Eat My Globe

Interview with Historian and Author,

Eleanor Barnett

INTRO MUSIC

Simon Majumdar (“SM”):

Hi everybody. Welcome to Eat My Globe, a podcast about things you didn't know you didn't know about food. And on today's very special episode, we're going to be talking about leftovers in the way how we dealt with leftovers over the ages shows us how we lived our lives. Our guest today is Eleanor Barnett. She is a historian with a PhD from the University of Cambridge who currently holds a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Cardiff University. Her work uses food as a lens through which to access the daily lives of ordinary people – which we know about here because we do this for exactly the same reason – as well as wider cultural, economic, political and religious historical processes.

As History Eats, which is how I met her on Instagram, she posts daily food history stories, paintings and objects from across the world to a wide audience. And she is a regular contributor to other public facing media outlets. And she is also an author of a book, which is what we're going to talk about today. “Leftovers: A History of Food Waste & Preservation.”

So Eleanor, welcome to Eat My Globe.

Eleanor Barnett (“EB”):

Thank you, thanks for having me, very exciting. Well, as you said, I am a food historian, which is a real job. I work at Cardiff Uni and I have a PhD from University of Cambridge. My particular expertise in my academic work is the early modern era. And I use food as this incredible lens through which to view much wider processes of the era, like the reformation, colonization and globalization.

As you also mentioned, I do a lot of kind of media work as well in the history world. So I write the monthly food history column and recipe for BBC History magazine. And I run. . .

SM:

Oh wow.

EB:

. . . my Instagram account called History Eats where I share just anything to do with the world of food history every day. But yeah, my most recent work intended for everybody for a wide audience is this history of food waste. And Leftovers is my first book. And I hope it's this kind of fun but important look at how we became such a wasteful society that today throws away a third of the food that we produce globally.

SM:

And that's what I say about in the next, you know, when I start asking the next questions. You said, and this is extraordinary. You said, in the present day, food worth one trillion a year is wasted globally. While in Britain, each of our households will waste an average of around 500 pounds needlessly on edible food, costing us 13.8 billion on a national scale. So, what's the cause of this imbalance? You know, does it. . . . I mean, how do you get that much imbalance in food?

EB:

Yeah, it's crazy. So it's an interesting and it's a difficult question to look at really, because it depends on how you, how you measure food waste. So, and we haven't got the kind of global infrastructure to do that uniformly. So if we count in just literal tons, the highest offenders in the world are China, India, and then the US. China and India have substantially larger populations than the US. So, that says something. Food waste in households is, as you might expect, much, much higher in developed countries.

SM:

Of course.

EB:

But there's also a lot of waste that happens really, we should call it food loss, that happens before it reaches the consumer in production, farming, and so on. And that's much higher in developing countries, where they haven't got as much efficient farming and transportation technologies. So, food waste is this massive global problem in different ways in different countries. But I think it's also worth noting that quite often the food that these developing countries are producing for us in their farms is, is coming to the West. So it's kind of perhaps unfair even to measure it on a kind of country to country basis.

SM:

That's interesting. So I know we were going to talk about that later, but can you, you, you mentioned that food is you call it a numerous and a complex thing. So first, I want to talk about this in every country because we're not every country, obviously.

EB:

[Laughter]

SM:

But you talk about India and China and, you know, I. . . my father is. . . was Indian. And so, you know, I used to go there a lot and we went there fairly recently. And you see all the waste of food littered around the place. You see it a lot with food packets and all those. They're littered everywhere. And then I wanted to come here. So what is this, when you say numerous and complex, what are you talking about?

EB:

Yeah, so I think when I first started looking into the food waste, I just assumed it would be only looking at things like a half eaten sandwich that you're not interested in anymore. But when you start looking into the topic, it's much more complicated than that because it includes things that are food waste that's unavoidable as well. So things like eggshells or tea bags that just aren't, aren’t edible, of course.

SM:

I always say that whenever we talk about tea bags, I'm probably responsible for all of it because I have a huge amount of Taylor's Yorkshire Gold here. . .

EB:

Ooh, lovely.

SM:

. . . in LA that I have shipped in for, which is fantastic, but I have it shipped in. So I don't know how much waste that causes.

EB:

[Laughter]

SM:

But it probably does. Sorry, but that's just a little aside. But tell me about it because apart from me making a joke about it. It is a very. . . . It is a very complex thing

EB:

Yeah, yeah, and then you have things that are potentially avoidable, is their official category. So things like potato skins or bread crusts that are technically edible, but, you know, for cultural reasons, many cultures don't eat those things. So, yeah, at first glance, it's just looking at things that we might, you know, that we sort of lazily throw away, but it's actually much more complicated than that.

SM:

It's. . . which is really interesting. So it's good to understand that it's a. . . across a wide variety of things. And let's talk about the past because that's why we're here.

EB:

Mm.

SM:

And, you know, I start doing this, I started doing this series of things we've done nearly 100 episodes now, I think, no, more than 100 episodes.

EB:

Amazing.

SM:

In your book, you say that we look back on the past as if food waste kind of didn't occur, so we look back and we kind of don't think about food waste.

EB:

Mmm.

SM:

Can you explain what part of this is, you know, down to communication? What part of this is, you know, back in those days they don't have it between cities sharing the information? Obviously, it’s a. . . . But tell me why that is.

