#BetterFood

We held our office Christmas party this week; a little early, I admit, but good to beat the rush. I’ll spare you the details, except one: we over-ordered. There was too much food left and, briefly, it went from feeling generous to ugly. But only briefly. Because, of course, there’s an app for that. An app for leftovers, that makes sure what’s not eaten doesn’t go to waste. I’m James Harding, Editor of Tortoise, and I mention the Christmas party leftovers not as a mini mea culpa, but because one of the more encouraging moments of my week was the realisation that technology is coming for waste in all its forms: food waste, financial waste, information waste, energy waste, health waste. One of those moments when you see a thing, then a pattern, then it seems to repeat itself everywhere.  Here’s why. On Wednesday, we hosted our first Responsible Quantum Summit. My colleague Luke Gbedemah, who writes the Tech States Sensemaker, had identified a group of people who can explain quantum computing and, excitingly, give a sense of where it’s going. He also gave me a reading list for the night before, and so rather than pretend that I now can offer you an easy definition of quantum computing, I’ll give you the pithiest explanation that I read, courtesy of the New York Times:  “Traditional computers perform calculations by processing ‘bits’ of information, with each bit holding one of two values: a 1 or a 0. A collection of eight bits – known as a byte – can store a single character, like the letter A. A quantum computer, on the other hand, processes bits built by scientists that can exist as both a 1 and a 0 simultaneously. So whereas two traditional bits hold only two values, a pair of these so-called ‘qubits’ can hold four values at once. And as the number of qubits grows, a quantum computer becomes exponentially more powerful – three qubits hold eight values, four qubits hold 16 and so on. That makes today’s supercomputers look like toys.” But what was so mind-blowing about the quantum summit in our newsroom, though, wasn’t what it made me understand, but what it forced me to imagine. The first step was realising how real and near quantum applications could be. Not way over the horizon, but in the next decade. Not just encryption in the digital world by creating a key that cannot be hacked. But also real-world problems like fertilisers in farming and carbon capture and language processing. And, by language processing, they mean not transcription from voice to text and back again, but machines that understand meaning – jokes included. Looking back over my notebook of the day, though, I see one word scrawled and underlined: wasteland. It’s because, as I listened to Ilyas Khan, the CEO of Quantinuum, and Richard Murray of Orca and Yixin Shen at Royal Holloway and others, I heard a similar pattern of thought: people seeing ways in which we live that could be more efficient, safer and sustainable if we applied powerful computers to do the things that we do every day, but better. We could improve the security of financial transactions. We could ensure health data is more effectively used. We could reduce water pollution and fertiliser run-off. We could create new materials that effectively store carbon emissions. In other words, if we applied ourselves, we could reduce inefficiencies that we’ve just come to take for granted. We could cut waste from financial fraud, waste of life in the inefficient use of health information, waste of our resources and biodiversity in unnecessary planetary degradation. One of the mind-boggling facts of our wasteful world is that if food waste were a country, according to the UN, it would be the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China. But the fact is that waste is built into so much of our economic and social way of life. And allow yourself in these anxious and stressful times to imagine what benefit technology has in store, what it will do and what it can do to different kinds of waste in the decade to come.  By the way, this is not a claim on my part to be a model of modesty when it comes to eating, ordering or wasting food. Anyone who knows me would cackle at that thought. And I also know that the obsession that comes with age – an obsession about rubbish creeps up on people and, before you know it, you’re a middle-aged man who gets a strange mixture of anxiety and excitement on the day the bins are collected. But there’s an idea, here, I think. One to explore in 2023. Waste – and the application of technology to reduce it. And, when you start thinking about it, you see the pattern and the possibility everywhere. Even in a post-Christmas party haze. Catch up The Responsible Quantum Summit Conversations around shared languages, national security, global economy and quantum supremacy with special guests.

