People still shop as though ethics were some kind of optional extra, relevant only to a few premium purchases. Consumers tend to operate according to a double-standard: they are outraged when companies do not ensure they source ethically but they do not often make much effort to source ethically themselves.
ReadIt turns out that the more we understand how nutrition works and how complicated it is, the simpler the dietary advice we need to follow. In theory, any number of changes might make your diet healthier, but in practice diet is too complicated for us to be able to micromanage it. Too much is unknown about how the elements of diet interact for us to be able to change the variables to achieve the result we desire.
ReadRather than looking for secular surrogates, we should look for other ways to cultivate the virtues that ritual promotes. Such practices need to be at least as embedded in our daily routines as prayers are for believers.
ReadThe arrival of the BBC’s The Big Allotment Challenge shows that grow-your-own is a pursuit worthy of the same attention as baking, dating and home improvement. As an allotment holder myself, albeit very much the head gardener’s lackey, I’m ambivalent about this. Allotments are wonderful things but the rise, fall, and rise again in their popularity tells a story about social change that is both encouraging and dispiriting…
ReadEating at table should not be equated with formality and outmoded etiquette. Its main association should be conviviality. We sit around a table, but in front of the TV. We eat together at the table, but merely at the same time elsewhere. Even when eating alone, however, dispensing with a dining table comes at a cost. When we have our meals while doing other things we are not eating, we are merely feeding. We cease paying attention to what we are ingesting and our food becomes mere fuel.
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