EB:

So yeah, I think this is where we're talking about how when we look back on the past, I think we kind of imagine this sort of artificial time when we all lived in harmony with the earth. You know, we grew our own food and it was sort of a closed system. And I think that's true to an extent, but I think the, again, it's a more complicated story than that. So there are parts of the story in the book, you know, like butchers throwing their offal into medieval streets that are not quite so, not quite so rosy. So, food waste certainly did occur in the past, but perhaps in a different way than today.

SM:

And so how did it, how did it occur, do you think?

EB:

Yeah, so, a lot of the ways is through, or one part of the story is the story of the rise of public health. So, actually mainly public health, like we know it today, that kind of keeps the food industry out of our eye line, our noses as well. It hides, you know, kind of butchering and things like that behind closed doors, that sort of a Victorian thing. So before then, you would have been much more used to seeing butchers and developing industries and they produced a lot of waste, smelly waste that they didn't have the infrastructure to kind of deal with in the same way that we do today. So, you do get waste being flung into the streets and things like that.

SM:

Oh, gosh. And the other thing, I know you were talking about globalization. I put it down here, the Colombian exchange, all of that. Did that bring about global waste even more? Because, you know, they're bringing over tomatoes from Mexico or wherever they're bringing them over, you know, wherever they're bringing stuff from.

EB:

Mmm.

SM:

And did this cause more waste when it came in? Did it, you know, the Silk Road, we went to the ‘Stans earlier this year to see what was happening with the Silk Roads and all of that stuff. And did all of that help or cause the problems as well?

EB:

Yeah, so it's another complicated one. So, in some ways, kind of the rise of the globalised food system that we would recognise today is a positive thing in terms of waste. So, one kind of clear example is when it's this is the 1870s onwards, we managed to invent artificially refrigerated ships. And that means that you can now ship your meat. . .

SM:

Yes.

EB:

. . . from mainly from entirely the other side of the world to Britain, so Australia and New Zealand. And that's a positive thing in the sense that over there they had an excess sheep population, which meant that they were literally just throwing away carcasses. They didn't, they didn’t have a use for them. So in that sense, they're able to save that meat and ship it across to Britain. And it means that by 1900, half of the mutton and lamb that's consumed in Britain is imported mainly from like I say from Australia and New Zealand. So in that sense it's positive but I think the answer is really that it's negative because of how it changes our relationship towards food. So whereas before people were very much used to growing their own food, you know, breeding nurturing their own animals and then finally bringing, bringing an end to that life you know looking the animal in the eye they wouldn't have wasted anything when it's suddenly this kind of pre-made thing that comes from far away that you don't have this connection to I think it leads to behaviors that mean that yeah we ultimately become more wasteful.

SM:

And, and I think that's really interesting. I mean, I always, you know, one reads about, you know, Mr. Pepys keeping his parmesan, you know, buried in his garden.

EB:

Yeah.

SM:

And I always think, you know, that's something that's brought from a long way away if you talk about the times. And even then, so we still had kind of global things being covered.

So let me talk about this because I wanted to talk. Years ago, many, gosh, 35 years ago, I used to work in a bookshop in London in, in Liberty’s. There was the Penguin Bookshop in Liberty’s. I went on to work for Penguin. And you talk about Elinor Fettiplace, which is a great book. And that was published by Penguin. And I've got a copy of it at home.

EB:

[Laughter]

SM:

So that's why I'm interested to. . . .

So you talk about in Tudor and Stuart times, you bring up the women. The role of women. . .

EB:

Yeah.

SM:

. . . during these periods to preserve food and avoid leftovers.

EB:

Hmm.

SM:

And you mentioned Marmalades and Elinor Fettiplace. I think I say I do have a copy of it at home, at home. Was it their role to kind of avoid leftovers by choice? And they, and that's when they started preserving things and there won't be anything? Or was it just kind of something to do during those times? Because. . .

EB:

Hmm.

SM:

. . . again, I'm talking about sugar and that was very. . . that was a very wealthy kind of. . .

EB:

Hmm.

SM:

. . . thing to have.

Was this to avoid leftovers by choice, like they wanted to preserve things or was it just kind of something to do during those times? So the richer people tend to do it because they had sugar and all of that.

EB:

Yeah, so that's, I mean, kind of going back to your last question, things like in these days, going back into the Tudor era, things like sugar, but also lots of fruits, oranges are expensive imports.

SM:

Yeah.

EB:

And in that sense, because they were expensive, unlike the imported meat of the Victorian era, relatively, they don't want to waste them. So, I think it's definitely not about kind of boredom or not having anything else to do. But it's I think another factor in why they become so invested in preserving their fruits and sugar concoctions is because of the joy that they had in growing and tending to the plants and the resultant taste that preserving would have given you. So, this is again, think back, this is a time when food is, you know, very much seasonal.

And if you wanted to have the taste of, you know, delicious oranges or whatever quinces that come into season in the autumn, you would need to preserve them to make sure that they don't go off over the winter. And then the other thing is that, yeah, it kind of develops into this culture among especially wealthier people who could afford the sugars to have these wonderful marmalades, jams, suckets, as they were known, which was slightly kind of more intact fruit preserves, again, through sugar, to serve them as part of a special banquet course at the end of a Tudor feast. So of course, this would have been an amazing time to show off your wealth and show off your skills in preserving and, you know, give your, give your neighbors, make your neighbors jealous about all the amazing food that you can have throughout the winter months.

SM:

So it all comes back to jealousy.

[Laughter]

EB:

[Laughter]

Of course!

SM:

I guess it does. But what other women would you have when you're thinking about this? Because you're obviously not just Elinor Fettiplace, who, like I said, I have the book. But what other women come to mind when you're thinking of this kind of this specialty . .

