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The extent of child labour in the cocoa industry came as a shock. It’s especially prevalent in the world’s leading producers in West Africa. Côte d'Ivoire, the biggest grower, has more than 100,000 child workers often enduring slave labour conditions involving the use of dangerous pesticides and machetes. There’s also cross-border child trafficking. The multi-billion-pound "Big Chocolate" industry hasn’t shown much interest in cleaning up its supply chain. Another good reason to choose Fairtrade.

Industry insiders

Reading The Grocer magazine regularly has been a bit like eavesdropping on the food industry’s private conversation. It was eye-opening to witness its determination to flog us syrupy drinks and salty snacks backed by seven-figure marketing campaigns. A cynic might quickly form the view that the industry’s ideal consumer never cooks, never reads the back of a packet and instead relies on it big processors’ corn, soya and sugar alchemy to cater for all their "meal and snack occasion" needs.

Our daily bread

Expert View

If we are going to change the lamentable way most people eat it will have to be by making it fun

Guy Watson

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Food Festivals 2009

Get a taste of the year ahead with the UK's most comprehensive foodie events listings on the web

• Four cookery schools run by Michelin starred chefs

Cabbages and kings: Britain's 12 best organic producers

Food specialists pick the purest, greenest and tastiest dozen organic food and drink products

• Britain's best sorbet and ice cream

• Root manoeuvre

• Top 10 heritage pubs in London

As a nation we munch our way through 11 billion sandwiches a year (that’s 200 each). But popularity is no guarantee of quality. Glance at most bread wrappers and you’ll find a gruesome list of emulsifiers, preservatives, sweeteners and fats. These ingredients make for depressing spongy loaves with long shelf lives, even if they’ve got fancy French or Italian labels. One of the greatest pleasures of writing the book was discovering artisanal bakers who achieve miracles with nothing more mysterious than good flour, water and yeast – plus skill.

Fairtrade

Before writing this book our engagement with Fairtrade food was pretty half-hearted: a tendency to Divine chocolate and easily available bananas. Harriet Lamb, Director of the Fairtrade Foundation changed all that. She encouraged us to avoid out-of-season, air freighted green beans arguing that in comparison with the Kenyan bean farmer, who creates about 0.9 tonnes CO2 emissions per annum, our carbon footprint (at an average of 9.8 tonnes p.a.) was through the roof and that the free healthcare and education we take for granted has to be paid for in Kenya. Soberingly, it is the developed world’s predilection for meat and dairy products which accounts for half the carbon emissions associated with food.

Plenty more fish in the sea?

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that half of the world’s fish stocks are already being exploited to the hilt and a further quarter are now fished beyond maximum sustainable levels. But fish are tricky to monitor. Sustainability can depend on where and how a fish was caught as well as its species. Enough to induce paralysis at the fish counter. Fortunately, the Marine Stewardship Council’s certification scheme takes into account the full environmental impact of fishing. Look for their "tick-mark" logo on the fish, or even better, ask your fishmonger if you are lucky enough to still have one.

Fat futures

The UK has the highest obesity levels in Europe with more than 60 per cent of us now officially overweight or obese. But obesity is rather euphemistic, isn’t it? What we’re really talking about is people consuming far too much overprocessed foods and soft drinks: we can’t find the "off" switch. Thirty years of artificial sweeteners have not helped; in fact they’re part of the problem, creating ever-sweeter foods and encouraging cravings. It’s not just airline seats and hospital beds that are feeling the strain; health service budgets are threatened by the costs of a heavier and sicker nation as a result of obesity.

The upside of the credit crunch

The food landscape changed dramatically while writing this book: organic purchasing levelled out after high year-on-year increases; many are finding Farmers’ Markets and vegetable box schemes such as Riverford’s are cheaper ways of shopping and less stressful too; growing your own and cooking from scratch increasingly look like good ways to save money and rediscover the pleasures of food.

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