Welcome from the editor: teenage kicks

Welcome and thank you for joining me this weekend.

Remember your teenage years? Friends, school, social pressure and anxiety, feeling misunderstood and then food. As we hit puberty our relationship with food becomes more complex. All of a sudden food not just something that nourishes us and that we enjoy, but something to look at with suspicion, something that can change how we feel and how we present ourselves, and something that can magically turn us into someone we like better perhaps. As we start becoming young adults, food takes on a different meaning.

I remember as a teen going though many phases in which I would only eat one type of food. I had the yoghurt phase, the bread phase, the potato phase, the mushroom phase… . And I wasn’t the only one. Many of my friends were navigating their choices around food, having hit an age when our parents couldn’t tell us what to eat any longer. But eating well can help with all the changes that puberty brings upon young people. This week we take a deeper look in Teenage nutrition: the importance of a healthy diet in adolescence.

If the carbon footprint of a food or drink product was transparent, would that help you make more sustainable choices? That’s what a retailer is currently piloting. Find out more in German supermarket launches ‘true cost’ trial to show impact of food products on climate and health.

Professor Mark Post unveiled the first lab-grown meat burger in London exactly 10 years ago today. After decades of scientific research in labs, and with cultured meat being approved in the US last June, things are speeding up. The novel food could soon be on British restaurant menus as Aleph Farms applies for approval to sell its cultivated beef in the UK. Would you try it?

Wishing you a wonderful weekend,

Stef