EB:

Hmm.

SM:

. . . . and preserves and things like this?

EB:

Well, I don't think there's any kind of one woman who sort of pioneers, I would say, in these preserves. But you just get lots and lots of manuscript, manuscript recipe books, which is what Elinor Fettiplace’s published version is published obviously much, much later, is originally a manuscript. And it's amazing to see these women, how absorbed in that world they are and they share recipes among themselves so it's kind of this sort of community of female knowledge. So it's only you do get male authored cookery books that kind of instruct women on how to do these preserves as well in that era but it's not until the late 17th century that you get Hannah Woolley who's the first female author who writes the first female authored cookbook in English.

But in the wider story of Leftovers, there's plenty of women who feature in the book. One of them who came to mind is Elizabeth Dubois, who in 1747 claimed to have invented the first ever instant soup, which was like a kind of early type of stock cube made by boiling down meat broth. . .

SM:

Oh, really?

EB:

. . . until it became jelly like. Yeah. But with all of these kind of claims to being. . . .

SM:

Oh, that's fantastic. I had no idea.

EB:

Yeah, yeah, but with all these claims to be, you know, the first, it's actually, there is a kind of a longer history of these more ordinary everyday women who have actually probably been making these preserves for, you know, decades, centuries, and, but we just don't have kind of access to, or they wouldn't have sort of publicized themselves until later on in the 18th century.

SM:

Wow, I love that. I absolutely love that. One of the areas that really kind of drew me in was a kind of righteous piety. You use that word in there. And I love this because I had, I was a, what's it called, an Anglican seminary student for a long time.

EB:

Right.

SM:

I went to university in King's College London to do that. But one of the things that most intrigued me was a form of righteous piety. How would you explain this? It's a form of social welfare.

EB:

Hmm.

SM:

Or I think it's a form of enslavement because they just wanted to push down the kind of the peasants, the serfs, whatever you want to call them. How do you find it?

EB:

That's a really interesting take. I think what I would say is thinking about this, thinking about the Tudor and the Stuart era, everyone was religious. You didn't have a choice really. You, you know, there wasn't really such thing as an atheist. And it was a time when people were debating the kind of ins and outs of Christianity because it was when the Reformation happened. England was transitioning from Catholics to Protestant. So if anything, this kind of religious lens on food for everyday life was kind of even hotter. And I think it's unsurprising that issues to do with food waste and charity were all understood in this way.

So you get, you know, people, everyone is taught from the pulpit and from the crown and you get the same attitude again in household guidebooks, recipe books, which you might assume would be secular. They all have this religious kind of undertone or overtone. So people were taught things like the feeding of the 5,000. . .

SM:

Yeah, no, no, definitely.

EB:

. . . when, you know, Jesus goes and mourns the passing of John the Baptist and this massive crowd, 5,000 strong crowd follow him. But he, they only have two loaves and five fish. Yeah, not five, yeah, two loaves, five fish. And he performs this miracle and he's able to feed everyone. And at the end of that biblical story, Jesus says to the disciples, something like gather up the broken pieces so that there be none wasted or something along those lines. So people are taught that. People are taught Dives and Lazarus, the story of the rich man and the poor man, when there's a rich man having this big banquet. And then you get the poor man sort of waiting for the scraps of the banquet that might fall from the table. The rich man refuses. And in the end, the rich man goes to hell and the poor man goes to heaven. So that kind of translates into a reality to a degree in the era. So you do get big, very, very wealthy households have orders to make sure that any leftovers are collected and the poor literally wait at the gates to get the leftovers. But it's. . . . Yeah, it's a time when there's still a lot, a lot, lot of inequality between the rich and the poor.

SM:

That's really interesting how they use those. But they use leftovers in a kind of semi-political way. . .

EB:

Mm-hmm.

SM:

. . . I think, as well as being food going to people who needs, need it. Certainly that's how I feel, but I don't know how. When you go to the Elizabethan period, you say in your book, and this is, I found really interesting. Municipal authorities fought a relentless battle to keep the streets clean of food slops and animal innards and to banish the putrid smells that emitted to beyond the town walls. So we always see kind of that Elizabethan period as, you know, food slops dressed, you know. . .

EB:

Hmm.

SM:

. . . being in the streets and all of that. And that I always say people kind of got used to it.

EB:

Yeah.

SM:

Is this a fair comment? Because I don't know much about the Elizabethan period as well as I do other areas. So, is this a fair comment?

EB:

So I think yes and no. So I think it's really clear that the animal industries were much closer to people then than they were for the most part today, at least in the Western world, you know. People lived kind of sheets of jowl with, with pigs. And as the urban areas developed in that era, you do get lots of cases, like I kind of mentioned, of butchers flinging their offal into the streets, which obviously would have been very smelly. And there's one story that I love of in the 15th century, there are complaints from the friars because the butchers happened to be right next to the church and they're throwing their offal into the street, the only kind of alley into the church. So I just think it's a kind of funny image of them trying to go for a nice, peaceful prayer. And it's just absolutely horrendously smelly.

SM:

[Laughter]

EB:

And a fun fact that Pudding Lane in London, where the Great Fire of London started, is named after pudding.

SM:

Yeah.

EB:

Which means, essentially comes from a word meaning animal entrails, because the butchers were nearby. And, you know. . .

SM:

Yep.

