Food for thought?

I had a wonderful home cooked lunch today in London with Sarah and Adam....(a mixed bean and veg soup, spelt bread and a truly delicious red winter salad -thanks Adam!)....it sparked a discussion about how out of touch a lot of us are with shopping for, cooking and really tasting food. Stuff doen't always have to be as wholesome as what we had today, and rarely needs to be complicated or expensive, but I think a lot of us have forgotten that it can at least be tasty.

Apparently, in a lot of countries we've gotten so used to the artificial taste of processed foods that we no longer recognise the real thing...in some cases, we don't even like it. Pastuerised apple juice from concentrate tastes nothing like the real thing, but it's what we've come to expect.

The SlowFood movement, founded in Italy (where else) promotes a sustainable attitude to the production, cooking and enjoyment of food. Some frightening statistics from their site are food for thought..........

• 75% of European food product diversity has been lost since 1900
• 93% of American food product diversity has been lost in the same time period
• 33% of livestock varieties have disappeared or are near disappearing
• 30,000 vegetable varieties have become extinct in the last century, and one more is lost every six hours

Collaboration with schools, teachers and parents in taste education has extended to adult education projects for food industry professionals and food writers as well as enthusiasts.

Now, world hunger is a terrible and terrifying issue and being concerned that we don't enjoy our food enough might appear relatively unimportant, but by looking at the production issues, it's apparent that our move away from seasonal and local produce has a profound implication for developing countries too.

I would dearly love to see more parents both cooking more often themselves and encouraging their children to cook and take an interest in food. We're at risk of loosing so much.

And coming at things from a different perspective, for anyone who can, make a donation to suppport the worthwhile work of the United Nations World Food Program..........