Parties make their New Year's resolutions
‘Tis the season to be jolly: to sing carols around the Christmas tree, eat your bodyweight in mince pies, and … trudge to the polling...
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Nick Hughes Freelance Writer & Editor
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nickjhughes
- Feb 22, 2019
- 3 min
Why the silence from the high-street health alliance?
Brexit is all-consuming. So say 32 food and drink trade associations which claimed last week their members have neither “the physical...
14 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Apr 20, 2018
- 2 min
The Great Fat Fight is back on
Ding ding! That was the sound of the bell ringing for the latest round in the great fat fight. Last year the bitter split in the public...
11 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Jan 19, 2018
- 5 min
Gove resumes reformist role
Love him or loathe him, one thing you can never accuse Michael Gove of is being a safe politician. Taken at face value (and more on that...
16 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Aug 7, 2017
- 3 min
Chicken dispute misses the point
It took what I like to refer to as ‘the yuk factor’ for food to finally feature in the public discourse around Brexit. The prospect of US...
21 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Jun 16, 2017
- 3 min
Election result spells chaos for Brexit
Spare a thought for the civil service. While Friday morning’s election drama was unfolding to widespread incredulity, the people charged...
8 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Apr 7, 2017
- 3 min
Foodservice shoots itself in the food....again
Another week, another shot across the bows of foodservice for its response to the obesity crisis. This time it was Public Health England...
14 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Jan 25, 2017
- 3 min
Redistribution is no solution to waste and hunger
The year 2016 felt like a breakthrough period for food waste redistribution. Greater public awareness of food waste along with...
29 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Jan 18, 2017
- 3 min
Leadsom battles with Brexit paradox
Listening to Andrea Leadsom address the Oxford Farming Conference this month it was hard not to feel a degree of sympathy for the Defra...
22 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Dec 19, 2016
- 3 min
What will Trump mean for food?
What will a Donald Trump administration mean for food and the environment? It’s a sentence I never anticipated having to write, but then...
19 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Sep 2, 2016
- 3 min
Reformer May fails obesity test
Theresa May responded to the collapse of BHS last month by vowing to reform capitalism. It’s taken a little over three weeks to discover...
16 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Jul 15, 2016
- 2 min
Ugly veg makes for pretty PR
Never one to pass up a PR opportunity, Tesco chose the second week of Wimbledon to publish a blog from its commercial director Matt...
10 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- May 26, 2016
- 2 min
Public the loser in foolhardy fat fight
Making healthy food choices is hard enough at the best of times such is the onslaught of messaging imploring us to choose one product...
8 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- May 13, 2016
- 2 min
Is it time to kick the tip into touch?
Conservatives are instinctively reluctant to interfere with the affairs of business; so it’s a sign of just how frustrated the Government...
3 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Apr 20, 2016
- 2 min
Is food up to the productivity challenge?
George Osborne is renowned for his ability to put a positive spin on the most ambiguous of statistics, but not even the Chancellor can...
6 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Apr 1, 2016
- 2 min
Unmasking the supply chain sinners
It’s a little over three years since the horsemeat scandal sent shockwaves through the food industry. But for all that ‘horsegate’ did to...
5 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Feb 12, 2016
- 3 min
Is this the farm of the future?
Nestled on the edge of the East Sussex village of Forest Row, hidden from the main road down a long dirt track, Tablehurst doesn’t...
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nickjhughes
- Jan 30, 2016
- 3 min
TTIP: Toxic treaty or free trade triumph?
As the frenzy builds around the upcoming EU referendum, a treaty with potentially just as significant ramifications for UK business is...
7 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Dec 18, 2015
- 3 min
Should We Stay Or Should We Go?
Europe: Should we stay or should we go? If we stay there will be trouble, howl Eurosceptics agitated by the unfettered influx of migrants...
2 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Nov 23, 2015
- 3 min
Knives already out for DEFRA shadow
To say the appointment of Kerry McCarthy as shadow DEFRA secretary of state received a lukewarm response from the UK food and farming...
2 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Aug 30
- 3 min
Nutri-Score is a pragmatist’s best friend
It’s the middle of August; peak holiday season, and in the grand tradition of national newspaper columnists I have managed to contrive an...
