bigger picture and you’ll witness one of those chin-scratching miracles of industrialisation: the price of food has been falling steadily as a share of income since your grandad was...
The heartbreaking tragedy and unlearnt lessons of the annual feijoa glut
The world was a better place in late March. I’m not just saying that because I am temperamentally predisposed to believe that all things are get getting worse all the time and have been doing so forever. I’m not just saying that because it is colder now than it was...
Floods, pestilence, roadworks: how Cassia is defying the odds to bring us Sid’s iconic lamb chops
It’s worth enduring floods, a pandemic and a maze of orange cones just to try the lamb chops at Cassia, the Indian fusion restaurant by Sid and Chand Sahrawat. Flavoured with Goan spice and topped with cream cheese, the chops are a hit in a menu of bangers. Like all...
Top tips for not disgracing yourself this Mother’s Day
This Sunday, across the length and breadth of Aotearoa, children and partners will be getting up at the crack of dawn to prepare breakfast in bed for the mother of their household. The thought behind this ritual, I suppose, it that poor mum is indentured to prepare...