News release 24 August 2007

Food for Thought served up at Festival of Politics 

Cook and broadcaster Clarissa Dickson-Wright gave a warning about society’s preference for convenience food, on the opening day of the Scottish Parliament’s Festival of Politics.

She said: "I don’t think people would buy the ready meals and the supremarket food if they knew quite how dangerous it was. Let's take chicken. There are only two people in the British Isles that I would buy chicken from."

Ms Dickson-Wright argued that a change to the law was needed to ensure that people knew where their food came from.

She called for the repeal of Section 36 of the Trade Descriptions Act, which states that goods are deemed to have been manufactured or produced in the country in which they last underwent a treatment or process resulting in a substantial change.

She also talked about an approach taken in Sweden, which meant consumers could find out more about where their food came from: "In the supermarket when you buy something you have a number on it… and that number traces back to the farm they come from."

Ms Dickson-Wright was joined by award winning chef and co-founder of Oloroso Tony Singh in a discussion about the politics of food production and healthy eating.

Chaired by the Parliament's Deputy Presiding Officer Alasdair Morgan MSP, a number of issues were covered ranging from the role of education in shaping eating habits to the growth of farmers’ markets in the UK.

Mr Singh welcomed the boom in farmers’ markets as an alternative to supermarkets though pointed out that they could be expensive.

He said: “The general public can’t go to the farmers’ market to do their weekly shopping – it’s too expensive. For most people it’s quite a luxury.”

The impact on society of convenience food and the decline of the importance of the family meal was a key theme of the discussion.

Mr Singh said: "Twenty or thirty years ago we’d spend an average of two to three hours a day cooking a meal. That's now changed to about twenty minutes for dinner. Most people don’t sit down to a family meal at all, which shapes our social landscape."

"People are time precious, but I still think that you can take time out to cook good food, healthy food, even if it’s one day a week.

"We spend more money on food but we are getting fatter and we are getting less nutrition. We are the unhealthy man of Europe."

The lack of education about food was a recurring theme of the event and Ms Dickson-Wright’s comments on this issue were well received by the audience.

She said: "There are no cooking lessons in schools. Home economics should be brought back."

The full discussion along with other Festival of Politics highlights is available on www.Holyrood.tv.

The media contact is:
Susan Gray: 0131 348 6245 RNID TypeTalk calls welcome
email: [email protected]

Full details of the Festival programme are available from

http://www.festivalofpolitics.org.uk

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