EB:

. . . these are, there are complaints about this, obviously, for centuries, but even the accepted practices quite smelly and unhygienic or environmentally irresponsible from our point of view, which is that they were supposed to go and take it down to the Thames and throw it into the Thames. But I also think it's kind of, it might be surprising how, how our long ago ancestors were aware of these bad smells and that they wanted to get rid of them. So, you have orders because of all these complaints you have orders you know early in the medieval era of banishing butchers from town and city centers. You get people like famously William Shakespeare's father John Shakespeare who worked in the leather industry and he gets a fine in Stratford for throwing the kind of the bits of his leather working which of course you know it's from animals, animal skins. . .

SM:

Yeah.

EB:

. . . into an unsanctioned midden heap or muck heap in the town. And you get people being fined for letting their pigs and other animals, but mainly pigs, roam freely in the developing towns and cities and kind of feasting on, again, these kind of unsanctioned muck hills of waste that should be banished from outside of town centers to keep the smells and the, you know, disease away. And in fact, they actually, until again, late Victorian era, they actually think that disease itself is caused by bad smells. They thought their body was almost porous and that bad smells could kind of infiltrate your body and infect your body. And that's why you get, you know, repeat outbreaks of plague being blamed on bad smells from butchers. So they're certainly. . .

SM:

Oh

EB:

. . . it is a smelly time.

[Laughter]

But it’s. . . but they're aware that that's bad. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

EB:

. . . you know, and they do have laws, I think much earlier than we might assume to try and tackle these problems.

SM:

And here's another thing, which is just something that came into my head when I was reading this, but I know that pigs have been used as a kind of waste disposal.

EB:

Yeah.

SM:

They went in, ate the food and then. . . is that still kind of, was that something that you found when you were reading about Elizabethan times and times before, or is this just something I'm kind of thinking of?

EB:

No, definitely. I think actually, it's a kind of funny theme that kind of emerges, I think, throughout the book, a sub theme is the pig is mentioned throughout the centuries. And humans have developed this kind of symbiotic relationship with pigs, you know, I think it's at least 9000 years ago, where essentially, they'll eat anything.

So when as farming develops, they become this very useful way of getting rid of your food waste, edible but also stuff that might be inedible to us. And then of course they give you manure for the fields and ultimately they give you meat when it comes to slaughter time. And that was really this ritual event for those who in the medieval Tudor era who did have a pig in their household. It was this big ritual event in the autumn where they would slaughter the pig and they would make sure because this pig had been so much a part of their lives really that they would use up every last bit of that animal. So, you know, blood into blood pudding, preserve meats. . .

SM:

Yep.

EB:

. . . hams, bacons, heavily brined salt pork. You might fry up the innards straight away. You'd save the bones for brine. You'd render down the fat into a cooking medium. And then there are these wonderful paintings, some of which I share in the book, from the Netherlands, primarily, which show the slaughter of the pig. And then, you know, the adults are making sausages or whatever, dry meat in the background. The pig is normally being the carcasses kind of left there and it's collecting the blood. And then you see the little children in the front who are enjoying blowing up the bladder to use as a football or a kind of balloon. So they, they, yeah, it's sort of a closed system in that sense that they would use everything that they, that they could. And then as we kind of move through history, we see the development of larger scale pig industries. So kind of in the 17th century. So you get people keeping suddenly now hundreds of pigs in one area and feeding them off. For example, the distillers, they will feed them off the waste from that developing industry. So mulch and grain and yeast, things like that, with starch factories.

SM:

So that's why they often had pig farms near to distillers, in fact, I remember.

EB:

Yes. Yeah, exactly.

SM:

So that's, yeah, that really is interesting.

One of my favorite kind of chapters and look at that was the passage even on Old Father Thames.

EB:

Hmm.

SM:

And I really like this, but I can't help thinking, and this is probably just me, but I want to know whether you as a historian will ever think about it. You know, I kind of thinking when human beings are kind of gone. . .

EB:

Hmm.

SM:

. . . maybe, you know, whatever. At times in the distant future, rivers like the Seine, which is fairly filthy at the moment.

EB:

Yeah.

SM:

The Ganges, which is horribly filthy at the moment. The Thames. They'll all come back to something that they were before.

EB:

Mm-hmm.

SM:

Do you, as a historian, do you ever think these thoughts at all?

EB:

Yeah, I mean, I, I suppose it's a hope rather than anything grounded in fact. I mean, I think people are becoming more and more aware of how we've lost so much, you know. Even the other day we were talking about how in the Victorian era you used to just be able to catch copious amounts of eel from the Thames, this is early Victorian era. And then over time it becomes so polluted that now they're, you know, really, really rare and they're imported but they used to be a kind of poor man's food. So yes I mean I hope so but yeah maybe I should explain Old Father Thames is this kind of long running myth in, in London, kind of mythical figure who's sort of connected to the Thames and he looks like you might expect like an old man who kind of rises from the water. But because of the just massive change in industry over the course of the Victorian era the Thames starts becoming really, really polluted. And in 1858 you get this kind of pressure point called the Great Stink when the Thames becomes so thick with dirt from all these industries and the weather's bad as well that it's so smelly that the Houses of Parliaments have to be closed down. And Queen Victoria tries to go on a little pleasure cruise. . .

SM:

Oh wow.

EB:

. . . along the Thames and they have to abort it because it's that bad. And so, as you said, there's this amazing ballad from the era that, that sings about Old Father Thames being kind of, you know, depressed and all dirty and all the fish around him are dead and all that sort of thing.

SM:

Wow, I mean that's ugh. That, yes, it fills me with some slight trepidation of what's going to happen, but we'll see.

EB:

Yeah, we'll see.