We held our office Christmas party this week; a little early, I admit, but good to beat the rush. I’ll spare you the details, except one: we over-ordered. There was too much food left and, briefly, it went from feeling generous to ugly. But only briefly. Because, of course, there’s an app for that. An app for leftovers, that makes sure what’s not eaten doesn’t go to waste. I’m James Harding, Editor of Tortoise, and I mention the Christmas party leftovers not as a mini mea culpa, but because one of the more encouraging moments of my week was the realisation that technology is coming for waste in all its forms: food waste, financial waste, information waste, energy waste, health waste. One of those moments when you see a thing, then a pattern, then it seems to repeat itself everywhere.  Here’s why. On Wednesday, we hosted our first Responsible Quantum Summit. My colleague Luke Gbedemah, who writes the Tech States Sensemaker, had identified a group of people who can explain quantum computing and, excitingly, give a sense of where it’s going. He also gave me a reading list for the night before, and so rather than pretend that I now can offer you an easy definition of quantum computing, I’ll give you the pithiest explanation that I read, courtesy of the New York Times:  “Traditional computers perform calculations by processing ‘bits’ of information, with each bit holding one of two values: a 1 or a 0. A collection of eight bits – known as a byte – can store a single character, like the letter A. A quantum computer, on the other hand, processes bits built by scientists that can exist as both a 1 and a 0 simultaneously. So whereas two traditional bits hold only two values, a pair of these so-called ‘qubits’ can hold four values at once. And as the number of qubits grows, a quantum computer becomes exponentially more powerful – three qubits hold eight values, four qubits hold 16 and so on. That makes today’s supercomputers look like toys.” But what was so mind-blowing about the quantum summit in our newsroom, though, wasn’t what it made me understand, but what it forced me to imagine. The first step was realising how real and near quantum applications could be. Not way over the horizon, but in the next decade. Not just encryption in the digital world by creating a key that cannot be hacked. But also real-world problems like fertilisers in farming and carbon capture and language processing. And, by language processing, they mean not transcription from voice to text and back again, but machines that understand meaning – jokes included. Looking back over my notebook of the day, though, I see one word scrawled and underlined: wasteland. It’s because, as I listened to Ilyas Khan, the CEO of Quantinuum, and Richard Murray of Orca and Yixin Shen at Royal Holloway and others, I heard a similar pattern of thought: people seeing ways in which we live that could be more efficient, safer and sustainable if we applied powerful computers to do the things that we do every day, but better. We could improve the security of financial transactions. We could ensure health data is more effectively used. We could reduce water pollution and fertiliser run-off. We could create new materials that effectively store carbon emissions. In other words, if we applied ourselves, we could reduce inefficiencies that we’ve just come to take for granted. We could cut waste from financial fraud, waste of life in the inefficient use of health information, waste of our resources and biodiversity in unnecessary planetary degradation. One of the mind-boggling facts of our wasteful world is that if food waste were a country, according to the UN, it would be the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China. But the fact is that waste is built into so much of our economic and social way of life. And allow yourself in these anxious and stressful times to imagine what benefit technology has in store, what it will do and what it can do to different kinds of waste in the decade to come.  By the way, this is not a claim on my part to be a model of modesty when it comes to eating, ordering or wasting food. Anyone who knows me would cackle at that thought. And I also know that the obsession that comes with age – an obsession about rubbish creeps up on people and, before you know it, you’re a middle-aged man who gets a strange mixture of anxiety and excitement on the day the bins are collected. But there’s an idea, here, I think. One to explore in 2023. Waste – and the application of technology to reduce it. And, when you start thinking about it, you see the pattern and the possibility everywhere. Even in a post-Christmas party haze. Catch up The Responsible Quantum Summit Conversations around shared languages, national security, global economy and quantum supremacy with special guests.

We held our office Christmas party this week; a little early, I admit, but good to beat the rush. I’ll spare you the details, except one: we over-ordered. There was too much food left and, briefly, it went from feeling generous to ugly. But only briefly. Because, of course, there’s an app for that. An app for leftovers, that makes sure what’s not eaten doesn’t go to waste. I’m James Harding, Editor of Tortoise, and I mention the Christmas party leftovers not as a mini mea culpa, but because one of the more encouraging moments of my week was the realisation that technology is coming for waste in all its forms: food waste, financial waste, information waste, energy waste, health waste. One of those moments when you see a thing, then a pattern, then it seems to repeat itself everywhere.  Here’s why. On Wednesday, we hosted our first Responsible Quantum Summit. My colleague Luke Gbedemah, who writes the Tech States Sensemaker, had identified a group of people who can explain quantum computing and, excitingly, give a sense of where it’s going. He also gave me a reading list for the night before, and so rather than pretend that I now can offer you an easy definition of quantum computing, I’ll give you the pithiest explanation that I read, courtesy of the New York Times:  “Traditional computers perform calculations by processing ‘bits’ of information, with each bit holding one of two values: a 1 or a 0. A collection of eight bits – known as a byte – can store a single character, like the letter A. A quantum computer, on the other hand, processes bits built by scientists that can exist as both a 1 and a 0 simultaneously. So whereas two traditional bits hold only two values, a pair of these so-called ‘qubits’ can hold four values at once. And as the number of qubits grows, a quantum computer becomes exponentially more powerful – three qubits hold eight values, four qubits hold 16 and so on. That makes today’s supercomputers look like toys.” But what was so mind-blowing about the quantum summit in our newsroom, though, wasn’t what it made me understand, but what it forced me to imagine. The first step was realising how real and near quantum applications could be. Not way over the horizon, but in the next decade. Not just encryption in the digital world by creating a key that cannot be hacked. But also real-world problems like fertilisers in farming and carbon capture and language processing. And, by language processing, they mean not transcription from voice to text and back again, but machines that understand meaning – jokes included. Looking back over my notebook of the day, though, I see one word scrawled and underlined: wasteland. It’s because, as I listened to Ilyas Khan, the CEO of Quantinuum, and Richard Murray of Orca and Yixin Shen at Royal Holloway and others, I heard a similar pattern of thought: people seeing ways in which we live that could be more efficient, safer and sustainable if we applied powerful computers to do the things that we do every day, but better. We could improve the security of financial transactions. We could ensure health data is more effectively used. We could reduce water pollution and fertiliser run-off. We could create new materials that effectively store carbon emissions. In other words, if we applied ourselves, we could reduce inefficiencies that we’ve just come to take for granted. We could cut waste from financial fraud, waste of life in the inefficient use of health information, waste of our resources and biodiversity in unnecessary planetary degradation. One of the mind-boggling facts of our wasteful world is that if food waste were a country, according to the UN, it would be the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China. But the fact is that waste is built into so much of our economic and social way of life. And allow yourself in these anxious and stressful times to imagine what benefit technology has in store, what it will do and what it can do to different kinds of waste in the decade to come.  By the way, this is not a claim on my part to be a model of modesty when it comes to eating, ordering or wasting food. Anyone who knows me would cackle at that thought. And I also know that the obsession that comes with age – an obsession about rubbish creeps up on people and, before you know it, you’re a middle-aged man who gets a strange mixture of anxiety and excitement on the day the bins are collected. But there’s an idea, here, I think. One to explore in 2023. Waste – and the application of technology to reduce it. And, when you start thinking about it, you see the pattern and the possibility everywhere. Even in a post-Christmas party haze. Catch up The Responsible Quantum Summit Conversations around shared languages, national security, global economy and quantum supremacy with special guests.

