Swallow This by Joanna Blythman

Do you buy supermarket food? Salad, cheese, rolls, vegetables - perhaps meat and fish when they are bargained off because they are on their sell-by dates? I do.  This book is none too cheerful but it is important. I don't quite buy 'you are what you eat' - last time I looked in the mirror I did not resemble my breakfast boiled egg on toast, spread with Flora but I feel that what goes into my bod is essential fuel and I like to believe that it is fit for use.

Those bad old E numbers we all started to get all freaked out about feeding to our children - that's history. We have a whole new range of colourings, flavourings, preservatives that don't have the 'nasty' numbers but make fake food taste sort of real. New rubbish to replace the old. Don't want to scare you but none of the news is good. The word 'extract' on a label covers any process imaginable, treated with any commercially viable mix of chemicals. Not sure how much of my food purchasing will change but I shall be better informed about all the scams and swizzes that are legal mainstream food production and marketing deceit. The essentials of any processed foods according to the foodwriter author are 'sweet, oily, old, flavoured, coloured, watery, starchy, tricky and packed' She devotes a chapter to each process. And the stuff that looks 'natural', 'fresh' or 'baked on the premises' never is.