I’ve just finished reading Eat Your Heart Out by Felicity Lawrence on the plane to my holiday in Corfu. I really enjoyed Not on the Label which she wrote back in 2004 and recently realised that she’d followed it up with Eat your heart out in 2008.
Not on the label was an extremely enlightening and pretty disturbing account of how our food is made. It confirmed my distrust in supermarkets in describing how their power distorts the food production chain, put me off bagged salad, and opened my eyes to the appalling conditions for migrant workers working across the UK preparing our food, revisited in this latest book.
Eat your heart out focuses on a number of major foods and has insights I found fascinating. For instance, it shows how the food business (pre the financial crisis) influences politics, the role of the Marshall Plan after world war two in supporting trade that enabled the dominance of agribusiness, and the impact of soya production on the Amazon. There is also a very interesting section on the role of diet in offending behaviour. Research is cited where a randomised control trial was conducted in a prison and results apparently showed a drop in violence for those receiving multivitamins.
In two weeks time I will have been a vegetarian for 25 years (and unlike some people who describe themselves as veggie I’m an actual one – who eats all dairy, but no meat and no fish). So, where does knowing more about food and how it’s produced leave my food choices? It’s reminded me to as much as possible go for local organic vegetables, to eat butter not low fat spreads, only to buy organic milk, and generally to eat as little processed food as possible. And I’ll continue to eat porridge oats for breakfast (rather than supposedly healthy cereals that are actually full of sugar and many other unnecessary ingredients) and to be wary of mass produced bread.
I’d really encourage you to read Eat your Heart Out, though perhaps not whilst eating your lunch.