4 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Feb 13
- 5 min
Labelling landscape continues to confuse
Devising the metrics that underpin an environmental score for food products is a notoriously difficult task, although not nearly as...
4 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Aug 30
- 3 min
Nutri-Score is a pragmatist’s best friend
It’s the middle of August; peak holiday season, and in the grand tradition of national newspaper columnists I have managed to contrive an...
4 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Feb 13
- 5 min
Labelling landscape continues to confuse
Devising the metrics that underpin an environmental score for food products is a notoriously difficult task, although not nearly as...
4 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Dec 14, 2023
- 3 min
Investment in water can’t run dry forever
As I stare out of my office window (and defer writing this article for the third time this morning) the sun is streaming in through the...
10 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Aug 20, 2023
- 3 min
It's time we paid the true price of food
How much do you pay for your morning cup of coffee? Now let me rephrase the question: how much would you be prepared to pay for your...
14 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Jun 20, 2023
- 5 min
Comical food policy is no laughing matter
“The UK food system, the largest industry in the country by a country mile, is a puppet of a failing, shallow, ignorant and low...
7 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- May 12, 2023
- 4 min
Theme park junk food does little to amuse
Who is responsible for the UK’s obesity crisis? Is it we as individuals? Or does responsibility ultimately rest with governments and food...
12 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Feb 1, 2023
- 3 min
Bosses should speak truth to power
In the spirit of this post I will get straight to the point. I have a polite request to make of business leaders in the foodservice...
9 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Oct 21, 2022
- 4 min
Time for businesses to think big
It’s not often I read a book that stops me dead in my tracks but George Monbiot’s Regenesis proved an exception to the rule. In it, the...
5 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Sep 15, 2022
- 4 min
No time to stall on sustainability
The appointment of a new prime minister – and cabinet – brings a fresh opportunity for organisations to push their own particular agenda....
8 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- May 27, 2022
- 4 min
Vigilance needed to fend off food crime
Next year will mark the tenth anniversary of the ‘horsegate’ scandal in which horsemeat was illegally substituted for beef in a range of...
17 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Apr 30, 2022
- 3 min
Government must see past junk food chicanery
The cost of living crisis is biting and the statistics make for grim reading. Even taking into account measures announced in the...
6 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Dec 15, 2021
- 3 min
Johnson continues to swerve the pig issues
At least 16,000 healthy pigs have been culled and incinerated in the UK since the summer due to a shortage of capacity in abattoirs; yet...
13 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Sep 9, 2021
- 5 min
Will labour be Johnson's undoing?
As parliament resumed this week the prime ministerial in-tray will have been piled unusually high with issues of national importance. Any...
14 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Apr 21, 2021
- 7 min
Get real about the race to net zero
Has your business set a net zero target for carbon emissions? If the answer is no then there’s every chance you’ll soon be in the...
7 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Dec 11, 2020
- 9 min
Brexit: a giant leap into the unknown
So here we are: 1,635 days after the vote to leave the European Union and the UK’s future outside the world’s largest single market...
11 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Dec 4, 2020
- 5 min
Is blue still the colour of the food industry?
There was a time not so long ago when the food supply chain was largely gilded in Conservative blue. Farmers by and large have...
3 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Aug 6, 2020
- 5 min
Dimbleby keeps us waiting over food system fix
Those hoping for a 10-point plan to fix the food system will have been disappointed by Henry Dimbleby’s much-anticipated food strategy...
11 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Apr 6, 2020
- 3 min
Covid-19: Year dot for CSR
Corporate social responsibility has always been a difficult discipline to assess. Almost every large business will present to the world a...
7 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Mar 6, 2020
- 3 min
The price of ending foreign labour
Some years ago, after graduating from university, I spent several months working in a newly opened branch of Carluccio’s in Tunbridge...
5 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Feb 10, 2020
- 4 min
Unconvincing Villiers leaves more questions than answers
When she took to the stage at this month’s annual Oxford Farming Conference Theresa Villiers had the opportunity to set out a grand...
7 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Dec 6, 2019
- 4 min
Parties make their New Year's resolutions
‘Tis the season to be jolly: to sing carols around the Christmas tree, eat your bodyweight in mince pies, and … trudge to the polling...
15 views0 comments
nickjhughes
- Feb 22, 2019
- 3 min