Swallow This: Serving Up the Food Industry’s Darkest Secrets

From the author of What to Eat and Shopped | a revelatory investigation into what really goes into the food we eat.Even with 25 years experience as a journalist and investigator of the food chain | Joanna Blythman still felt she had unanswered questions about the food we consume every day. How ‘natural’ is the process for making a ‘natural’ flavouring? What | exactly | is modified starch | and why is it an ingredient in so many foods? What is done to pitta bread to make it stay ‘fresh’ for six months? And why | when you eat a supermarket salad | does the taste linger in your mouth for several hours after?Swallow This is a fascinating exploration of the food processing industry and its products – not just the more obvious ready meals | chicken nuggets and tinned soups | but the less overtly industrial – washed salads | smoothies | yoghurts | cereal bars | bread | fruit juice | prepared vegetables. Forget illegal | horse-meat-scandal processes | every step in the production of these is legal | but practised by a strange and inaccessible industry | with methods a world-away from our idea of domestic food preparation | and obscured by technical speak | unintelligible ingredients manuals | and clever labelling practices.Determined to get to the bottom of the impact the industry has on our food | Joanna Blythman has gained unprecedented access to factories | suppliers and industry insiders | to give an utterly eye-opening account of what we’re really swallowing.