FOOD
LIVING
NEWS
HOME REVOLUTIONARY
If you’re daunted by cooking at home,
these practical books might let you lose
that fear, and you needn’t worry about
your budget either. Romilla Arber is the
founder of the Food Education Trust, an
independent charity. This provides children
and adults with cookery skills so they can
learn how to make good, nutritious, home
cooked meals from scratch and rely less
on processed and pre-packed foods.
Romilla suggests people simply eat a more
balanced diet, one with a broader mix of
main ingredients, reducing the reliance
on processed meat products. In addition,
eating a wider variety of meals would make
family’s diets more enjoyable and healthier.
In the four years since it began, the
Food Education Trust has touched the
lives of thousands of people. Funding
comes solely from sales of Romilla’s
cookery books “What’s for Dinner?” and
the award-winning “What’s for Dinner?
Second Helpings.” These two books
have raised over £20,000 to date, all of
which is invested in the trust.
Romilla says, “There is an enormous
lack of food education within schools and
adult education centres, many children
are unable to identify everyday vegetables
such as leeks, butternut squash and
courgettes, but can recognize logos
belonging to leading fast food chains.”
Keeping your balance
It is her contention that, “As a nation our
diet is deteriorating rapidly.” She says
this is largely due to the large quantities
of processed foods we are consuming
on a daily basis. “The number of families
preparing meals from scratch has
key is for more people to cook proper
dinners from scratch.”
She continues, “Eating mostly just
“ Dieticians recommend we should
split our diets between different
reduced. Both my books wholly fund one or two food types simply doesn’t
types of meat, fish and vegetable
the Food Education Trust and each one deliver all the nutrients our bodies need,
based dinners.
is packed full of simple, easy recipes dieticians recommend we should split
which illustrate cooking with basic, raw
ingredients need not be difficult. The
our diets between different types of
meat, fish and vegetable based dinners; ”