So what's your crap food secret? Here's ours... What's Ireland Eating

Last night on RTE television, journalist (and my other half) Philip Boucher-Hayes presented the second "What's Ireland Eating?" documentary which we developed from the book we wrote together in 2009 - Basketcase; what's happening to Irish food?.

Like the first "What's Ireland Eating" programme which grabbed Irish audiences by the throat last year, it was a powerful investigation on what's going on in the Irish diet. Plenty of shocking footage of visceral fat choking a patient's insides as he lay on the operating table of a Dublin hospital. Plenty of new research denoting that high calorie, high fat, high salt food is not just loosely "addictive" but actually addictive. Norah Volkow, a scientist in addiction from the US explained how even the idea of consuming a food you crave creates a dopamine response, which is often not matched by eating the food itself. So you consume more, to get the same hit. Looking at signage of fast food brands can cause this response in people, with some reaching the point where they can no longer regulate their brain's response or demand for certain foods, let alone deal with what happens once they are in their body.

Let's be clear here. We all eat bad food from time to time. My particular "crap food" favorites are peanut butter, crisps and prawn crackers. In a sequence that was cut from the final edit for time constraints, Philip recorded a food diary, accurate down to the last Skittle and glass of whiskey. Fortunately his main meal that day was a ratatouille that I had made for supper, which is low in calories and thankfully full of pretty good nutrients. The photo on the right shows him receiving his nutritional breakdown which was conducted by Teagasc. Not a very happy face is it? But that's real life, we're not all as healthy as we may think we are.

But is a high calorie snack food bad for you if you only consume it now and again? One of the central questions we wanted to ask in the documentary was - is curing Ireland's obesity problem as simple as saying "everything in moderation". Professor Mike Gibney from UCD shook his head "That's not working is it?" which is pretty much the case. We know more about food values and calorie content in Ireland than perhaps we ever did. Yet our obesity figures are still on the rise. So why are so many of us out of control in our eating habits and does the food industry have a role to play in curbing this pattern?

Should there be a reformulation of ingredients in manufactured foods? Would a sugar tax bring about behaviour change? Should healthier options be subsided by taxing sugary drinks? Is more education the answer? There are many options in the war on obesity that have been employed by other countries - Denmark (fat tax) and some states in the US (banning sodas over 16 ounces in volume, punitive taxes on soda drinks in others) but obestiy is a complex issue that needs a complex set of solutions. As the weight watchers group in Athlone who featured in the documentary admitted "we eat when we're miserable, we eat to celebrate.. that's why we're here". They said that a lot of their excess weight was down to their individual responsibility. On twitter yesterday in Ireland #whatsirelandeating was the topic trending for the entire day with multiple tweets per second as the programme aired "what can we do about obesity... tax the junk food companies.... I never knew a bag of prawn crackers had 600 calories!". What was most important was that Irish people were engaged by the issue and engagement itself has to be part of the solution.

We didn't provide answers in the documentary but asked the questions. If you want to have a look it's on the RTE player at the link below.

http://www.rte.ie/tv/programmes/whats_ireland_eating.html

What's Ireland Eating... that's a good question

Last night our documentary which aired last May was repeated on RTE again. It came out of the book Philip and I wrote about food, and discussions we still have about global food systems, food safety, supermarkets, farming and the quality and price of what goes into our gobs. If you missed it the documentary will be on the RTE player and free to view for the next month or so at the link below;
http://tinyurl.com/6kdww6z

The documentary was made following a television proposal I wrote of Basketcase; What's happening to Irish Food, which was the book Philip Boucher-Hayes and myself co-authored back in 2009 (Philip is an RTE journalist and also my husband). On the left is a picture of us working happily together for the publicity of the book. Just remember I said the word Publicity, although in actual fact we work pretty well together... we'd want to - after one book, one documentary and countless other projects including two children it's simply the way it has to be. Although Philip was rubbish at finishing his section of the book on time - procrastinating brilliantly by putting up Christmas decorations that took two months to complete. At one point we were going to write in the dedication "We hope you enjoy this book, and if you find some of it quite not up to scratch you should see our Christmas decorations - they're fabulous".

We are currently preparing "What's Ireland Eating 2", and hope to start filming in 2012, so I'll keep you posted on the programme and give some hints towards what we're covering, all I can say for the moment is.... chicken. Happy eating folks

Denmark's Fat Tax - one month old and already gone badly wrong

After a fabulous Friday spent at Savour Kilkenny I'm firmly back in the real world after discovering a food news shocker today. I should have known that after a lovely interlude of chatting with author Colman Andrews about locavores, eating Goatsbridge trout and Knockdrinna cheese with fantastic wine pairings in Mount Juliet, things would come down to earth with a bump via my old nemesis - the supermarkets.

Tomorrow morning I'm reporting on the Kenny Show on Fat Tax and how Denmark is reacting to its first month under the new expensive food regime. Aside from the expected consumer complaints about more expensive processed food, dairy and meat products, the real shocker is that the supermarkets there have taken complete advantage of the new law and are charging as much as 15% more on products such as butter and cream, on top of the 6% or so mark up from the fat tax itself.

This is profiteering on an outrageous scale and again there's no measures or legislation to stop them. Not only are the Danish chains involved in this desception but also Aldi and Lidl which operate here in Ireland. Sometimes I think I'm far too cynical about supermarkets but this new piece of skullduggery in action blew me away. And what would happen here if a fat tax was introduced? Exactly the same thing, particularly as we've no supermarket ombudsman or protection from this sort of practice.

