Food - whats in a label

Wednesday 25th November 2020

This evening I joined the university Bledisloe lecture online. The guest speaker was Helen Browning the CEO of the Soil Association. The moderator was Jonathon Dimbleby (an RAU alumni!). Helen has just published a paper for the Soil Association called Grow Back Better - a map for the change that we need after Covid for food, farming and land use. Its worth a read. grow-back-better-soil-association-report.pdf

One of the facts that stood out for me was that 51% of family food bought in the UK is ultra processed food - the highest percentage in Europe. Obesity and disease is directly associated with ultra processed food. I found this link was a really good definition - What is ultra-processed food? - BBC Food Basically anything with a long list of ingredients that you dont understand should be avoided as much as possible. So I went to Tescos and looked at the ingredient list on a few things - I couldn't buy anything! So I focused on the important student essentials - wine (what can be wrong with that particularly as Tesco had a sale on!) and chocolate but I bought the one with the least ingredients (and no added oil). But seriously it is something that I will think about how we can do better.