Battling With The Food Industry

I knew I wanted to start a food company built on strong values about the power of honesty in food and the communities that food feeds.  The more I understood the dishonesty of the industry, the pretence of what was held up as fresh and natural, the more I knew I had to do something at a grass roots level. Talking about it was not enough.  I had to take action. The food industry has been plagued by a history of poor treatment of unskilled labour which perpetuate low expectations from food suppliers. Employees continue to be paid often well below the minimum wage, working hours that are unsustainable and antisocial and given little to no encouragement or opportunity to develop their knowledge or skills to further their careers.   These people are being exploited at the expense of the growth of greedy shareholders and retail chains seeking low cost and high profit, cultivating a society’s addiction to a quick fix of fast, cheap and easy food with a mindset that ignorance is bliss.

The food labelling laws were designed to protect the small delis, café’s and family sandwich shops which prepare on site with fresh produce you can see.  The loop holes in our food laws enable food chains to hide behind the façade of “made on site” when often they are delivered on site to avoid being honest about ingredients. The reality is hidden from consumers. That any sandwich bought in a mainstream chain was made and snap frozen 3 months prior to being purchased or the doughy soft white loafs of bread and pastries wrapped in plastic with extended shelf lives are filled with an ingredients list as long as your arm and limited nutritional value and toxic health implications was not transparent.

The processing aids that don’t need to be legally shown on packaging such as enzymes in bread to prolong shelf life are made from the likes of pork, bird feathers and bleach, all to maintain the façade and keep consumers ignorant with the perception of freshness and low food prices.