‘Food Glorious Food’ sing fellow inmates of the workhouse in which young Oliver Twist finds himself incarcerated at the start of the Lionel Bart musical of the Dickens' novel named after him. A half a century on, the same startling discovery seems once again to have been made by the tv chef who curiously also bears his name.

Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - Family Food 2007 is the latest in a series of annual reports published by Defra on food and drink purchases in the UK based on the Expenditure and Food Survey. The report presents trends in purchases by type of food and converts these into energy and nutrients intakes.

Alex Renton has deeply muddle-headed piece in the Graun today. His theme is food waste, but he simply doesn't know what he's talking about. the British food economy is not healthy today and we've only begun to feel the first tremors of world food shortages. We import 52% of our food; the figure seems likely to rise since, as the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (De...

People travelling outside the EU this summer can now easily check what food they can, and can't, bring back to the UK, with the new Food Widget - an online food travel checker launched by Food and Farming Minister Jane Kennedy.

Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - The annual 2008 edition of the Food Statistics Pocketbook provides a concise round-up of statistics on food covering the economic, social and environmental aspects of the food we eat (excluding agriculture).

At the Conservative and Labour conferences I spoke at events on the subject of food miles. The idea that consumers should pay great attention to the distance food has travelled from the producer to their plate. Food miles are one...

Tristram Stuart, author of a new book on food waste and a contributor to a special food waste issue of the Food Ethics Council’s magazine, said: “There are nearly a billion malnourished people in the world, but all of them could be lifted out of hunger with less than a quarter of the food wasted

The Food Ethics Council has established an enviable reputation for reflective thinking about the challenges facing the food chain. It is therefore interesting to read a report from its Business Forum about food security.The report points out that one reason that food security has risen up the political agenda is 'in part down to opportunism, as interest groups use a period of crisis to advance the...

But, the report’s authors claim, GM crops are adding to food insecurity because most are now being grown for biofuels, which take away land from local food production. Governments are stupid enough to insist that food be put into cars not people, therefore a method of food production has failed? For our next logical trick

The current crisis in the global food system, caused by dramatic price rises, provides an opportunity to assure long-term food security and avoid problems in future, argue three essays in the annual report of the International Food Policy Research Institute.