What's the point of having any kind of public health policy if supermarkets use it as a tool to rip off consumers? I'll be going through it in detail after 10am on RTE radio one tomorrow and will put an audio link up here on the blog later.

Stick to what you do best, believe in yourself and the passion will shine through. Finally, I visit the legend that is Ballymaloe

Breakfast at Ballymaloe House is the kind of breakfast you dream of. Gooseberries and pears from the garden nestle alongside natural yoghurt. The yellowest of eggs from hens on the farm fight for room alongside sausages, bacon, and puddings from pigs slaughtered and cured by a local butcher. A fragrant bunch of sweetpeas watches over the fresher than fresh orange juice and selection of home-made breads and scones.

As a seasoned examiner of hotel breakfasts who harasses waiters with "where does the raspberry jam come from?", breakfast at Ballymaloe was up there with some of my Great Food Experiences. In fact it's best if you eat breakfast here not to go to another hotel within a short space of time, or in fact ever. Simply because few meals are going to match this standard, and that's even before I get started on the Blackwater salmon and Ballycotton lobster at dinner.

It was last week that Philip and I found ourselves in Ballymaloe; we visited the hotel, cookery school and farm for a speaking engagement on our book Basketcase; What's Happening to Ireland's Food? and the follow-up documentary What's Ireland Eating? which aired a few months ago on RTE. Doing these talks is seldom hard work as the reaction and energy from people interested in food and which direction Irish food is going is so wonderful to be around. If anything, every time we speak at a food event together or separately, I learn so much from the people in the audience and take away many personal stories from farmers, food producers and enthusiasts. These chats have led to relationships with people from all over the country (in fact all over the world) and have informed a big part of my journalism. Indeed, they should all watch out, or they're in danger of appearing in the follow up to What's Ireland Eating? which looks to be on the cards.

But more important than the opportunity to eat the wonderful food at Ballymaloe, was the chance to spend time with Darina and the Allen family. It's so rare to meet someone who is truly so passionate about food, farming and the environment, or someone who is so steeped in the tradition of good food but also au fait with the realities of the global food highway we operate in. So many hotels and food businesses "greenwash" what they are doing; they market themselves as authentically Irish, organic, sustainable etc. But what's written all over Ballymaloe and Darina herself is that this farm is the genuine article. In fact, after filming with Ear to the Ground on farms from Belgium to Vietnam, I can safely say there are very few places like Ballymaloe, it is a remarkable farm and a beacon for Irish produce, organics and for the sheer quality and correctness in the way it produces food.

We all know Darina from her books and television series, but what you don't get to see on television is the way she moves through her garden, puzzling over how many days it will be before the blackcurrants are just right to eat. In almost the same breath she remarks on supermarket legislation and what upcoming changes might mean for Irish producers.

Darina's and Tim's breath of knowledge on farming, gardening and production of every type of foodstuff from cheddar cheese to cob nuts is remarkable, and the gardens they have built surrounding the cookery school at Ballymaloe are incredibly beautiful. Pictured above is Darina showing Philip around one of the formal gardens; box hedging encloses vegetables, herbs, lavenders and ornamental planting. Food is in evidence everywhere; chickens peck amongst the trees, garlic bunches hang from the mental struts of the greenhouses and everything from cabbages to cherry tomatoes are grown on the farm. From the milk of two Jersey cows they are currently making cheese. In fact, if there was ever a model for self sufficiency this is it.

After a tour of the farm we watched Rachel Allen giving a demonstration at the cookery school. The Ballymaloe courses are world famous, and it's possibly the only cookery school in the world located on an organic farm. As someone passionate about food and farming, I had always wanted to visit the cookery school and farm, but somehow I felt I would be let down by the experience. I felt it might be "chinzy"; inauthentic, that the Ballymaloe experience could be marketing over matter; a Cath Kidson version of River Cottage. As farming and artisan food is currently so vogueish, it's often hard to tell what's real and who is pulling the wool over your eyes.

But Ballymaloe is real. You know if you spend as long as we did talking about deep litter systems for cattle and compost making that this is a farm which knows what it is about. It is also a food message which is not a cutesy one, but a real one. Everything is done properly. It has an old fashioned workmanlike feel about it. Correctness and workmanlike approach might sound like something from a past age but it really pays off in terms of working with the environment and with livestock - it's a quality that was beaten into me from riding and working with horses. It's also something I learned from my parents farms, and something I always look out for when I visit farms, food or tourism businesses. Over-ornamentation or faux "Irishness" does not make up for bad farm management, poor quality food or mass produced ingredients. And thankfully customers aren't stupid. In my experience food businesses that fail to do things properly, fail themselves.

No corners are cut at Ballymaloe; it's the real deal. At its kernal is a message of quality; growing local ingredients through generations of experience producing food in East Cork. If there's any message or ethos I took away from Ballymaloe it's to stick to what you are doing, believe in it, and passion will shine through. So much of our lives and consumerism itself is built on precisely the opposite. What's lovely about Ballymaloe and so pertinent to all of us is that we produce great food in this country. Finally we are taking more notice and Ireland the Food Island is punching above its weight. Like Ballymaloe, food doesn't have to be complicated to succeed. It just has to be true to itself, and real.