Bad Food Britain: How A Nation Ruined Its Appetite

(Paperback)

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Award-winning investigative food journalist, Joanne Blythman turns her attention to the current hot topic the state of British food.
What is it about the British and food We just dont get it, do we Britain is notorious worldwide for its bad food and increasingly corpulent population but its a habit we just cant 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.

Award-winning investigative food journalist Joanna Blythman takes us on an amusing, perceptive and subversive journey through Britain's contemporary food landscape and traces the roots of our contemporary food troubles in deeply engrained ideas about class, modernity and progress.

Reviews

Praise for 'Shopped': 'She probably knows more than anyone else about where our food comes from.' Nigel Slater 'Joanna Blythman has bravely and compellingly exposed the corrosive effect of supermarkets on our farming and our food culture. And she has rightly identified you, the consumer, as the only person who can do anything about it. Don't read it and weep. Read it and change the way you shop.' Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall 'Shocking and powerful.' The Guardian 'She'll fire you up with a righteous fervour that may last beyond your return to the mainland.' The Times 'Blythman has provided a compelling wake-up call.' Financial Times

Author Bio

Joanna Blythman is Britain's leading investigative food journalist and an influential commentator on the British food chain. She has won three prestigious Glenfiddich awards for her writing. She writes for the Guardian and several other magazines and newspapers, and broadcasts frequently on food issues. She has two children and lives in Edinburgh.