Sustainability

Life now seems to be one of extremes, but my take on food and sustainability is resolutely moderate and open to new learning, governed by the fundamental belief that eating better has the power to make the world a better place.

With the industrialisation of Britain in the 19th Century and the worry about self-sufficiency and a starving nation post World War II the push was on growing as much food, as cheaply as possible. And we succeeded. We have more food than ever before even if we throw a third of it away. But we have learnt, and are still earning, that ‘cheap’ food and the intensive agriculture that produces it, comes at a huge cost.

Mono-crops, be they wheat, almond or avocado, are not as efficient as they once seemed, and the intense way they are farmed has produced rapid and alarming global soil degradation and shrinking crop yields; their reliance on chemical, carbon-intensive herbicides, fertilisers and insecticides have now been linked to cancers, dementia, auto-immune disease and diabetes and are polluting our rivers and our seas.

They are also decimating the insect populations that we rely on to fertilise our soil and pollinate our crops.

It is clear we need to eat less meat but when we do we need to pay more for it as we learn how effective pasture fed, small-scale cattle and sheep farming is at locking carbon into soil and promoting biodiversity.

For good gut and planetary health we need to eat a mass more vegetables and whole foods - fibre is the ultimate superfood – but instead many of us are not eating enough, relying on the ultra-processed foods that have been proven to be so bad for us.

Today diet-related disease kills more people worldwide than either smoking or alcohol. The WHO estimate that 2 billion people worldwide suffer from micronutrient deficiency, 4 million of whom are children living in the UK.

Eating well allows children to grow in good health and adults, young and old, to live to their full potential but it is also a joyful act, putting us in touch with the earth that feeds us, and to each other.

Food, and the pleasure of eating together, can connect us to both friends, family and the millions of people who grow, gather, harvest, move, cook and sell our food. In a post-Brexit world, the whole political spectrum has the chance to re-shape our food policies to support health and the environment, to pay food producers and farmers who are looking after the soil more fairly and to give people, no matter their incomes, the tools to feed themselves with whole, unprocessed food.

Above all we need to re-engage with the love of good food and cooking. The fastest route to good health is to cook more, with whole ingredients; the fastest way to pleasure is to sit down and savour good food with the people you love. Let’s eat deliciously whenever and wherever possible and see mankind flourish.