GeoFoodie

People often ask me how I use AI in my research. This is my answer. There is a great deal of advice at the moment telling students and researchers either not to use AI at all or to embrace it enthusiastically. Much of the public discussion has focused on plagiarism, authorship, academic integrity and whether AI should be used in universities at all. These are important questions, and they…

I strive to make a positive impact through my work, as many academics do. I also support colleagues to develop their own impact and am often asked by organisations to comment on their plans for creating change. Graphic of the difference between activity and impact. So often people think #Impact is what they did—making meals, donating #food or funds, volunteering. They then measure the…

Since 2022 I have advised Comic Relief and Sainsbury’s on the Nourish the Nation Campaign. This campaign has now ended, but been replaced by ‘Let’s put hunger to bed’. I was asked to speak alongside Simon Roberts (CEO, Sainsbury’s) and Samir Patel (CEO, Comic Relief) at the celebration event hosted at Sainsbury’s headquarters. I wanted to share my talk. Paula’s story is one covered in The Bread…

I’ve been poor for so long that I’ve learned to live on one main meal plus one snack a day. I think most people would class that as ‘skipping’ a meal, but for me that’s just normal, and has been for many years now.’ (Non-Food Club User, YouGov survey, 2025) In May and June 2025 I worked with YouGov to conduct a suvery of more than 14,000 UK households with earnings of <£40K and who lived in…

There is growing recognition that the UK needs to build greater food resilience. Tim Lang’s recent work is important here. It makes a compelling case for readiness: shorter supply chains, diversified sources of production, and stronger capacity to withstand shocks. That matters enormously. But readiness on the supply side is only half the story. Food resilience is a two-sided platform…

Prioritising Community Repair over Emergency Relief 1. Executive Summary This briefing reframes the strategic approach to addressing UK food insecurity, drawing on recent evidence. The findings reposition the policy focus away from reactive responses and towards a primary strategy of prevention and resilience. For the large majority of households navigating a persistent struggle with food…

I have been playing around with Google’s Notebook LM. One feature is the audio overview option. This produces a podcast-type audio discussion that reviews the documents that you ask it to. For this podcast, I asked it to do this for my paper, More than Just Food, which I published in 2019. I was really impressed with the outcome. The podcast lasts about 16 minutes. Have a listen. What do you…

In a previous post, I talked about using Gemini to explore the impact of my research. Today, I am going to explore that research with a different tool:  Notebook LM. The big difference between Gemini and Notebook LM is that Gemini searches the web, and as I found, not always so successfully, while Notebook LM looks just at what you ask it to. So I did an experiment. I put the same paper I used…

I have become a fan of Google’s AI tools. They are fantastic for summarising and revising text to make it clear, concise and well-formed. There are some limitations, of course. Gemini, for example, can make up sources, and it cannot access everything that one might think of as being ‘open access’. Notebook LM is great for cutting across articles and notes that the user feeds directly into the…

Many of you will know that I do a lot of research focusing on Rung 2 of the Food Ladders. One of these organisations is The Bread and Butter Thing. I’ve known Mark and Jane since they founded the Food Club in about 2016. In 2019 we did our first member survey. I was a bit tired of the narrative around saving money. My view is you can’t save what you haven’t got in the first place. I wanted to…

I recently had an interview with a reporter from The Grocer about the role of food clubs in the UK. A food club is not a food bank. Instead it is a low-cost, community-based food project that makes available food that is often donated by retailers and food producers. The food is within date, but frequenlty short-dated, so not suitable for sale at the usual outlets. These community food clubs are…

I read the newspaper this morning, and like yesterday morning, most of what I saw was crisis talk. With good reason. Wars and conflicts are multiple. The increase in frequency and magnitude of weather events (which are scientifically linked to climate change) results in large numbers of deaths and longer-term effects such as loss of property and livelihoods.  Once vibrant communities struggle to…

The government has 5 missions:  Kickstart economic growth, Take back our streets, Break down barriers to opportunity, build an NHS for the future, and Make Britain a green energy superpower.  Food security is imbricated with all these pledges.  Economic growth for all means good jobs, and good jobs need people able to do them.  This means having healthy people and being healthy rests on being…

On the 10th of September 2024 we launched the Food Ladders Toolkit. The event was held in Lambeth at the Community Shop. Food, based on the food stories of people who use Community Shop, was cooked for us by community members. It was absolutely fantastic. We want to thank all those who helped with the day and those who came and joined us. If you were unable to join us for the launch and would…

Things to consider How do you coordinate your network? Going forward, one of the first questions will be how to organise your activity to maintain its momentum and achieve its aims. While all coordination should be partnership working, who takes the lead may differ depending on circumstances within a particular locality. Sustainable Food Places identified three types of local food networks:…

I was recently invited to present at a parliamentary breakfast. In fact, it was to be this morning. But a general election was called so the breakfast was cancelled. I wrote a report to be handed out at the event about the state of Food Security in England and how it has increased at an alarming rate. In 2018, before the pandemic, the rate was about 1 in every 10 adults. In the summer of 2020,…