Real Food, quite simply, is food that your great grandparents - and every human who ever lived before them - would have recognised as food.
Real Food is food that is whole. Unadulterated. Food that hasn’t been f&cked around with. Food that has been produced naturally, and food that doesn’t contain anything unnatural.
Real Food is food that your everyday person can understand. Food that you don’t need a degree in Molecular Biology or Food Chemistry to get your head around. It’s food that’s honest, in that it actually is what it says it is - no nasties, no additives, or things that sound like they belong in a laboratory.
Real Food has provenance. You know exactly where it’s come from, who produced it. And how. They’re real people with real faces and names, as opposed to big, faceless corporations. And they set Real Food’s real prices.
Real Food is at the very least sustainable - produced without the routine use of pesticides or herbicides - and ideally it is regenerative. It doesn’t pollute our health or our planet. It may or may not be certified organic or biodynamic, but it is never intensively or industrially produced. Where animals - of any type - are implicated, their welfare is paramount.
Real Food is seasonal. It’s dynamic and its availability changes according to weather, geography and nature. Supermarkets make everything available, all of the time, regardless of those factors: that’s manifestly not Real Food.
Real Food isn’t always convenient. But it’s always, always worth waiting for. In fact, half the fun might be in the anticipation.
Real Food is about connections. Connections to the people who produced it. Connections to the lands and seas it came from. And connections to the people we sit down and eat it with.
Real Food accompanies life. The set pieces, the high days, holidays, and long lunches, yes - but also the midweek suppers on cold, wet evenings, the Saturday morning breakfasts before heading out for the day and the packed lunches that are the envy of all your colleagues.
Read Food is the antithesis of Ultra Processed Food. It might also be the antidote to it. It’s food that is going to make us – and our planet – not worse, but better.
Because, in the final analysis, Real Food is food that nourishes.
Nick