Book review: The Food Maze
25 June 2008 :: Events by Laura Burgess
Book Review
If you thought the food maze meant endless new aisles following the latest Tesco store expansion, think again. This book gets to the heart of the food supply chain – from farm to fork – and demystifies some of the common misconceptions around the production and marketing of our food.
Writer, Robert Elliott, makes an honest appeal to people to think about the traceability of food and to demand higher standards of production to improve the population’s health and protect our natural environment. As the owner of one of our ecoescapes, Aspen House, Elliott knows a thing or two about food, and isn’t happy until his guests have the perfect egg with their bacon. It’s something that comes as a given for his business. In the Food Maze, Elliott shares his own personal account of his relationship with food from childhood helping his family achieve self-sufficiency with their vegetable plot, through to a period of food ‘neglect’ in the 1980s which led to poor health.
Since then he’s been sure to scrutinize his food choices and to return to self-sufficiency as much as possible. And to provide his guests with a memorable stay and, of course, delicious meals. The Food Maze expresses the need to return to ‘real food’ and not the inferior imitation food that supermarkets sell cheaply en masse. Elliott’s ‘back to basics’ life in the countryside has given him an insight into food production that others simply will never know about, or perhaps never thought to ask. We can no longer afford to ignore these facts, and so the Food Maze is more than an insightful introduction into food traceability. Delving below the surface and media hype, The Food Maze explores the impact of farming on our soil which has suffered under heavy pesticide usage and the negative effects of climate change. Elliott goes on to look in detail into bread, milk and meat production, continually referring to the global picture and the events in history that have influenced our diet and health today.
The Food Maze is a fascinating and thought-provoking read and will have you dissecting every food label you come into contact with in the future. There is hope, however, and that’s in the search for Real Food.
To order a copy of The Food Maze for £9.99, visit www.reallifepublishing.co.uk
Find out more about Aspen House.
