Prue Leith: My carbon footprint should put me in jail

I made the mistake of saying I thought insects might help feed the world. They are high-protein, cheap to farm (they breed like rabbits and grow like Topsy), require little water and energy and probably wouldn’t mind being factory-farmed. Now my post is full of mealworm powder and cricket flour and invitations to champion bug farms.

Being an adviser to the hospital food review has been surprisingly uplifting. The panel members are mostly NHS professionals who are champing at the bit to improve matters and have already led changes in their own hospitals, so know it can be done. In one hospital, lunch was as good as the best home cooking. Yes, some hospital food is dire, and reform will be a huge task and take years. But with the Health Secretary and PM on side, I think we dare to hope.

My carbon footprint should put me in jail. I spent three weeks in India over Christmas, two weeks filming in Cambodia and two weeks working in South Africa. India was pure tourism and we’ve cracked how to do it: mornings tramping round palaces and museums, nice lunch, afternoons asleep by the pool or siesta in bed, then a street walk in the cool, eating what the locals eat. Cambodia was to make a documentary for Channel 4, trying to trace my Cambodian daughter’s roots. As a babe in arms, she was flown out of Phnom Penh just before it fell to the Khmer Rouge. We went down some blind alleys and some good ones, both illuminating and upsetting. I don’t like the idea of blubbing on camera. But we had a lot of fun too, helped by nightly drinks with the crew on the roof of the hotel.