Westminster's green evasion won't wash
It’s more than three months since UKIP swept the boards at the European elections and still the debate over our relationship with Europe...
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Nick Hughes Freelance Writer & Editor
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nickjhughes
- Aug 18, 2014
- 2 min
Waste not want not
I had a new experience when I dined out on Saturday night. At the end of our meal, the waitress at Richie’s Diner – a modest...
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nickjhughes
- Aug 7, 2014
- 2 min
Russia mixes food with politics
The news coming out of Moscow that Russia has banned food imports from certain countries, including the UK, is a reminder of how food can...
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nickjhughes
- Aug 4, 2014
- 2 min
The true cost of cheap food
Last night's Dispatches programme on exploitative labour practices painted another depressing picture of the price we pay for cheap food....
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nickjhughes
- Jul 25, 2014
- 3 min
Mind the gap
The publication of life expectancy data always makes for sobering reading and the latest release from the ONS is no exception. The most...
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nickjhughes
- Jul 22, 2014
- 2 min
Tesco going green with Dave?
My first reaction on hearing that Unilever's Dave Lewis is to replace Philip Clarke at Tesco was 'What does that mean for Tesco's...
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nickjhughes
- Jul 18, 2014
- 2 min
Owen, Owen, Gone!
If the horses and the badgers pushed him to the edge of the precipice it was the floods that finally swept him into the abyss. From the...
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nickjhughes
- Jul 11, 2014
- 2 min
What is UK food policy?
Trying to pin down the UK’s policy on food is a bit like trying to solve a Rubix's Cube with your hands behind your back. It’s a near...
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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...
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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...
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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...
3 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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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....
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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