Helen Conn is pottering in the orchard of her Surrey garden with its quince,
hazelnuts, figs, mulberries and so on, destined to be made into jam.
Cardoons are rearing from the vegetable patch, with the beginnings of white
sprouting broccoli, yellow carrots, pak choi and celeriac. The talk is of
food and travels: finding pigs’ heads to make brawn in a Welsh market, the
tuna auctions in Tokyo, a favourite tapas bar in Spain, a sensational fish
and chip shop in South Africa.
Back in her cottagey kitchen, festooned with collections of old rolling pins,
gadgets and recipe books, she offers coffee and it is something of a shock
when she opens a cupboard to reveal a collection of sweeteners, a salt
substitute from Finland containing potassium and amino acid lysine, pots of
MSG and a selection of flavour-enhancers from Switzerland and Croatia.
Conn is a food scientist: one of those white-coated laboratory beings bent on
perverting and engineering our food with additives and techno-processes
until it barely resembles food at all. Except that this flamboyant,
food-loving woman doesn’t fit the image at all. In fact, she laughs at the
absurdity of the idea.
“We are such Luddites in this country, so suspicious of that word ‘science’,
and yet we are way ahead of the world in food technology. I saw an ad
recently that boasted something like ‘our food products are not made by food
scientists’. That’s like saying ‘don’t worry, our doctors aren’t medics’ or
‘our finance directors know nothing about accountancy’. Food is all about
science. Every time you cook, you use chemistry, and every ‘natural’ food
has a scientific formula. If you listed the chemicals that make up a tomato,
then said ‘what is this?’, hardly anyone would get it. When you make a
‘nature-identical’ tomato flavouring, you are just mimicking the original.
“Whenever there is a food scare and people say, ‘what is such and such doing
to our bodies?’, I say, ‘well, in most cases, nothing, because the body
deals with the chemical in the same way, whether the source is natural or
synthetic’. We don’t question the medicines we buy, yet they are made in the
same way: think of aspirin, made to a formula based on salicylates found in
willow bark.”
She is particularly wary about pillorying specific additives, such as food
colourings or the flavour-enhancer monosodium glutamate (MSG), for
behavioural disorders in children. “I’m not suggesting that there aren’t
people who are susceptible to various foods,” she insists, “particularly
those that are high in various amino acids [the basis of MSG]. For example,
some people can’t eat cheese – but we are talking about people with a true
intolerance, who have gone through proper medical diagnostic tests, not
those who have a perceived intolerance and have done a trendy patch test in
a health-food shop. “I think behavioural problems often are down to diet,
but I am more inclined to blame a lack of omega-3 fish oil – that I
understand at a scientific level – than things like the colours in fizzy
drinks alone. My philosophy is that there is a place for everything, as long
as you eat a balanced diet and don’t overdose on any specific food or
drink”.
If anyone can convince us to be less suspicious about the contribution of
science to our food, it is Conn, who was brought up in a large family, where
her Jamaican mother always had pots of food on the go. She studied food
science and nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College: “I was never a nerdy
scientist, more a hot-pants and platform-heels sort – this was the late
Sixties and nutrition was just becoming fashionable.” Since then, she has
spanned every corner of the food world: from working for Unilever to help to
develop filo pastry with a shelf-life in Greece, bringing modern technology
to bear on artisan sausages in Germany, to working with chefs such as Anton
Mosimann and, currently, Heston Blumenthal. She is MD of Britannia Health
Products, which researches, develops and markets foods linked to specific
nutritional benefits. And next week, with other scientists and chefs,
including Blumenthal, she will again be doing her bit to excite people about
the way science can enhance the enjoyment of food, at the Cheltenham
Festival of Science.
“‘Processed’, in terms of food, has become a demon word,” she says, “but
virtually everything we eat is processed: I make jam; that’s a process. If
only kids were taught food science as part of chemistry in schools, we might
get to grips with it, and not be so wary. Of course we should question what
goes into our food, but you can’t question properly unless you understand
the basics.”
In any case, the future, she predicts, will be less about additives and more
about “functional foods”, designed so that you can cherry-pick what is best
for you. “There are two routes you can take. You can accentuate the active
ingredient in a food, through breeding – for example you can cultivate
tomatoes with higher levels of lycopene, which has been shown in clinical
studies to help prevent prostate cancer. Already we are seeing ‘super
broccoli’ with higher levels of flavonoids. The other route is to extract
such active ingredients from one food and then put them into other foods.”
The GM giant Monsanto recently caused a storm with its plans to implant
omega-3 oils into wheat, but Conn is convinced that such biotechnology is
the way forward. “We are going to need such foods as we continue looking at
ways of extending people’s lives and helping them to be active. I’m not a
believer in only pills – I want everyone to have joy in eating – so it makes
perfect sense to me. We are only scared of these things because no one has
explained them properly.”
Cue the thorniest subject of them all: GM. Not unsurprisingly, she has no
problem whatsoever. “I think there is panic because we’ve muddled the Dolly
the sheep type of genetics with crops. If you look at the way most plants
and seeds have been developed over the years as a matter of course, if
that’s not genetic modification, I don’t know what is. My concern is more
that it is not always good for flavour. For example, we have bred and bred
the potato to produce huge quantities of things that taste of nothing, which
is why we are starting to go back to the old breeds, because they are more
interesting.”
So, what should we be worried about? “Our own ignorance!” she laughs. “Heston
is launching a book with the Royal Society of Chemistry that will go to
every school chemistry department. That to me is fantastic, one of the best
things he’s done. If Jamie Oliver can push on the school-dinner front and
Heston on the science, then the more educated people will be, and the more
able to make sensible decisions about science in the food world.”
The Cheltenham Festival of Science runs from June 8-12 (01242 227979;
www.cheltenhamfestivals.co.uk)
