Portside

Although you still can’t get a decent sandwich in space (who knew?), plans are underway to develop a special dough for low-crumb bread and an oven in which to bake it on the ISS.

Locol is a response to the challenge of food access in underserved communities in which issues of poverty, hunger and access to nutritious food are exclusively about race. But it is an imagined solution, designed to overcome the wrong threat. It is based on a dangerous minimization of the facts, lacking a larger racial analysis and the admission that racism, not some aberrant market failure, is the culprit in the deprivation of communities of color.

There are at least 200 compounds contributing to the flavor of chiles and they all have a different effect. Capsaicin is the most common, first to be discovered, and hottest of the capsaicinoid family, but every chile contains a somewhat different mix of capsaicin, dihydrocapsaicin, nordihydrocapsaicin, homodihydrocapsaicin, nornordihydrocapsaicin, and quite a few others.

This 13th centure cookbook of Syrian recipes shows us the opulent upper limits of the cuisine from those who cooked and ate it—chefs developing recipes, explorers discovering ingredients, the wealthy elite who demanded luxury and ingenuity.

Food Fraud 2017 highlighted just how serious an issue food fraud has become. It’s organised, criminal and widespread, but there are solutions that we must explore. Consumer trust in the food industry is on the decline in light of scandals such as the inescapable European horse meat incident in 2013 and melamine milk incident in China.These are two examples of what we call food fraud.

In the South, America has identified food-system problems and developed solutions. Today, as Americans agitate for food sovereignty, the bold agricultural ideas conceived in the late 1960s by Fannie Lou Hamer and other radical Southerners suggest paths for us to follow out of our food deserts.

A new proclamation by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture partially rolls back the stronger school nutrition standards in place since 2012, allowing states to grant exemptions for serving whole-grain rich products, and delaying any of the upcoming requirements to lower sodium levels until after 2020.

The latest entrant to the superfood contest is Brazilian açaí, a purplish, antioxidant-rich stone fruit — though most call it a berry — foraged from trees in the Amazon River basin.Surprising parties become heroes and scoundrels as the coveted berry changes hands in different ways. Global consumption has further increased demand, but because of the high value of good vibes, some superfood exporters have an incentive to hew to best practices.

For many in Mexico, cacao is more than just a bean. In its preparation, there is resistance, memory, rituals, identity, and friends and family

The author of The Potlikker Papers discusses paying down a debt to the black and immigrant cooks of the South, and what it means to be an active Southerner.