Rob Percival

Enjoying international cuisines makes people more tolerant, UK study finds Frequent and varied eating found to reduce likelihood of perceiving immigrants as ‘cultural or economic threats’

the way to a racist's heart is through his stomach

www.theguardian.com/food/2025/oc...

Yes, and the food movement needs to confront it much more directly.

Tracy started down this path a while back. Completely out of step with the surrounding food movement, and very very ugly.

Revealed: ‘Chilling’ Surveillance of Activists by Meat and Dairy Industry The U.S. meat industry has engaged in intrusive surveillance of animal rights groups, including monitoring relationships between activists and tracking employees of leading charities. The industry-fun...

🔴 NEW 🔴

‘Chilling’ Surveillance of Activists by Meat and Dairy Industry

The Animal Agriculture Alliance, which briefs the FBI, has tracked over 2,400 individuals linked to animal welfare and environmental groups.

📝 @clarecarlile.bsky.social

Increasing inequality in agri-food value chains: global trends from 1995-2020 Agri-food systems are increasingly globalised. In the last three decades, as national food systems have become more interdependent, the distribution o…

We have this new paper, led by Meghna Goyal, which provides the first global view of inequality in the agri-food system. We find that agricultural production has increasingly shifted to the South, but income is increasingly captured in the North.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Junk food leads to more children being obese than underweight for first time Cheap ultra-processed food behind rise in overweight children, with one in 10 now obese globally, says Unicef

This from UNICEF: “the unethical business practices of the ultra-processed food and beverage industry undermine efforts to put legal measures and policies in place to protect children from unhealthy food environments”.

Same in the UK as globally.

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Second Norfolk megafarm blocked after legal pressure from campaigners | Sustain Another industrial-scale poultry development in Norfolk has been stopped in its tracks after failures to consider environmental impacts and flaws in the council’s decision-making process were exposed.

Second Norfolk megafarm blocked after legal pressure from campaigners www.sustainweb.org/news/aug25-n...

Huge impacts of UK pig and poultry farming revealed for first time | The Wildlife Trusts New report shows sector’s pollution harms rivers and wider countryside

Fantastic new report from Wildlife Trusts on the environmental footprint of UK pig and poultry farming.

🐔 1/3 of UK wheat is grown for feed
🐷 Annual waste = 4,160 Olympic pools
💧 Some regions face extra pressure on rivers and soils

Read more 👉 wildlifetrusts.org/news/huge-im...

I was shocked when I first saw these results from standard climate models used in IPCC reports: for high emissions, the Atlantic overturning circulation #AMOC shuts down in all 9 models that ran past 2100, and is well on the way to shutdown by 2100.
Our paper on that is out today.🧵

The benefits of #agroecology are not a notion but a fact!

✅ A meta-analysis of 170 studies, spread across 21 countries in Europe, highlights that agroecology increases #biodiversity in agroecosystems, soil C storage, and N2O mitigation

Paper is led by Cian Blaix 👉 doi.org/10.1016/j.ag...

#climate

Here, we estimate global numbers of wild-caught finfishes using FAO capture production (landing) tonnages (2000–2019 data) and estimates of mean individual weight at capture, based on internet-sourced capture and market weights. We estimate that between 1,100 and 2,200 billion (1.1–2.2 × 1012), or 1.1–2.2 trillion, wild finfishes were caught annually, on average, during 2000–2019.

At the global level fish and seafood products constitute the third major source of dietary protein consumed by humans after cereals and milk, representing 6.4% of total protein supply (19.8% of total animal protein supply), 1.4% of total fat supply, and 1.2% of total calorie supply.

This sounds insane to speak out loud, but is a real statistic:

The global seafood industry kills at least 1 trillion wild fish every year to supply 1% of the world’s food.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

But only so much one can say in a 600 word op-ed!

Yes, I know that's what the industrial meat people do. I've been far from silent on all that.

It's a 600 word op-ed, of course it's written in broad brush strokes!

Bye.

lol, okay Mike

Nowhere have I maligned plant-based products as 'bad'.

If you can't read beyond the headline, then I really can't help you.

Sure, here's what I wrote.

Hi Alexander. Nowhere did I claim that "all processed foods are alike". Or that nutritionally unbalanced minimally processed diets would be healthy.

(The opening paragraph is a bit loose, thanks to some creative editing by the Grocer - all I actually wrote was "Yes, minimally processed foods are better for your health." The rest is their confection.)

Nature knows best: processed food is bad for weight loss Nature knows best: minimally processed foods are better for your health and - surprise, surprise - processed food is bad for your diet, says Rob Percival, head of policy, food and health at Soil Assoc...

Yes, minimally processed foods are better for your health. The UPF lobby should accept the science, and commit to greater transparency on additives, sweeteners and processing techniques.

My @thesoilassociation.bsky.social op-ed in the Grocer. 👇

share.google/WFU1cHtWQeBY...

Lots to unpick on the 'healthy UPF' front as well. Plausible at a product level (or perhaps even a dietary level, for the purposes of a clinical trial), but creating a consistently healthy ultra-processed food environment? Very different (and arguably difficult) challenge.

Yep, the study challenges/contradicts the hypothesis that all UPF are intrinsically harmful (though this isn't the hypothesis actually being tested), while affirming that ultra-processed diets shape health outcomes for reasons which extend beyond nutrient composition (which IMO is really the point).

Bird Flu on Dairy Farms May Be Airborne After All Infectious bird flu virus was found in milk, on equipment, within wastewater and aerosolized in the air on California dairy farms

#FactoryFarming - its #biosecurity threat a further reason that it has to end

#H5N1 #PublicHealth #OneHealth
www.scientificamerican.com/article/bird...

Is anyone actually claiming/assuming that all UPFs are 'uniformly harmful'? (genuine question)

Revealed: How the Meat Industry Uses Environmental Groups to Make Beef Seem Climate-Friendly Expert says non-profit partners provide a ‘fairy dust’ of legitimacy to beef industry.

New at DeSmog: @rachelsherrington.bsky.social reveals how the meat industry might have teamed up with prominent environmental groups to convince consumers that beef can be "climate friendly," even as the industry's emissions of planet-heating pollutants increase. #climatechange

I'm talking to the study author later this week. I'll put your view to him (politely!)...

(which is interesting/worth showing, IMO)

I think that's a bit unfair. Energy density is very plausibly at play here, but UPF were sourced from retailers and representative of nutritionally improved ‘healthy’ UPF available in the UK - the study shows that UK dietary guidelines currently fail to adequately distinguish MPF form 'healthy' UPF.