Kippers could save your life

I miss kippers. My wife won’t let me eat them at home, and they have become a rarity in restaurants. I stayed in a luxury hotel last month, and the manager was telling me that if I wanted anything – valet parking, room service, breakfast after 10.30 a.m. – I had only to ask. When I enquired if kippers were on the menu, he went as white as unsmoked cod and mumbled that the head of housekeeping had forbidden them because of the luxury soft furnishings.

But I have medical science on my side: a report in the British Medical Journal last week said that fish such as herring could save lives, and the planet. Nearly three-quarters of forage fish – those half-way up the food chain, between plankton and larger fish, like tuna or cod – that are caught are not eaten, but made into fish meal for farmed fish like salmon.