Many people know that honey is good for us and many more know how great it tastes, but not everyone knows just how many different aspects there are to honey. Anthropologists and archaeologists believe that man has been hunting for honey for over 10 000 years. We have been keeping bees for millennia and they are mentioned in many religious texts. They provide us with many natural products including, honey, propolis, beeswax and pollen, all of which have been extremely useful to us. This post is only going to focus on honey.

Honey is made from the nectar found in flowers which is collected by bees and then partially digested before being regurgitated and stored in the honeycomb as a source of food for the bee larvae. Honey is sweet because it is made up of the sugars fructose and glucose and trace elements of amino acids and other beneficial qualities.

I lifted the lid on the cardboard box containing my raw food pizza to take a peek.

The young woman behind the desk at Nourish, the health shop at Dean Street Arcade, joined me, and we silently stood looking at the array of avocado pear, caramelised onion, mushroom, sprouts and what looked like cream, but I had been assured was actually cashew nut cheese.

She pointed to my son and whispered 'Is he going to eat this?'. I shrugged. I couldn't get my four-year old to eat a normal pizza, nevermind this affair. I assured her, my mouth already watering at the prospect of tasting what was infront of me, that I hadn't sampled the fare yet either. 'I'm just helping out' she smiled, 'and I hadn't seen one of them before'...

Every school week a box of vegetables is dropped off at my son's school with my name on it. It sits, in amongst similar boxes, awaiting pick-up. It must be said that I often forget and my box finds its way into the school fridge until I remember the following day to collect it.

My pack is always brimming over with a variety of fresh vegetables, picked on the morning of delivery. This might sound pretty obvious, but I have used other box delivery schemes in Cape Town where, because of logistics and through no fault of their own, you only receive your vegetables a couple of days after picking. This can make a huge difference to the state of your vegetables (Harvest of Hope's are firm, crisp and FRESH – gorgeous!).

Bet you thought the day could never come. All this blarney about fish running out is just part of the whole green thing, people are just over-reacting, as usual... right?

Wrong. The prediction is that if we continue fishing as we are now, we will see the end of most seafood by 2048.

Imagine, for a moment, an ocean without fish. Your meals without seafood. Imagine the global consequences. This if the future if we do not stop, think and act.

The End of the Line is a film that reveals the impact of overfishing on our oceans and our global love affair with fish as food.

The major feature doccie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009, is screening overseas at the moment, and is due in South Africa in September at a cinema near you.

learning the permaculture way with SEEDSeed embodies what permaculture is all about. The Seed permaculture courses teach you how to design and grow your garden in a way that mimics the diverse biological systems in nature. The garden works as a whole system, providing ecological sustainability, whilst at the same time meeting human needs. Looking at a permaculture garden you may be forgiven for thinking that this is organised chaos! Yet as in nature, there is method in madness.

Plants are planted in a manner that conserves space and allows them to benefit each other. Seeds Saturday courses teach you the principles behind permaculture and how to go about adding permaculture to your own garden. The courses take place at

Second Edition Cape Town Green MapWe've been working on a project with the City of Cape Town's Environmental Resource Management Dept and A & C Maps for the last eighteen months and today we're launching the second print edition of the Cape Town Green Map, ahead of World Environment Day tomorrow. The online map was launched a year ago, and Open Green Map, the global green map system we are affiliated with, is also turning one tomorrow.

South Africa is apparently the first country in the world to issue a wine bottle seal certifying the "wine has been grown and produced sustainably". The seal is issued by the Wine and Spirit Board and is intended for bottled wines only.

Every seal carries a unique number, through which the wine’s provenance (wine speak for where it comes from) can be tracked from vine to bottle. The system starts this year and is a voluntary system available to wineries that have passed the accreditation of the Integrated Production of Wines' (IPW) set of sustainable principles, at farm, winery and bottling levels. IPW covers a range of issues such as integrated pest management, the health of workers, the conservation of biodiversity and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as how waste is handled.

This weekend the Good Food and Wine festival is happening at the CTICC. I went along to discover how much sway the local and organic movement has over food in our country at festivals such as this one.

South Africa has many hidden food gems that are scattered throughout the country and you sometimes have to be in the know and other times you may just stumble across some great produce. Now let’s face it, festivals such as this one are aimed at the well heeled and if you can tear yourself away from the celebrity chefs, there are several stalls featuring organic or eco-friendly foodstuffs.

Green Home, which happens to be supplying the BBC Lifestyle

It seems to be that more and more, there are people who have a wheat allergy, gluten intolerance or gluten enteropathy. Many of us cannot conceive of a lifestyle that excludes many of our favourite foods such as bread, cakes, biscuits and pasta. Yet this is what many people face daily - for the rest of their lives.We have been eating wheat for millennia as a race, but for some of us, our bodies are turning on one of our staple grains.

So what exactly in wheat is the cause of allergies?

Wheat is not just made up of carbohydrates or starch,

apples - keep the doctor away this winterThe apple. The forbidden fruit. There is extensive history and mythology surrounding the apple, and we have been eating apples for millennia, Archaeologists have evidence of people eating apples as far back as 6500 B.C. Apples originated in Central Asia and at least 55 million tons of apples were grown worldwide in 2005, with a value of about $10billion. The biggest producer of apples was China. South Africa has around 22,5 million Apple trees.The following areas are where they are mostly grown: Ermelo (Mpumalanga), Bethlehem( Free State), Langkloof, and many areas of the Western Cape. The Elgin Valley near Grabouw is the main producing area for apples in south Africa. 60% of South Africa’s apple crop is harvested in the Grabouw region, just one hour outside of Cape Town.