SM:

Let's move on to America where you know, here I am sitting in Los Angeles now.

EB:

Yeah.

SM:

The. . . It's, it’s an amazing thought to think that the American Revolution began with food waste. And I still remember writing, obviously you have the Boston Tea Party, but I still remember when they started having molasses brought up from the, what do you call it, Jamaican, Jamaica and other places. And they brought up to the. . . to Boston and they started brewing rum there and they started selling that to other parts of the world as well.

And they were saying because of both some of these American Revolution, about that time anyway, they began to throw them into the sea. They began to get rid of them on all of this. So I want to know about the Boston Tea Party, particularly because I think that's the thing that people know.

EB:

Hmm.

SM:

But the molasses is something that they used to throw into the river as well when it was all started. It's a great thought that the American Revolution began with food waste. Why?

EB:

Yes, so this is the Boston Tea Party, which I'm sure many of your listeners will know of. When essentially in December of 1773, 342 chests of tea that belonged to the British East India Company were thrown into the Boston Harbor by American colonists, who then were, you have to remember British, in protest at the company's. . .

SM:

Yeah.

EB:

. . . kind of enforced monopoly over American tea imports and the British government imposing taxes on the colony. So you get men that they're sort of disguised in Native American headdresses and they sneak aboard three British ships that were left in the harbor overnight and they, they get the tea and they throw it into the water. And I think that in today's money, it's one to $2 million worth of tea. All in protest that they believed. . .

SM:

Wow.

EB:

. . . in no taxation without representation. When obviously things like these taxes were being decided by the parliament back in London, and this is kind of how it all gets sparked off. And I think it shows really how valuable food was for it to be a target of their protests. But more widely and how I kind of use the story in the book is to open up the conversation about the globalized, globalizing nature of the food chain, the food system, even in the 18th century, which is this time when Britain and other European powers are seeking to expand their empires and discover new lands. And it meant that food was being shipped around the globe. And importantly, people were being shipped around to sailors, explorers, colonists, all of whom needed ways to preserve their food. Stop it from going to waste on these long overseas voyages. And so this chapter is really about kind of the opening up of the wider world, I guess, the establishment of this globalized food chain and kind of what that meant for the story of food waste.

SM:

That again, this is so fascinating because people don't even think of this as leftovers, but it's absolutely true what you're saying.

You talk, and this is one of the areas that I really love because I start reading about Nicolas Appert and I start reading about this. So you talk about the tin can, which I look at and I've discussed this, you know, myself on Eat My Globe episode, believe it or not, on the history of Spam®. 

EB:

Lovely.

SM:

I did one many, many years ago on the history of Spam®. So how did the tin can and other items like faster ships and all of this become important in the food waste and the preservation world?

EB:

Yeah. So as you sort of touched on the tin can was supposedly officially invented by Nicolas Appert who in Paris, heated bottles to seal them of air. I didn't think he was the first to really invent the tin can, but the first kind of proposed it on this more industrial scale in 1810. And so he's responding, thinking again about kind of the globalizing opening up of this world and this era to a response to Napoleon's call to find a new way of preserving food stocks in the context of the wars, Napoleonic wars, when supplies of sugar, which were coming from the New World, from the Americas, were cut off. And, so, and then then it, Donkin, Hall and Gamble in London very quickly acquired the patent for it and build the first tin can factory in 1813 in South London. And actually they're the ones who use tin rather than glass and different materials. So the tin can is invented in this context of feeding sailors and explorers and, you know, warmongers of this era. And one of the amazing things that it does actually is to help fight the problem of scurvy, which is something that I hadn't really thought would come into the story a few ways before I started writing it. But scurvy was just this insane killer for these big, these explorative journeys. So more than two million sailors were killed between Columbus's quote unquote discovery of Americas in 1492 and the mid-19th century.

SM:

How many?

EB:

Over two million. And there's an amazing. . .

SM:

Wow.

EB:

. . . another statistic which is really shocking to think of is in the Seven Years War with France, about 1,500 British soldiers were killed in action, but nearly 10 times the amount, 130,000 died of disease and mainly scurvy because on these trips before, for centuries, going back to the Tudor era, people in the navy, in armies, would have had very similar, very unhealthy diets, which were. . .

SM:

Yeah.

EB:

. . . you know, very heavily salted meat, very few vegetables and fruits, which couldn't be easily preserved, and hardtack biscuits, you know, which is literally just flour. . .

SM:

Yep.

EB:

. . . and water, and it's dried and dried and dried.

And there's, you know, again, for centuries, you can just find all these complaints from these poor sailors and travelers who are living off these really disgusting preserves. And, you know, we've mentioned, mentioned already the kind of early stock cube and things like that. A lot of these inventions were invented for the purpose of traveling and for ladies and so on going back centuries but the tin can is the one that really revolutionizes sailors diets and one of the, as it's kind of put forward one of the reasons for the invention is to, to stop or help prevent scurvy.

SM:

That’s, that’s fantastic. But how did it kind of move from the Royal Navy. . .

EB:

Yeah.

SM:

. . . or other navies around to becoming kind of a food for, you know, ordinary people?

EB:

Yeah, so it's a really, well, it's a gradual process. Partly because, and I think that's quite an interesting part of the history in the book is when I'm talking about all these inventions, there are lots of experiments, first off, of course. So, you know, ultimately the tin can succeeded, but there were many inventions before then that in preservation which were tried and failed and ended up being completely disgusting, inedible. And there are several major scandals with the tin can itself as well.

