Guild of Food Writers Awards

 I went to the Guild of Food Writers Awards last night, 25th June 2009, and watched as a massive range of food writers and journalists won awards. Makes you realise what a huge amount of people are involved in the food industry, and it frustrates me how little schools and the curriculum appreciate the job opportunities.
The award for a young writer was won by Justin Gruss from Dorset, who is still at school and won himself a laptop. A great start to a young man who hopes to write a cook book and go on to greater things.
Heston won the best food book, and I managed to get through the crush of excited people waiting to congratulate him. He was genuinely surprised to win this award, and it is amazing that he can manage to run restaurants, do TV programs and write such a huge amount of material. Kitchen Chemistry is a book and CD on my website which has some fascinating science to use in the classroom.

Blogs had their own awards and the winner was Tim Hayward for his blog on The Guardian www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth

Le Rocquier School Jersey runs Healthy Lifestyle day

Le Rocquier school in Jersey ran a Healthy Lifestyle day in June with Mrs Carpenter and Mrs Drabble. The aim of the day was to encourage people to live a healthy lifestyle.

Students worked in teams and started with a workout in the school fitness suite using the cycling machines, cross trainers, running machines and treadmill.

Then they went to the food rooms and prepared salad, potato wedges, burgers in buns and fruit salad. These recipes will be analysed using the Nutrition Program.

In the afternoon, the groups sat and meditated and practised their breathing.

The groups each created a PowerPoint presentation on the day and the images will be available on this blog shortly.

New food trends – what are people eating? Dragon fruit and harissa?

When people (mainly students) use the Nutrition Program, they can submit ingredients and foods to us if they are missing from the database. This is showing interesting trends as people are using more exotic ingredients in their recipes, choosing lower fat foods, and eating new food products in their daily diets.

Here are some ingredients which show new food trends – dried pineapple, apple and cherries, dragon fruit, green tea, smoked lardons, harissa, shitake mushrooms, canned pumpkin, mango pulp, lamb’s lettuce and snapper. There are many more – email if you would like the list. We’ll try and find the nutritional value of these ingredients and add them to the database.

What about diets? The funniest request was for paracetamol – and we’ll try and find it. You will see deep fried Mars Bar on the database as it was requested, perhaps in fun. We’re going to add Fanta Zero, Red Bull, candy floss ( it is summertime) and tequilla.

The most interesting to research has been Kamut flour which is an ancient type of wheat related to the durum variety used in modern bread making. They claim it is higher in protein than normal flour and is tolerated by people who are gluten sensitive. This is the link http://www.alimentstrigone.com/info_kamut_en.html. Doves Farm sell this flour.

Kamut wheat

School Meals Nutritional Analysis

From September 2009, the schools meals served in secondary and special schools will have to meet nutritional standards. It is easy to check that primary school meals meet the criteria, but secondary schools are much more complicated. You can see the support that is offered if you visit the School Food Trust website. We, at the Nutrition Program are taking a simpler approach. We are adding a menu analysis to our program which will meet the criteria for the School Food Trust nutritional standards.

You can see the details on this link. BUT there are problems with all the data that can be analysed.

1. Food labels show fibre, but it is AOAC fibre not NSP fibre as required by the Trust.
2. Many modern food products do not have data on calcium, vitamins and zinc content, so these nutrients cannot be calculated until such information is supplied. However, being able to see if the meal is healthy is a good thing and you will be able to do this through our program.

As ever, I believe that things should be kept simple – so you can put one meal in, see the results and then make it more healthier if needed. This helps all cooks with their planning – get one thing right and then progress.

Food: their future conference

We were there and met some very interesting people from the British Nutrition Foundation and  Licence to Cook.

We also got some great feedback about the Program and suggestions for how we can improve which is always good to hear.