“On biting into a grape, the ancients did not know if it would be ripe or sour. The same was true, in my experience, as late as the 1990s. It was like grape roulette: a truly sweet one was rare and therefore special. These days, the sweetness of grapes is a sure bet.” In The Guardian, Bee Wilson begins with the story of grapes and expands to food in general. “We are now producing and consuming more food than ever, and yet our modern diet is killing us.” Good enough to eat? The toxic truth about modern food. “Millions of us enjoy a freer and more comfortable existence than that of our grandparents, a freedom underpinned by an amazing decline in global hunger … Yet our free and comfortable lifestyles are undermined by the fact that our food is killing us, not through lack of it but through its abundance – a hollow kind of abundance.” (This article definitely makes me wonder whether I’m really beating the system by regularly consuming a somewhat miraculous product called Cotton Candy Grapes.)

+ “The calorie as a scientific measurement is not in dispute. But calculating the exact calorific content of food is far harder than the confidently precise numbers displayed on food packets suggest. Two items of food with identical calorific values may be digested in very different ways. Each body processes calories differently. Even for a single individual, the time of day that you eat matters.” Peter Wilson in The Economist: Death Of The Calorie.