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Who Killed Healthy Eating in Britain?

I randomly stumbled across this book some time ago and placed it on the bookshelf for later reading. What drew me to it (or what drew it to me ) was the mention of the current day chemical industry and the pervasive chemical contamination that we so often hear and read about, at least in the media channels that find everybody’s health more important than who wins the X-factor.

The book kicks off with the chance discovery of a grave in southern France whilst the author is on holiday. It is the grave of Jack Drummond and his wife, the victims of a despicable murder in the early 1950s. Worse still his young daughter, just 11 years old, was also murdered with them. Back in 1951 the story was big news both in France and back in England too.

The Vitamin Murders documents the author James Fergusson’s investigation into who was convicted for the triple murder and speculates who may have actually been responsible. It unearths the fascinating history of Jack Drummond who was responsible for Britain’s nutritional guidance during the rationing of the second world war and tells how he was as much a wartime hero at home as those who fought on the front line.

When James Fergusson’s wife becomes pregnant during the writing of this book they test themselves for chemical contamination at a London lab and discover that they can pass on the trace chemicals they have in their systems to their unborn child. This leads to a circle that connects the murder of the Drummond family in 1951 with their own chemical legacy and finds a number of unnerving facts along the way.

The Vitamin Murders is an excellent murder mystery that delves into the fact that we owe a lot of our current reliance on poisons to the post war years and is well worth a read for advocates of organic food.

Tim Smit of the Eden Project and foodie extraordinaire Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall both lend their quotes to the back page of the book saying “read it and weep” and adding that the agrochemical industry has “made unwitting guinea pigs of us all.”

You’ll never look at food, or yourself, in the same way again.

Buy The Vitamin Murders – Who Killed Healthy Eating in Britain?

The idea behind the bottle bank arcade machine is that making things fun makes them more usable…

Any opinions on the fact that it’s sponsored by VW?

When I was out in the states last month I spent most of my time in Connecticut and upstate New York. It was really good because I spent a lot of time getting down with nature and checking out the land.

Down by Naples, NY State, was a wonderful place called Grimes Glen, a typical little US creek with a couple of waterfalls.

The falls themselves were cool but I thought I’d share with you the sculpture by the bridge on the way up the glen. Someone had painstakingly positioned all these rocks, with mortar to hold them together.

Very Andy Goldsworthy, don’t you think?

When I switched my Sky box on the other day (at the wall socket, of course) I was greeted with a message screen that I had not seen before.

The vivid green screen that turns to red with the glassy Sky logo and a chameleon perched atop it is accompanied by the narrative:

We can all do our bit to be greener.

By switching your Sky box to standby, together, we can save enough energy to light all the homes in Birmingham for a whole year.

Remember, go red, be greener.

Switching to standby, aye? I thought that standby was the problem because it still uses electricity whereas the really green option is to just switch off at the wall.

All I can find regarding Sky being greener is an article that says a software update last year, rolled out to 9 million customers, could switch off the Sky box during the day, supposedly when not in use. I’ve seen the Sky box tell me it was going to switch off after 2 hours of inactivity and Sky reckon it saves their customers £20 Million a year – that’s about £2 per customer.

Now, if Sky could go just that little bit further and totally switch the whole box off that would be even better

Why buy organic? What is organic? Why isn’t everything organic if it’s so much better? Why is organic more expensive?

If you know the answers to these questions then you’ll be happy to see this wonderful little movie from The Soil Association. If you have friends that need convincing that organic food is actually better than intensively farmed food then, again, you’ll like this.

We like the “public service broadcast” style because, in essence, it is a public service to understand and remind people why organic food is better for the food itself, us, the consumer, and the land and for nature.

(In particular we like the Jack Drummond tone of the film, but that’s another story, especially as we’re reading The Vitamin Murders at the moment. Green book review coming soon)

And if you like this film feel free to pass it on