Latest news with #foodporn
Telegraph
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Tucci in Italy, review: a proper passion for food is this show's secret ingredient
If you took a swig of Frascati every time Stanley Tucci gave us his food orgasm face coupled with an 'Oh man! That's so good!' you wouldn't make it halfway through the box set of Tucci In Italy (Disney+) without slipping under the sofa. Stanley loves his Italian nosh, of that there's no doubt. Yet while watching other people have the time of their lives is so often a total turn-off, spending time with Tucci as he sniffs out gastronomic delights like a truffle hunter, delving into hidden corners of his grandparents' homeland, is actually a rare delight. Teaming a little bit of off-the-wall history – did you know that the Egyptians invented pizza? – washed down with lashings of food and wine, Tucci is a tour guide par excellence. Which is largely down to his ability to fit right in with the locals: time and again in this five-episode tasting menu, it looked like Stanley, a fluent if slightly staccato Italian speaker, was talking to a long-lost cousin. The shaven-head, thick rimmed specs look is big in foodie Italy. It also helps that Tucci's style – dry humour mixed with an enthusiastic amateur's knowledge – never tips over into the gushing clichés that blight so many foodie shows. It's a crowded field, but Tucci's culinary explorations feel driven by authentic passion (and an ability to neck whatever bit of dead animal gets artistically presented to him) with appropriate gusto. Vegans and vegetarians best steer clear. The format here does not stray too far from Tucci's previous forays into Italian cuisine. Each episode tours a selected region, sees our host seek out local chefs, restaurateurs and home cooks – kudos to the researchers, the stories featured feel fresh, not the usual reheated leftovers – but if a format ain't broke, then it's wise not to fix it. One key ingredient is the light seasoning of political and historical detail that gives the food-envy a necessary break. In Trentino, there were tales of wartime persecution of German speakers, in Tuscany, hearing of the difficulties faced by gay parents was not only informative but also illustrated that confirmed Italophile Tucci was not viewing his beloved adopted land through rosé-coloured glasses. The less spontaneous elements, Tucci narrating rather over-egged takeaways from each region, feel a little stodgy compared to the light touch elsewhere. Excellent at highlighting how food connects us to our roots – we British have a lot to learn from the Italians on that front – emotions are often bubbling near the surface. The last thing I expected when watching a food programme was to get a little choked up. But as Tucci joined a young chef who'd returned to the wild and rugged mountains of Abruzzo, having tired of big city kitchens, a rustic mutton barbecue triggered unexpected emotions. It had been the chef's grandfather's special dish. 'Memories from childhood make us feel like children again,' he told Tucci as the pair shared a manly embrace. Food for thought.
Telegraph
10-05-2025
- General
- Telegraph
The taste for meat is back but how long will we be allowed to eat it?
Last summer the algorithm came for me. Instagram finally found my weak spot – food – and I have been hooked ever since. No doubt it finally deduced that I am a middle-class, urban, millennial woman, and for that reason – among all the food porn demonstrations of how to make absurdly rich tarts, cakes and cookies – it sends me a barrage of vegan and vegetarian influencer accounts. I watch them all, hypnotised as influencer after influencer tells me how becoming a vegetarian or vegan changed their life, and how the food can be better than your wildest dreams – meanwhile pouring vegan 'cheese' over their pile of tofu and chickpeas. Yuck. I'm not the only one, it seems, left nonplussed by the ascent of plant-based foods. Even to that most virtuous generation, Gen Z, the allure of such diets seems to be waning and the siren call of meat ringing out. Beyond the obvious inferiority of most shop-bought 'plant-based' cuisine, so much of which is desperately trying to imitate the real thing, often with ghoulish results (M&S 'no chicken Kyiv' anyone? How about Quorn sausages?), there seem to be three main reasons for this change. One is that in an age of well-being and fitness crazes, protein is in the limelight to support the body-type du jour: heavily muscled from hours at the gym. Young people are vain: they are quick to prioritise the cultivation of a pair of bulging guns above all else and meat is the most efficient parcel of protein, lean or laced with fat. Another prong is disillusionment with the environmental cause. Those who were idealists about saving the planet through shunning the products of carbon-intensive animal farming now feel that there is little hope of achieving the broader aim at all, so why bother with Quorn? Then there is the fact that although 'plant'-based foods should be cheap because they're artificial and less tasty, they aren't and often cost more than the animal originals. In 2024, plant-based sausages, burgers and milk were all a third more expensive than the real thing. Clive Black, retail analyst at investment group Shore Capital, explains: 'The complexity of alternative proteins is immense compared to the simplicity of natural meat proteins. It masqueraded as something that's good for the environment, animals and you, but it's actually the opposite of a holy trinity – it's a holy nightmare.' No wonder sales of fake meat appear to be dropping: in 2024, they were down by 21 per cent compared with the same period in 2022. Chewing such fare miserably from time to time, I have often mused that I should not be paying to eat such food, but rather ought to paid to eat it. There are other hints that once primly meat-shunning Brits are fighting back against the dreary world of pea protein and lentil powder: Heck's plant-based sausage range has been reduced and Nestlé's Garden Gourmet range has vanished. Beyond Meat is another company that has fallen on hard times, its share price dropping dramatically from its high in 2019, despite former celebrity endorsements. And after eight years, Veggie Pret, the pointless-seeming meatless version of the chain, shut down earlier this year. But if more people are finally realising the horrors of fake meat and fake dairy, and demanding meat again, then they better enjoy it while they can. For as the absurd net zero drive continues to gather urgency, it may become harder and harder to get hold of meat. The Climate Change Committee, which was set up under Ed Miliband in 2008 during the Blair years to spell out how Britain must become carbon neutral by 2050, has its eye on agricultural emissions; the fourth-highest emitting sector in the UK, it says. Almost 50 per cent of these emissions are caused by the farts of cows and sheep, with 14 per cent coming from livestock waste. There is also environmental degradation caused by farming, so the plan is to clear off some of the sheep and cattle and return their grazing lands to forest. If the Climate Change Committee's carbon budget is to be followed, the number of cattle and sheep in the UK will be down by 27 per cent by 2040, and by 2050, consumption of lamb and beef is to be cut by 40 per cent. Taxes on red meat may be introduced to help get us there. I don't like lamb myself – it tastes too much like blood, and I generally avoid eating baby animals (including veal). Beef is once a week, chicken more often, fish is too boring to contemplate unless it's rich and meaty. But the surest way to get me and everyone else, including those who are still clinging to their pea-protein sausages, to seek out more meat is to tell us we aren't allowed to have it. Animal cruelty is unconscionable. But it is not a necessary part of meat and dairy production and should be phased out of existence. But humans are meat-eaters and milk-swillers. We must be allowed to eat animal products, from meat to cream, and to enjoy them, be nourished by them, and rejoice when the industries that produce them manage to thrive – especially when they do so without inflicting terror on their doomed livestock. At any rate, the winds of taste, health and trend are blowing away from Miliband's horrible, carbon-neutral vision of the future.
