Joanna Blythman

From the author of What to Eat and Shopped, a revelatory investigation into what really goes into the food we eat. Even with 25 years experience as a journalist and investigator of the food chain, Joanna Blythman still felt she had unanswered questions about the food we consume every day. How natural is the process for making a natural flavouring? What, exactly, is modified starch, and why is it an ingredient in so many foods? What is done to pitta bread to make it stay fresh for six months? And why, when you eat a supermarket salad, does the taste linger in your mouth for several hours after? Swallow This is a fascinating exploration of the food processing industry and its products not just the more obvious ready meals, chicken nuggets and tinned soups, but the less overtly industrial washed salads, smoothies, yoghurts, cereal bars, bread, fruit juice, prepared vegetables. Forget illegal, horse-meat-scandal processes, every step in the production of these is legal, but practised by a strange and inaccessible industry, with methods a world-away from our idea of domestic food preparation, and obscured by technical speak, unintelligible ingredients manuals, and clever labelling practices. Determined to get to the bottom of the impact the industry has on our food, Joanna Blythman has gained unprecedented access to factories, suppliers and industry insiders, to give an utterly eye-opening account of what we re really swallowing."

Serving Up the Food Industry's Darkest Secrets

Swallow This

An elegant demolition of the supermarket miracle, this book charts the impact that supermarkets have had on every aspect of our lives and culture. Did you know...; Almost 50% of supermarket fruit and vegetables contain pesticide residues?* UK supermarkets make 40p on every GBP1 spent on bananas while plantations workers are paid just 1p?* Supermarkets operate a climate of fear amongst their suppliers?* Every time a supermarket opens the local community loses on average 276 jobs?In the 1970s, British supermarkets had only 10% of the UK's grocery spend. Now they swallow up 80%, influencing how we shop, what we eat, how we spend our leisure time, how much rubbish we generate, even the very look of our physical environment. Award-winning food writer Joanna Blythman investigates the enormous impact that these big box retailers are having on our lives. need to survive, the wholesalers who have been eliminated from the supply chain, travels to suburban retail parks to meet the teenagers and part-timers who stack our shelves and reveals the hoops third world suppliers must jump through to earn supermarket contracts. This thought-provoking, witty and sometimes chilling voyage of discovery is sure to make you think twice before you reach for that supermarket trolley quite so enthusiastically ever again.

The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets

Shopped

The Food Our Children Eat

What is it about the British and food? We just don't get it, do we? Britain is notorious worldwide for its bad food and increasingly corpulent population but it's a habit we just can't seem to kick. Welcome to the country where recipe and diet books feature constantly in top 10 bestseller lists but where the average meal takes only eight minutes to prepare and people spend more time watching celebrity chefs cooking on TV than doing any cooking themselves, the country where a dining room table is increasingly becoming an optional item of furniture. Welcome to the nation that is almost pathologically obsessed with the safety and provenance of food but which relies on factory-prepared ready meals for sustenance, eating four times more of them than any other country in Europe, the country that never has its greasy fingers out of a packet of crisps, consuming more than the rest of Europe put together. Welcome to the affluent land where children eat food that is more nutririonally impoverished than their counterparts in South African townships, the country where hospitals can sell fast-food burgers but not home-baked cake, the G8 state where even the Prime Minister refuses to eat broccoli.

Bad Food Britain

The Book You Cannot Afford to Ignore

The Food We Eat

Food should be one of life's greatest pleasures, yet increasingly, the choices facing consumers have become increasingly problematic. As well as having to think about what food may, or may not, be doing to you and yours, twenty-first century eaters have to think about what impact the food we eat is having on the environment, farm animals and food producers, both in far away places and back home. Globally, the world is running low on food and water, so we can no longer rely on a steady supply of cheap food. Meanwhile on the home front, many of us are watching our money like never before. Armed with this comprehensive, easy-to-navigate reference book which covers all common types of food, you can simplify your food choices, be aware of environmental and food security issues to quickly identify the best and most ethical food to eat. Answering the most frequently asked questions such as 'Is farmed fish better than wild?' 'Is red meat bad for you?' 'Could GM food feed the world?' 'Is it better to drink bottled or tap water?' 'Is saturated fat really so bad for me?' and 'Are organic foods really worth the extra expense?', Blythman will help you choose what to eat, guiding you to everything you need to know to eat well.

Food That's Good for Your Health, Pocket and Plate

What to Eat

Covering all our pressing food dilemmas, the award-winning food writer leads the way to sensible and practical choices about what to eat.

What to Eat: Food that’s good for your health, pocket and plate

From the author of What to Eat and Shopped, a revelatory investigation into what really goes into the food we eat.

Swallow This: Serving Up the Food Industry’s Darkest Secrets

An elegant demolition of the supermarket miracle, this book charts the impact that supermarkets have had on every aspect of our lives and culture.

Joanna Blythman

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