Food and Drink, It's on everyone's lips...
Food. It’s all around us.
With one really good reason – we need it to survive.
But it strikes me that lately food has been even more in the spotlight than usual. Food, is seems, has become fashionable.
Farmer’s Markets and Nosh supermarkets are the in-thing; Gordon Ramsey is hot property – even if he’s got a foul mouth on him. Master Chef and New Zealand’s Hottest Home Baker are hits and everyone’s talking Tapas. Tapas this, Tapas that. Who the hell knew what Tapas were last year?
With an array of reality TV shows to choose from cooking is easiest to relate to. You are far more likely to find yourself standing over a hot stove in the evenings than stranded on an island or posing for an America’s Next Top Model photo shoot.
Cooking shows, of a demonstrational nature, have long held a place on TV screens, but contestant style shows are no doubt very much the flavour of the month.I guess it’s because we, as consumers, have become more discerning. We want more than steak and chips, meat and three veg. We want sushi and Tapas and falafel and couscous, and we want to know how to make it - or at least watch someone else learn.
I’ll admit I’m a “foodie”. I can tell they’ve removed one colour from the Hundreds And Thousands sprinkles. I couldn’t tell you which colour but it’s definitely not quite as bright a rainbow as before. And yes, the new Cadbury Chocolate does taste different, they can deny it as much as they want but it’s not the same as it was.
And Fair Trade coffee just seems to taste better than normal coffee. I can’t understand why, after all they are usually all Arabica beans. My only explanation is that guilt has an unpleasant aftertaste.
Even the standard beer has gotten all fancy on us. There are all these choices available to you; preservative free or all natural, low carbohydrate, low calorie, organic, Fair Trade - what’s next? Can people really tell the difference? Well, we set out to find out and held a Blind Beer Testing. You can see what our student panel had to say on page 20.
This is the Eat and Drink issue and as much as food is fashionable so too is drinking, but not in quite the same way. New Zealand is undergoing a reform on Alcohol at the moment and taking the opportunity to look seriously at the kind of drinking culture we have. Binge Drinking is the topic on everybody’s lips. The age of buying liquor is under the spotlight, as is the amount you can drink before you drive. We asked In Unison online readers if they thought New Zealand should have a zero tolerance drink driving policy and a whopping 70 per cent said yes.
Columnist Bruce Lightfoot looks at our drinking habits in Second Time Around on page 10 and we tell you what to do in a situation where someone has had too much to drink on page 25. We would love to hear your thoughts on New Zealand’s liquor laws, especially as 18 to 20-year-olds are the key targets in the Government’s reform. We’ve got V Packs to give away to the first four letter writers and you can leave your comments online at www.usu.co.nz/inunison.
So whether you want to eat, drink or do both this issue has something for you. Check out the handy tips to make life easier on every page.
Amanda Haxton
In Unison Editor 2010