Joanna Blythman was in Town

Joanna Blythman is a Scottish investigative food journalist, writer and commentator on food chain, covering subject as salmon farming, supermarkets, intensive pineapple production and the causes of obesity. She has won several awards for her books which highlight the power supermarkets have these days, what our children eat and how to avoid GM foods.

Cork Free Choice Consumer Group invited Joanna over to the Crawford Gallery to talk about 'What's in our Food' and if I wasn't already convinced that processed food is total rubbish - I would be now. I actually started to refuse processed food and ready-made meals because they taste simply horrendous and I do like my flavour. I never thought about the health side of things and what it can do to our body. Joanna read out some of the ingredients in processed food and most of them were first of all non-pronounceable and secondly I have never heard of. So that was a bit frightening especially because I consider myself a bit of a fountain of knowledge when it comes to food.

Anyhow, Joanna was a bit nervous when she gave her speech (mostly supported by her notes) but when it came to the Q&A's she was in her element, being able to answer them all. Obviously her knowledge is based on the UK laws and regulations but since they are not too different from ours, we were able to learn a lot more.

Darina Allen and her brother Rory were under the listeners and you could see by their approving nods that they totally agreed with Joanna's informative evening.

Kitty, from Nano Nagle Centre in Mallow was also attending and we had a lovely chat about her upcoming new TV show where people are shown how to create a vegetable garden. Kitty was on of the 'Helping Angels' of Richard Corrigan for his City Farm project in Blackpool a while back. So watch this space for further updates on this project.

If you want to learn more about the 'stuff' that is in our food, make sure you read one of Joanna's books (available on Amazon) or follow one of the links below:

http://www.food-info.net/uk/ingredientlist.htm
http://nutrition.about.com/od/askyournutritionist/f/processedfoods.htm
http://www.ukfoodguide.net/enumeric.htm