Feminism and food, Julia Child, Big Food influence, slippery NHS trusts, iron supplements, puppies
nosebag #20
Hi everyone, I hope you’ve had a fantastic week and survived any storms, literal or metaphorical, the world has chosen to throw at you. Here’s my Sunday nosebag, a little weekly rummage through my life, mind, reading and writing over the past seven days. It’s usually only for my paid subscribers, which costs less than a Starbucks coffee a month and is a way of supporting me to keep writing. But this week in a fit of generosity I’ve decided to leave the paywall out. I hope you all enjoy it with your morning coffee…
How is the book going? I thought you’d never ask! Well now they have slightly moved the publication date, to 10th April. It’s only about 5 weeks later than planned but that’s what they’ve decided. They want that little bit of extra time to get it all perfect basically. And no, I’ve still not seen the cover. So, at the moment, I still feel pretty anxious about the whole project and will be glad when it’s all in the bag! I sent all the edits back last Sunday night but have been reworking one of the chapters all week. When I re-read it during edits I just thought, ew, this one is a bit…weak? So I’ve tried again. I hope I’ve got it closer to the mark this time.
I did a lot of extra research this week - and found out many interesting things - the chapter is about women and the kitchen and feminism and how UPF companies have sold us the idea of liberation, etc. One article that is really worth a read is this one by Spare Rib founder Rosie Boycott, published in the Guardian in 2017.
In the article Boycott wonders whether feminists themselves played a role in our disconnection from our food and the rise of UPF (although she doesn’t call it UPF as the term didn’t exist 17 years ago!). I’ve tried to take this question on, to a certain extent, in the aforementioned reworked chapter.
Whilst writing I was also thinking about Julia Child, who transformed lives in the early 1960s by literally rolling up her sleeves and becoming one of the world’s first TV chefs. I watched a couple of her TV programmes on youtube, and it’s amazing how unedited and raw television was and how she is just so practical and just gets on with it. Compelling.
And if it’s raining all weekend then I highly recommend you get a cup of tea and some biscuits and watch (or rewatch) Meryl Streep play Julia Child in Julie and Julia, I think it’s on Netflix at the moment.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about the influence of big global corporations, be that pharma, food, tech etc on our lives. This interesting 2024 investigation in the BMJ shows how the UK governments food advisors are paid by the world’s largest food companies, and there’s an interactive map of the links. (this is just a screenshot so is not interactive, go to the original article to explore further).
And this 2023 investigation by the Washington Post uncovered how food influencers on tiktok and instagram were being paid by food companies to promote sugary foods or dispel fears about the sweetener aspartame.
Food companies target women in particular and use women as puppets in the process.
As well as thinking about food and feminism for most of the week, I’ve also written The Word is Woman, which contains news about ‘that letter’ claiming male ‘milk’ is as good as women’s - and no the very slippery University Hospital Sussex did not take any responsibility, and yes, I am going to take it to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, when I get a mo.
For those of you who read my Nosebag a couple of weeks ago where I mentioned my split nail and how the doc referred me for a blood test to see if my iron was low, well, I haven’t had the blood test yet, but in the meantime, I’ve been taking iron supplements, and…I feel better!! A LOT better! I guess it could be a coincidence, but if not, it’s yet another example of something I could have blamed on the menopause, but that HRT may not have helped.
There were some fantastic comments on my recent piece about menopause but the iron thing reminded me of one of my favourites from
who wrote:Newsflash - it's not just oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone that are relevant in perimenopause and menopause. Like everything in health - we have to address the system not just look at elements of it in isolation! It's so simplistic and ridiculous to just focus on these hormones. It's lazy actually. FFS. And they are profiting. Which is probably why I feel so offended when I think about it too much.
And finally, well, I am away this weekend visiting
who as some of you may know, currently has a litter of the most gorgeous PUPPIES. And guess what…WE ARE GETTING ONE!
It's very hard to choose! Wish us luck because they are all absolute heaven!
Have a lovely weekend 😘
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Fascinating stuff, as always, but I’m bobbing in to say… THOSE PUPPIES 😍🐾
OH MY, I'm blushing :) !
Those Puppies! lucky you. They are all so cute. I'd have had to choose all of them.
I do have another point to make before I step away. I can't not. I would so a love discussion on the extent to which feminism had a role to play on disconnecting us from real food (yet another thing we can blame women for!). Also, I just want to say that if you follow the money trail on those food companies they are all owned by just a handful big companies that have their fingers in every pie going (no pun intended), including big pharma. Which brings me back to HRT (I can't resist). Oestrogen is highly lucrative, progesterone a lot less so. Maybe that's why there is a push on oestrogen.....It's all about the $£$£$ and women have and continue to be a real money spinner for "the system" in so many ways., including where food is concerned. Imagine if we were all in good health....