Sorry, But Bakewell Tart is Not in Imminent Danger of Disappearing Due to Climate Change

Coffee, olive oil, bananas, you name it and someone has suggested they will soon disappear due to human-induced climate change. All easily debunked of course, but a recent piece in the Telegraph has added to this growing portfolio of nonsense with an article headlined: “Climate change ‘could kill off the traditional Bakewell tart’.” Weather-related problems in California, where 80% of almonds, a key ingredient of the delicious Bakewell, are grown are blamed, but replacement synthetic flavours are said to be available. Curiously missing from the story is the fact that almond production in California is touching record highs with the 2024 crop the third highest on record. What a great effort – climate change fear mongering combined with a plug for industrial chemical slurry being passed off as a Bakewell tart.

Highly Processed News and Highly Processed Food, all in one fake, cherry-topped package.

Written by recent graduate trainee Tim Sigsworth, the story reports that the Derbyshire delicacy is now being produced without almonds by some makers “because of supply chain problems linked to global warming”. Supplies are said to be under strain due to heat and drought episodes. In fact, water droughts are intrinsic to the climate in California, particularly in the near-desert south of the state. Overall rainfall can be patchy, with droughts alternating with plentiful precipitation that quickly fills up reservoirs. In addition, annual snow melt provides a variable but important base level. As the precipitation graph measured in annual inches shows below, the 20th and early 21st Centuries had numerous short-term droughts. However, they might be considered somewhat wet compared with the paleoclimate record over the last millennium. This reveals two mega droughts that were each well over 100 years long. Longer term records reveal that decade-long droughts are an ordinary feature of California’s climate. On the evidence available, there is scant scientific proof to link current rainfall trends to recent warming or climate change, human-caused or otherwise.

Far from being blasted by heat and drought, the almond-growing business in California has come on by leaps and bounds over the last 30 years. Over that period, production has been transformed from relatively small scale businesses producing an annual crop of around 370 millions pounds weight to recent totals approaching three billion pounds. Prices have trended a little higher since 2020-21 when a record crop and Covid depressed returns.

Prices stayed below the cost of production at the beginning of 2023, although high world demand has raised rates since then. Perhaps, like most farmers around the world, there are complaints that profits remains a challenge.

But however many nuts are grown, it is a natural product that demands a sustainable market price. A chemical confection produced in a food laboratory is always likely to be cheaper. The Telegraph story gives prominence to Kirsty Matthews of Macphie, a food manufacturer that has launched a new almond-free product called ‘Cherry Bakewell Sensation’. She enthuses: “Customers who’ve known us for years are suddenly seeing it as a solution for supply chain stability.” No doubt the receipt for this sensational treat is a closely guarded trade secret but the chemistry behind replicating almond flavours is not. Benzaldehyde is the primary compound responsible for the almond aroma and can be added in the Bakewell frangipane or pastry to replicate a nutty sweet taste. Also used is acetate that can be blended with other flavourings to create the desired nutty taste, while Ethyl Vanillian can provide a sweet creamy note to add fake depth to the Bakewell custard.

It is curious how many of the planet savers have embraced industrial slurries that replace natural ingredients with cheap chemical concoctions. The UK Government-funded UK FIRES recently laid out an absolute Net Zero future based on this highly processed muck. The need to collapse the existing agro-food system is said to represent opportunities for ‘hybrid’ food products. Thus plants and alternative proteins can be blended with half the chemistry lab thrown in, including stabilisers, colourings, E numbers and preservatives. Any semblance of taste can boosted, as is common in many highly processed foods, by adding masses of salt and sugar.

“We can still give you the experience you expect, the same aroma, the same balance of flavours, the same indulgence, but with an ingredient list that works in today’s supply climate,” notes the Bakewell Queen Kirsty Matthews. Obviously part of a marketing push, Matthews also wrote on August 14th in the trade journal British Baker that there was a sustainability factor at play. “In a world where imported ingredients can be affected by everything from extreme weather to fuel prices, there’s a value in reducing dependency on global supply chains,” she wrote.

Particularly when chemicals are cheap and I can get some under-cooked journalist to compose a load of old conkers about climate change, she didn’t add.

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