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Nick Hughes Freelance Writer & Editor
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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...
nickjhughes
Nov 23, 20153 min read
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10 Frightening Food Facts for Halloween
As associations go, food and Halloween go together like witches and broomsticks or vampires and blood. We light pumpkins in windows,...
nickjhughes
Oct 30, 20152 min read
4 views
0 comments
Milk crisis exposes tension in UK policy
The milk crisis rumbles on with dairy farmers converging on Brussels last month demanding an end to the collapse in the farmgate price....
nickjhughes
Oct 22, 20153 min read
4 views
0 comments
In the line of fire
Food and drink companies are no strangers to activist campaigns. From historical boycotts of Nestlé over the promotion of infant formula...
nickjhughes
Aug 13, 20152 min read
6 views
0 comments
What does a Conservative government means for food policy?
There’s been a discernible sense of euphoria emanating from Conservative MPs and their supporters ever since the party won a surprise...
nickjhughes
Jul 20, 20153 min read
2 views
0 comments
A divine intervention
I can’t claim to have read all 246 paragraphs of Pope Francis’s Encyclical On Care for our Common Home but I’ve read enough extracts...
nickjhughes
Jun 22, 20152 min read
3 views
0 comments
Think global, act local
Food has long since ceased to be a local business. Just as empires were built on commodities shipped from all four corners of the...
nickjhughes
May 13, 20152 min read
2 views
0 comments
Food politics – what the manifestos say about the parties
Earlier this week I spent a disheartening afternoon conducting an unscientific experiment on the manifestos of the three main political...
nickjhughes
Apr 22, 20153 min read
4 views
0 comments
The real price of our food
The price of food is big news right now. Food price deflation, along with a rock bottom oil price, is the primary reason why here in the...
nickjhughes
Mar 30, 20152 min read
3 views
0 comments
US blazes trail on sustainable diets
Intriguing news has emerged from the US where, against all expectations, sustainable diets have landed on the food policy agenda. By...
nickjhughes
Feb 25, 20152 min read
3 views
0 comments
Taxation – an important but complex measure
There are few more divisive issues in the world of food policy than that of taxation. For some people levying taxes on unhealthy or...
nickjhughes
Feb 11, 20153 min read
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The illusion of choice
The recent Efra Committee report on Food security: demand, consumption and waste made some entirely sensible proposals for enabling UK...
nickjhughes
Jan 26, 20153 min read
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Safety in Science
The European Commission is not known for its ability to unite public opinion and sure enough the EC was at its divisive best in November...
nickjhughes
Jan 16, 20152 min read
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New Year's revolution
During the past week I’ve attended two conferences, both of which shone a light on current blockages within food policy. Both the...
nickjhughes
Dec 19, 20142 min read
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Fat tax? Fat chance.
There’s precious little agreement on how best to tackle the scourge of obesity. Policy options put forward by various stakeholders range...
nickjhughes
Dec 9, 20142 min read
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The business case for sustainable diets
As someone working in food policy, I often find myself mulling over the question of who is responsible for making our food system more...
nickjhughes
Nov 24, 20142 min read
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To tax or not to tax?
Important news has emerged from Mexico in recent weeks where a pioneering soda tax has been in force for almost a year. The preliminary...
nickjhughes
Nov 13, 20142 min read
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0 comments
Crisis, what crisis?
The supermarkets are in crisis, or so the narrative of the financial press goes. To anyone familiar with the figures at stake such talk...
nickjhughes
Oct 21, 20142 min read
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Slow death of our living planet
In times of austerity, environmental issues have to wrestle their way onto the national agenda by any means possible. Protests and...
nickjhughes
Oct 2, 20142 min read
10 views
0 comments
Can the public sector do sustainable procurement?
The supply chains of the major supermarkets are under near constant scrutiny by the media, NGOs and consumers. Rightly so, as between...
nickjhughes
Sep 15, 20142 min read
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0 comments
Diet focus can be net-zero turning point
The publication of a plan for transitioning the food system to net-zero is a significant moment for the sector. Not for what the plan...
nickjhughes
Nov 20, 20244 min read
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0 comments
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...
nickjhughes
Aug 30, 20243 min read
7 views
0 comments
Diet focus can be net-zero turning point
The publication of a plan for transitioning the food system to net-zero is a significant moment for the sector. Not for what the plan...
Nov 20, 20244 min read
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...
Aug 30, 20243 min read
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...
Feb 13, 20245 min read
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...
Dec 14, 20233 min read
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...
Aug 20, 20233 min read
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...
Jun 20, 20235 min read
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...
May 12, 20234 min read
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...
Feb 1, 20233 min read
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...
Oct 21, 20224 min read
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....
Sep 15, 20224 min read
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...
May 27, 20224 min read
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...
Apr 30, 20223 min read
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...
Dec 15, 20213 min read
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...
Sep 9, 20215 min read
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...
Apr 21, 20217 min read
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...
Dec 11, 20209 min read
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...
Dec 4, 20205 min read
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...
Aug 6, 20205 min read
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...
Apr 6, 20203 min read
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...
Mar 6, 20203 min read
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...
Feb 10, 20204 min read
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...
Dec 6, 20194 min read
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...
Feb 22, 20193 min read
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...
Apr 20, 20182 min read
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...
Jan 19, 20185 min read
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...
Aug 7, 20173 min read
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...
Jun 16, 20173 min read
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...
Apr 7, 20173 min read
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...
Jan 25, 20173 min read
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...
Jan 18, 20173 min read
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...
Dec 19, 20163 min read
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...
Sep 2, 20163 min read
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...
Jul 15, 20162 min read
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...
May 26, 20162 min read
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...
May 13, 20162 min read
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...
Apr 20, 20162 min read
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...
Apr 1, 20162 min read
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...
Feb 12, 20163 min read
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...
Jan 30, 20163 min read
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...
Dec 18, 20153 min read
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...
Nov 23, 20153 min read
10 Frightening Food Facts for Halloween
As associations go, food and Halloween go together like witches and broomsticks or vampires and blood. We light pumpkins in windows,...
Oct 30, 20152 min read
Milk crisis exposes tension in UK policy
The milk crisis rumbles on with dairy farmers converging on Brussels last month demanding an end to the collapse in the farmgate price....
Oct 22, 20153 min read
In the line of fire
Food and drink companies are no strangers to activist campaigns. From historical boycotts of Nestlé over the promotion of infant formula...
Aug 13, 20152 min read
What does a Conservative government means for food policy?
There’s been a discernible sense of euphoria emanating from Conservative MPs and their supporters ever since the party won a surprise...
Jul 20, 20153 min read
A divine intervention
I can’t claim to have read all 246 paragraphs of Pope Francis’s Encyclical On Care for our Common Home but I’ve read enough extracts...
Jun 22, 20152 min read
Think global, act local
Food has long since ceased to be a local business. Just as empires were built on commodities shipped from all four corners of the...
May 13, 20152 min read
Food politics – what the manifestos say about the parties
Earlier this week I spent a disheartening afternoon conducting an unscientific experiment on the manifestos of the three main political...
Apr 22, 20153 min read
The real price of our food
The price of food is big news right now. Food price deflation, along with a rock bottom oil price, is the primary reason why here in the...
Mar 30, 20152 min read
US blazes trail on sustainable diets
Intriguing news has emerged from the US where, against all expectations, sustainable diets have landed on the food policy agenda. By...
Feb 25, 20152 min read
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Nov 20, 20244 min read
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Feb 13, 20245 min read
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Dec 14, 20233 min read
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