So in Britain we had the Stephen Goldner who won the contract to supply the British Navy with tin cans in the kind of mid-19th century. But they were supposedly really poorly made. It's still a new kind of novel-ish technology and they were corrupted with ultimately, you know, poisonous meat.

So there was a big scandal of several, you know, exhibitions that were kind of, took on this tainted meat. One in 1849 from Cork to Hong Kong when the poor people on the ship already were coming down with malaria and they wanted some nourishing food and open these tin cans and they were of course completely corrupted and disgusting, which meant they had to stop off near Rio de Janeiro, I think, to try and get some fresh provisions because, you know, they were they were going to die basically.

And in America, you have the embalmed meat scandal when the US Army was given, you know, very hastily put together tinned canned meat for the Spanish-American War and it turned out that it was, you know, toxic and it ends up killing lots of people as well. So. . . .

SM:

Oh my gosh.

EB:

Yeah, so there's many, many stories like that from the tin can but as I say, other, other kind of preservation methods as well throughout history. So, I looked at it through perhaps your listeners will be aware of Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, very famous kind of cookery household management book of the mid-19th century. So, in her first edition in 1861, she notes that the tin was, sometimes carelessly prepared and even adulterated and, and mentions the quote poor men of the navy who were the chief customers of the tin can.

But when we get to the 1907 edition of her book, there's actually a whole chapter on the use of the tin can for the ordinary housewife. And Mrs. Beeton, or the voice of Mrs. Beeton, says that, okay, you know, they're not the best. They have been adulterated, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, they're such a handy substitute now for when fresh provisions are hard to come by or if you want to eat certain fruits and vegetables outside of season, outside of their season. So, it's starting to be accepted really around that point, the end of the Victorian era, turn of the 20th century. And in part, that's because we see this massive change in the lifestyle, the living conditions in the Victorian era. It's the first time in history that most people in Britain are living in urban environments rather than rural so you get this first generation of women housewives who are living away from the kind of traditional food practices preservation practices that have kind of sustained their you know generations before them and so these handy substitutes are becoming more popular for them basically. And at the same time of course that it's this massive boom in industry and the kind of emergence of lots of brands. And when archaeologists look at kind of the beginning of the Victorian era you tend to find just a few kind of broken reusable jars or bottles things like that which might have had a crack but, and so have been discarded. But when you get to the end of the Victorian era, you find bigger kind of version of landfill, muck heaps or so on, where you get lots and lots of disposable bottles, tins, jars, which are now marked with the logos of these emergent brands. So, it's just a huge, huge change in a really quite short space of time in how people are eating and how they're living.

SM:

And let's, let’s move on to another part of history. So during the World War I and World War II, obviously different times in different countries, but, but food and how it was kept would become kind of much more important, I think.

EB:

Hmm.

SM:

Because leftovers, A. . . .Well, they were, you know, they were things that people had to keep. So, they would have potatoes growing in their yard and they'd have to use the potato peel. . .

EB:

Yeah.

SM:

. . . for a potato cake or something. And so that's something that they, they found really kind of useful for them. But then afterwards, I think they kind of left those behind. And did that cause a problem for them? Or. . . . Because I think they kind of left them behind because they used them during the war and they didn't want to use them afterwards because it felt like the war was happening again. Does that, if that makes sense?

EB:

Yeah, definitely. So just to briefly touch on the world wars, I think it's such an interesting time because as I've been sort of talking about the Victorian era, you get this kind of big expansion of what we would consider kind of more of the modern food industry. It's globalized or globalizing. There's lots of branded products. People are more urban, et cetera, et cetera.

And then there's this sudden kind of stop on that expansion or change of the industry and now suddenly reducing food waste is this matter of national survival given that you know normal food import routes are cut off and so on and you know both wars it becomes you know by law it's criminal, it's a criminal offense to waste food willfully if it could be eaten by, by humans. And I think you're right that then. . . . I mean rationing, for example, I mean, it continues into the into the 50s in Britain.

SM:

Yeah.

EB:

So it's not sort of like an immediate stop to that way of dealing with food. And yeah, and I wouldn't want to suggest that. But I do think that it's a big turning point after the war, people want to, yeah, forget the kind of hardships of the war. And what's happening is, is America comes out of the Second World War, you know, in profit, big business. And it's, and it's able to kind of spread its message of its new technologies like refrigeration in households, you know, TVs, cars, that kind of thing. So kind of selling the American dream to European nations. You know, fast food, that kind of thing is also, you know, literally advertised to the British. And that is kind of the turning point I think when yeah a new generation after the war young people can start kind of living in a more wasteful way. And the stats are that in the 1970s food waste had doubled compared to pre-World War II levels so it's very sharp rise, exponential rise after the wars.

SM:

And I began to read something about the food waste then that it became almost like a sign of wealth.

EB:

Oh.

SM:

And so even if you, so you went to the fast food area, you had, oh you had half your burger if you wanted it, you threw the rest away with the. . .

EB:

Hmm.

SM:

. . . and that was a sign of kind of the wealth that you had.

Does that find something that you discovered when you were looking at the fast food in that period?

EB:

Yeah, that's a really sharp, like stark image, isn't it, to think of people purposely throwing away food compared to these war years. I think most people don't remember it quite so starkly. I think when I've been speaking to people for the book who, you know, were young in the war or at the end of the war, they still remember being mainly frugal themselves. But I think, you know, the stats are that because of this change in the way that people are eating, food waste does increase dramatically.

