Spring 09 - Real food festival 2009

Once again the Real Food Festival is promising to deliver a showcase of the very best of authentic produce when it returns in May.

Almost 20,000 visitors passed through the doors at London’s Earls Court exhibition centre last year to attend the inaugural Real Food Festival and more are expected at the 2009 show that runs from May 8-10.

Using the same successful formula as last year, more than 500 small producers have been hand picked by the organising committee to take part and showcase food and drink that has been produced ethically, fairly and sustainably in the UK and globally. It says it will give everyone the opportunity to see and taste artisanal produce through sampling as well as chef demos, and see live animals such as cows, sheep and pigs.

The event will also be supported by well known foodies such as Raymond Blanc, Barny Houghton, Ollie Rowe and Henrietta Green.

New for this year will be a special education area for children to learn where their food comes from. Children will be able to watch a cow being milked and learn how to churn the milk into butter.

Cookery classes and tips for kids will be taking place hosted by Houghton of Bristol’s Bordeaux Quay. There will also be live demos from top chefs such as Blanc, Thomasina Miers and Allegra McEvedy at the Real Food Theatre.

Another new addition is organic growing charity Garden Organic’s workshops and interactive demos encouraging visitors to get their hands dirty and learn about making the perfect compost, as well as looking at creating wormeries – an activity that has already caught the attention of leading chefs such as Arthur Potts Dawson, because composting and wormeries can help reduce the amount of kitchen waste.

Following the success of last year’s thought provoking ‘great debate’, four debates under this banner have been scheduled this year to encourage discussions on a range of topics including the future of food and the affordability of real food in today’s economic climate.

Speakers already lined up include Professor Tim Lang, who coined the phrase “food miles” and Soil Association director Patrick Holden.

Festival founder Philip Lowery says: “The festival is about bringing producers and consumers together to recognise and understand where our food comes from, and educating people and showing them the difference in this way of eating. It is also about supporting small producers.”

Lowery believes the key issue is the sense of unease that consumers are starting to feel about industrial food production processes, and that it is this that needs to be worked on: “Even though we are starting to learn more about our food, we still haven’t really touched the surface about what happens in our food and how it reacts in our bodies.

“But we are starting to recognise that it is not about an individual nutrient; a chicken isn’t and shouldn’t be just a cheap delivery system for protein. I think that by eating and choosing real food, we get the benefits of that, particularly from the point of view of incredibly good, tasty food.”

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