One of the world’s leading scientists reveals why so much of the current advice on food and nutrition is dangerously inaccurate. Our daily digital ThinkIns are exclusively for Tortoise members and their guests.Try Tortoise free for four weeks to unlock your complimentary tickets to all our digital ThinkIns.If you’re already a member and looking for your ThinkIn access code you can find it in the My Tortoise > My Membership section of the app next to ‘ThinkIn access code’.We’d love you to join us.Professor Tim Spector, one of the world’s leading scientists, believes almost everything we’ve been told about food and nutrition is wrong. Join us to listen to insights from his extraordinary new book Spoon-Fed, through which he will encourage us to question every diet plan, official recommendation, miracle cure or food label we encounter. Chair: Ceri Thomas, Editor and Partner, TortoisePre-order the book hereAbout Professor TimProfessor Tim Spector is a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and honorary consultant physician at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals. He is a multi-award winning expert in personalised medicine and the gut microbiome and the author of four books, including the bestselling The Diet Myth.Professor Spector is on the scientific advisory board of health science company ZOE. The ZOE Covid Symptom Study app is being used by over 4m people to regularly report on their health, making it the largest public science project of its kind anywhere in the world.How does a digital ThinkIn work?A digital ThinkIn is like a video conference, hosted by a Tortoise editor, that takes place at the advertised time of the event. Digital ThinkIns are new to Tortoise. Now that our newsroom has closed due to the coronavirus outbreak, we feel it’s more important than ever that we ‘get together’ to talk about the world and what’s going on.The link to join the conversation will be emailed to you after you have registered for your ticket to attend. When you click the link, you enter the digital ThinkIn and can join a live conversation from wherever you are in the world. Doors open at 6:20pm for a welcome and briefing. Come early to get settled, meet the team and chat to other members. ThinkIn starts at 6:30pm.Members can enter their unique members’ access code to book tickets. Find yours in My Tortoise > My Membership in the Tortoise app.If you have any questions or get stuck, please read our FAQs, or get in touch with us at memberhelp@tortoisemedia.comRead our ThinkIn code of conduct.What is a Tortoise ThinkIn?A ThinkIn is not another panel discussion. It is a forum for civilised disagreement. It is a place where everyone has a seat at the (virtual) table. It’s where we get to hear what you think, drawn from your experience, energy and expertise. It is the heart of what we do at Tortoise.

This ThinkIn has been made possible by our founding partnership with Fora.  We’ve become used to eating what we want, but our increasingly globalised and meaty diet, is taking its toll. The world’s population is growing but if we’re serious about the climate crisis, we need to get used to a new style of eating. Is it possible to enjoy food – as we do now – and care about the planet? Our special guests are: Gizzi Erskine, chef and TV personality Morten Toft Bech, Founder, The Meatless Farm Company Ruth Rogers MBE, chef and owner of The River CafĂ© Patrick Holden, the Founding Director of the Sustainable Food Trust Chair: Merope Mills, Editor and Partner, Tortoise What is a Tortoise ThinkIn? A ThinkIn is not another panel discussion. It is a forum for civilised disagreement. Modelled on what we call a ‘leader conference’ in the UK (or an editorial board in the US), it is a place where everyone has a seat at the table. It’s where we get to hear what you think, drawn from your experience, energy and expertise. It’s where, together, we sift through what we know to come to a clear, concise point of view. It is the heart of what we do at Tortoise. Drinks from 6.00pm, starts promptly at 6.30pm. If you are late to a ThinkIn you can ‘SlinkIn’! If you would like to contribute to this ThinkIn, let us know by emailing thinkin@tortoisemedia.com We film our Thinkins so we can watch them back, edit the best bits and share them with members who weren’t there in person. Members can find their ThinkIn booking code in My Tortoise, under My Membership.