And I think the other thing is, you know, if you think that for the first time, say the 70s, people can start eating out at restaurants, which they wouldn't have done the generation previously. Even that simple act, whether it's kind of fast food or not, you're taking the power away from you knowing how much you're going to eat, you're gonna need to eat to somebody else, so you can't have control over the portions and kind of giving the power of the waste to the restaurants but the wider food industry as well and the suppliers and so on.

SM:

So finally, we've got a couple of things that I wanted to ask. Bringing it forward again, what do you think the pandemic had to do with food waste? Because I think it probably did.

EB:

Yeah, so I mean, actually, that's kind of how I realized I needed to write this book. Because obviously, being a food historian, I think about food a lot anyway, but suddenly lockdown. And it was this big shock to see suddenly our kind of normally completely full heaving supermarket shelves, not, you know, having gaps in them, if not entirely empty at certain points. . .

SM:

Yeah.

EB:

. . .which made you think about the value of food, I think. And at the same time, there were all these images over here in the UK of milk being thrown down the slurry pit in liters and liters because the supply chain was breaking down and there weren't the vans to come and pick it up. And there was the rather infamous pig cull in 2021, I think, when it was 100,000 pigs just had to be killed because there were no abattoir workers, there weren't any drivers and so on to transport the meat. So, in that way, it suddenly seemed, wow, food waste is so kind of immediately obvious, you know, what's the history of this? And that's kind of how I started getting into it.

And I think we have these big changes on the supply chain level, but also it changed how we, we dealt with food and food waste in our own homes. So I think the stats are in the first four months of lockdown over here, a third. . . we wasted a third less food than previously. And it's about 50 % of people reporting wasting less, less food.

But then what's interesting is that by the summer of 2021, self-reported food waste goes back in line with the kind of pre-pandemic levels as people get back to their ordinary busy lives. But I think for that period at least, we were, we were suddenly made aware of the value of food and we didn't want to waste it as much.

And the other thing that I explore in regards to the pandemic is how apparent the divide between the rich and the poor was and is. COVID led to a 300% increase in the UK in demand for food banks, so people, which, you know are. . .

SM:

Yep.

EB:

. . . other people's leftovers really. But, you know, for years and years of austerity that we've had here in the UK, it had already use of food parcels had already increased by over 70% between 2015 and 2020. So I think that was maybe again a kind of crisis point where we saw how bad food insecurity is in such a wealthy country and to kind of reflect on a system that at the moment through things like food banks gives leftover food for leftover people unfortunately, and whether we can kind of build a better, fairer society instead of it being like that.

SM:

So from my historian's perspective, which is what we're looking at here, what do you think about the future of food waste? I know that's not something you would necessarily think about, but what do you think? Where is it going?

EB:

Hmm.

SM:

You know, I still think of it as people will begin to use it more, but, you know, we don't know. What do you think?

EB:

It's a complicated one. I think from the kind of top down governmental action side of things, I'm not so hopeful. The UN had in 2015 made this big promise or goal, I should say, to reduce 50% of food waste by 2030. And now 2030 is really actually quite rapidly approaching. And I think they met. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

EB:

. . . quite recently and basically said it, you it's not going to happen. And you kind of looking at the, from the historical point of view, I suppose, we see time and again, governments making promises, but then because of, you know, the, the nature of short terms, et cetera, et cetera, they, these promises end up falling by the wayside. So we had a promise here that by, by 2023, everybody would have access to food recycling, but they kind of then changed the wording to from 2023 and then in 2024, they proposed a new timescale which is from March, 2026. So that kind of side of things, I think, looking historically and into the future is not so promising. But I also do see a lot of hope from looking at the past. One thing that we've kind of spoken about quite a lot is these amazing inventions in preservation, like the tin can. And so, or loads of things, [indecipherable], I know, loads of things that are kind of or have been invented to preserve food or make it last longer.

And I think, you know, one of the greatest joys for me was being able to write a history that goes from the Tudor era but ends up looking actually into the future. And I was able to explore and speak to some amazing business owners who are working on these incredible technologies that are that I think I hope are going to at least help solve the problem. So just to give some quick examples, things like labels on your food that change texture or color in response to whether that particular item has gone off or not. So you don't have to rely on labels like best before, used by dates, which are just a guess or a best guess. So that these labels can respond to the gas production of those foods. So very clever things like AI bins, which are being rolled out in the UK now in restaurants, which can measure just from a camera, not just what type of food you're throwing away, but how much. And it can automatically create a menu for you that tells you you're ordering too many tomatoes on Tuesday lunchtime by this percentage, blah, blah, blah, blah.

SM:

Yep.

EB:

So all those types of exciting technologies, I think, are, are going to make a huge difference.

And I think, again, from the historical perspective, I do see a lot of hope from people in general, our ability to kind of come together when we when we see it as an urgent enough issue to, to waste less. So the world wars is, is such a clear example of when you know everybody on the home front just took up this mission and really did make use of every little bit of food that they had. So we can do the same again that's for sure and I'm finally. . . do exploring the book some wonderful kind of local or grassroots initiatives of people who are, for example, getting young kids involved in growing their own food and preserving their own food and to kind of teach the next generation about its value in the hopes that they'll waste less of it.

SM:

I love that. So, in the end, I hope that this will get people more interested in leftovers.

First of all, thank you very much. That was great because you, you did you took it all the way from the Tudors and the Stuarts, all the way through. And I think that's really fascinating and something that I haven't thought about. But you made me do. We will show a copy of leftovers here.

When people look at it, they will see it. And but first of all, I want people to go and read Leftovers because it's, it's a fantastic book. It really is. And I don't say that very easily. It's something that I absolutely love.

