DIGIVU- Dave Harcourt’s Blogs Combined · Sacrificing for Food Science

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While there is no doubt that weather, biofuels and changes is demographics are setting the poor of the world up for really hard times for the next few years, their is a lighter side which would have amused Maria Antoinette – if they can’t get food give them cake!

The £50 espresso is made from a blend of two coffee beans; Jamaican Blue Mountain and Kupi Luwak which comes from Indonesia and are harvested by civets who sniff out the choicest berries, digest the flesh, and pass out the bean in the way that nature intended.

What is interesting that the cost is simply a function of the high cost of the coffee beans which are real food ingredients. There are other foods where the price is a function of a non food ingredient, like the $1.4m (£700,000) Strawberries Arnaud, which, in addition to the strawberries, boasted a 4.7-carat pink diamond ring.

However, those listed below are expensive because of their food ingredients

The £85.50 sandwich
Britain’s most expensive sandwich was created by Scott McDonald, chef at Selfridges food hall, in August 2006. He used Japanese wagyu beef, foie gras, black truffles and salad. Selfridges catering manager, Ewan Venters, claimed: “If you are a food lover, this represents great value for money.”

The £8,000 pie
Spencer Burge of the Fence Gate Inn in Burnley, Lancashire, created a pie in 2005 whose ingredients included wagyu beef, matsuke mushrooms from China, French bluefoot mushrooms and winter black truffles, all cooked in two bottles of 1982 Chateau Mouton Rothschild. Discerning diners could buy a slice for a mere pounds 1,000.

The $1,000 pizza
The Manhattan restaurant Nino’s Bellisimo unveiled a $1,000 (pounds 500) pizza in March 2007 made with 225g of Imperial Reserve Persicus caviar from Iran and thinly sliced lobster tail, resting on a creme fraiche sauce.

The £600 salad
The world’s most expensive salad was created by chef Raymond Blanc in 2003 – the Florette Sea and Earth salad used almas and beluga caviar, langoustines, Cornish crab and Florette baby leaf salad.

Food Navigator announced that Mars UK claimed to be the “first confectionery company to launch an online platform which will allow members of the networking site Facebook to buy real chocolate bars”

What was interesting was how difficult it was to find the site both in Mars’s website and on Facebook. The products are sold through the Celebrate Sweetshop which doesn’t pop up thet easily if one is focussing on Mars.

The original review noted that the burger was not the product from the can – as was obvious. However, the cheeseburger has now been tested and seems to have no positives neither cost, convenience or taste

and the taste test is rather negative!

Yes there is a Hotdog Council with its website,

an a recent press release predicting that 30 million hotdogs will be consumed at major league matches in the coming season.

Sounds a lot but its only 0,15 % of the 20 billion a year hotdogs sold in America. Yes that is more than 1 every week (66/year) for every American!

We in South Africa and probably in much of Africa look at the Food Mile concept as a novelty which doesn’t really effect us – maybe wrongly. Now following low fat and low calories snacks we have Low Foodmile snacks

from BakeryandSnacks.com

Probably the concept is difficult to implement where the consumer is driven first and foremost by the amount of food they can access for the spending power they have -worry about the impact on the environment is more appropriate to the wealthier consumer who worries about things like organic food, natural additives and ethical trading.

I will probably publish a bit about Foodmiles and related environmentally focussed issues on my African Agribusiness Issues Blog as there is much discussion of the concept.

This article in the Globe & Mail points out that Organic Foods are no safer than non organic foods when it comes to normal food safety risks such as microbial infection, chemical changes and foreign material contamination.

To me this is quite obvious, but it apparently is not to the consumer. Hopefully, growers and processors all understand this and apply the necessary quality and safety management practices that are applied to all food.

Yes there is a competition for the best Fish and Chip Shop in the UK, although I understand there are now more curry shops!

Click on the image of the page to read about the winners