I’m thrilled to announce I’m working with Real Food Wythenshawe, delivering yoga classes for this fabulous organisation over the next couple of months.
Real Food Wythenshawe is an ambitious five-year programme, bringing a passion for growing and cooking fresh, sustainable food to the people of Wythenshawe. There’s a plateful of projects, from a Geodome at the back of Manchester College to growing fruit and veg in Wythenshawe Park to running a real food demo kitchen and supporting a food bank.
At the heart of the mission is enabling a community to lead healthier, lower carbon lifestyles through the food they grow, cook and eat.
I come in on the ‘healthier’ assignment and I’ll be delivering yoga that is nourishing in its own way.
Real food, food that grows and is fresh and is full of nourishing energy is central to Deana Morris Therapies’ values so it’s a great fit for me as I’m forever demonstrating to clients how junk food actually robs us of energy.
Preparing these yoga classes, I’ve been thinking about how dramatically our food choices have changed over the past 30 years. Growing up, our family had an allotment and we also grew fruit and veg in our garden as well as in a cold frame, which was cunningly crafted from two old windows and some wood. Any other supplies came from a fruit and veg shop at the bottom of the road. Although, I might add, my dad worked at a local factory that made something laughably called Angel Delight. I was no stranger to powdered puddings (Butterscotch flavour anyone? Yeah, thought not). But at least there was some balance between super-fresh and super-processed convenience food.
Today it feels supermarkets have taken over feeding us. Your choices may be ‘fresh’ but how fresh is anything that’s wrapped in plastic and will be past its use-by date in two days’ time?
At home we’ve recently started having a weekly organic veg and meat box delivered, which has been changing how we appreciate food as well as how much we spend. We actually spend a little bit less than we used to in the supermarket shops, which surprised me, but that’s possibly because we throw away less. For a start, most of the vegetables keep in the fridge for up to two weeks. They’re clearly grown for flavour, they’re not full of water and my partner now thinks I’m a great cook as well. But it’s just nutrient, flavour-dense, fresh food doing all the work. With a little help from me, of course.
And it’s great to discover there’s a grassroots real food project out there locally, spreading the word, and the appetite for fresh-out-the-ground fruit and veg.
Right, that’s my food and eating pun quota done for the day. But if you’ve any thoughts on how we can get more of us eating super-fresh, I’d love to hear your comments. Maybe it’s not just a problem for us urbanites. Is it just as much a problem out there in the countryside? Do feed back… ooh, another pun!