And he says, let me just get the book. It's called, “Leftovers: A History of Food Waste and Preservation,” which I think you just have to read. So please, go and read it. Make sure you, I mean, we have a lot of listeners to this show, so hopefully they'll go and buy it and just enjoy it as well.

But we've got some more questions first though, some fun questions. Yeah, so if Eleanor was a meal, what would it be?

EB:

If I were a meal? So this might be because I had a cheese toastie for lunch.

SM:

Yeah.

EB:

But my immediate response was I'm a cheese toastie because but a cheese toastie with some chutney that would. . . . Because it's dependable. It's got a rich history. But then there's like a bit of tanginess from the cheese and the chutney is a bit of a nice surprise. Bit of fun.

SM:

Oh, that sounds great.

EB:

[Laughter]

SM:

Okay. That's absolutely nice. We don't get much chutney over here. And I love it. Okay.

EB:

Well, there's a bit of history of chutneys in the book as well.

SM:

Oh well I, yeah Chutney, because of my Indian background is...

EB:

Yeah

SM:

It means to lick. Did you know that?

EB:

I didn't know that. How lovely.

SM:

In Hindi it means, it mean to lick.

EB:

Fabulous.

SM:

If Eleanor had to go back in time to any meal, anywhere in the world, where would that be?

EB:

So, I. . . . My most recent research, I am looking all the time for moments of shared meals between people of different faiths in the early modern era as this kind of way of breaking down kind of commonly Christian centric ways of looking at the era, better understanding religious toleration, diversity, that sort of thing.

SM:

Yeah.

EB: 

So, because recently I've been going, I've been exploring the Venetian archives, and there are all these lovely little moments of people from different faiths sharing meals. So, I would like to be there for one of them. And in particular, one story I was reading recently is someone called Giorgio, who in the 1570s comes before the Holy Office having been accused of eating food with Muslims and breaking the Catholic fasting laws and he's their servant, he's a Christian. So, I would want to be there to know what sort of thing was being spoken about, what was actually eaten and how Giorgio kind of understood himself still as a Christian or kind of reconciled himself eating as they would say like a Turk, it's his accusation, but still having a Christian faith. So ordinary people.

SM:

Oh that's fantastic. Again, people come up with so many. . .

EB:

[Laughter]

SM:

. . . things for this and they're great.

If you had to go back in time to see the invention of anything, anything at all, apart from the fire of the wheel and all of those, tell me what it would be?

EB:

Wow. Much more interesting than the than the invention of the wheel I think it's really niche food history things. So I would like to be there for the invention of the Eton Mess. People in America know what Eton Mess is? I don't know. It's like. . .  .

SM:

Oh, the actual Eton Mess?

EB:

Yeah strawberry. . .

SM:

Oh.

EB:

. . . meringue cream pudding. . .

SM:

I think that would be fantastic. Well, he why don't you tell them what the Eton Mess is? I love it. I love it.

EB:

Yes, it's like kind of strawberries, meringue, like kind of pavlova, but all mushed up and kind of cream. So it's quite simple. But why I'd like to go back is because it's a sort of mild food history mystery. There are two kind of fun stories that it was. . . that a nice kind of clean meringue was dropped at a Eton versus Harrow cricket match in the late 19th century. And then rather than waste it, they picked it all up. And even though it was all smashed up together, they kind of served it and then it stuck. And the other story is that it was actually a too enthusiastic Labrador in the 1930s who sat on the dessert, a picnic. And then they thought, we'll just eat that anyway.

So I'd probably be disappointed because I imagine these are just myths and it was actually just invented at Eton College, the famous school by one of the school cooks. But you know, I would want to go there and at least kind of say I solved that little food mystery.

SM:

Oh, that's a great one. I, I haven't heard the Labrador story. . .

EB:

No.

SM:

. . . but I've heard definitely heard about. . . . No, but that's yeah, I always like to think that some of these myths. . . . Whenever we read all these myths about anything in food, they've got some little grain of truth in them.

EB:

Yeah.

SM:

Tiny bit, but you know who knows. But that's a great one. I love the Eton Mess.

EB:

Yeah.

SM:

Again, we don't get any of that over here in LA. But, you know. . . .

And finally, what are your social media sites? And I know, you know, the Instagram one, but tell me about all you've got right now so people can see them.

EB:

Yeah, sure. So my social media of choice is definitely Instagram. So do come follow me. I'm @HistoryEats and I post daily food history facts or paintings, recipes from around the world. Yeah. And it's a lovely community. I learned lots and lots myself from followers who share their kind of food stories and cultures with me as well as the other way around.

And if you're a tweeter, can you say that anymore? An X-er? Follow me on X. I'm Eleanor R. Barnett.

SM:

Fantastic. Well, thank you again.

OUTRO MUSIC

SM:

Make sure to check out the website associated with this podcast at www.EatMyGlobe.com where we will be posting the transcripts from each episode, along with all the references and resources we used putting the episodes together, in case you want to delve deeper into each subject. There is also a contact button, so please do let us know if there are any subjects that you would like us to cover.

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Thank you and goodbye from me, Simon Majumdar, and we’ll speak to you soon on the next episode of EAT MY GLOBE: Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know About Food.

CREDITS

The EAT MY GLOBE Podcast is a production of “It’s Not Much But It’s Ours” and “Producer Girl Productions.”

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We would also like to thank Sybil Villanueva for all of her help both with the editing of the transcripts and essential help with the research.