When I was a kid we seemed to have hot chips with every meal. Hot chips and HP sauce. And then, for a long time as an adult I didn’t for all sorts of reasons. But I still love them when I can get them and now, thanks to science, I can enjoy them if not guilt-free then at least guilt-balanced. As in balanced by the exquisite enjoyment to be had shaming vegans for some of their fave feeds which turned out to be massively more dangerous to life on Earth than my hot chips.
A recent international study has ranked the biodiversity footprint of some of the world's favourite meals, and it's good news for those who like hot chips.
Using 151 of the most popular dishes on global recipe websites, the study analysed how much crops and livestock were putting the native environment at risk based on the combined ingredients.
Hot chips were the safest, apparently because potatoes are just friendly tubers who mind their own business and don’t get up in other species’ grills, trying to take over their ecological niches. Chick peas however, friend of the insufferable vegan, not so much. Two chick pea dishes ranked in the top ten for threatening precious biodiversity.
Shame on you vegans. Shame on you all.
Certainly enjoy them when you can, a quick internet search of "Australian potato shortage" turns up stories from different sources almost every year for the last few years usually citing extreme weather events as the reason.
I fear in the world when JB's no name antihero who hunts down those who contributed to the climate apocalypse will be doing so in a very hot chip deprived world.
So the seagulls have been right all along.