Armed with Kraft Singles,
American mustard and
Heinz Ketchup, chef Dan
Hong will showcase his
cheeseburger spring rolls,
a Ms G’s signature dish,
at Sydney’s Gourmet
Institute event on 12 June.
harveynorman.com.au/
gourmet-institute26 GOURMET TRAVELLER
Changing climates
Is it all apocalyptic doom? A new look at
the future of food offers cautious optimism.Utah-based Wise Company produces emergency freeze-dried meals with a
shelf-life of 25 years. Its dishes last so long they’re apparently still edible after
centuries (although who will live long enough to test this theory?). The success
of the business is the starting point for Amanda Little’s new book, The Fate of
Food. The American journalist noticed the practice of stockpiling “survival foods”
was on the rise – not just among doomsday preppers, but among people like her
brother, a climate scientist, and step-brother, a Fortune 500 company executive.
“I’m fundamentally an optimist,” she says. “But I began to wonder: how
screwed are we, exactly?” The signs aren’t good, as evidence mounts of extreme-
weather events and declining farm yields.
Little sets out to investigate ways to reduce our carbon footprint, while feeding
a world population forecast to rise by a third by 2050. She tries different versions
of the Impossible Burger at the 2015 Climate Change Conference in Paris and at
the Silicon Valley lab where it’s made. The burger, a plant-based meat substitute,
uses about 90 per cent less land and water than its beef equivalent.
She sees promise in Jorge Heraud’s robots, which weed crops “with sniper-like
precision, by spraying tiny jets of herbicides onto weeds when they’re very young”.
This process could reduce agricultural chemical use by 90 per cent. And she
cites the visionary work of Kenyan activist Ruth Oniang’o, who calls for merging
old and new farming methods (crop rotation, compost science, using high-tech
seeds and tools) for greater effect.
Like Oniang’o, Little believes a variety of approaches will help us prepare for
the environmental pressures ahead. Maybe she can hold off stockpiling freeze-
dried meals – for now. The Fate of Food by Amanda Little (Bloomsbury, $29.99, pbk).Soft lambskin over-ear cushions and up to 23
hours of playtime suit long transits with these
limited-edition bronze-toned headphones.
Bang & Olufsen noise-cancelling Beoplay
H9i headphones,$840, bang-olufsen.comSullivans Cove
Distillery’s trophy
shelf just got larger.
The Hobart brand
won the title of
World’s Best Single
Cask Single Malt
for the second
consecutive year,
for a decade-old
cask of its French
Oak whiskey.
sullivanscove.com PHOTOGRAPHY GETTY IMAGES (CHANGING CLIMATES).