We need to talk. About food, real food. We need a really serious talk.

Diabetes UK has designated February as Fakeaway February. This is intended to be a fund raising event and requires a Just Giving account to sign up (althought there is no minimum sponsorship requirement). This is not my beef.

The idea is to swap out your takeaway/ready meals/convenience food throughout February for cooked from scratch, home-made versions. This is a very laudable aim and something I fully support. The benefits of not eating the over processed, over packaged offerings that constitute convenience foods are legion. You will cut your sugar intake enomously, which will have a direct impact on insulin levels. You will cut your consumption of industrial fats, avoiding all the down sides that they convey. Home made is always the best option.

No problem with home made over takeaway. Always in favour of that option.

But who, in their right mind, decided to call the campaign “Fakeaway”?

What depths has our relationship with food sunk to, that the real food version of conveience food can be proudly labeled “Fake”? There are plenty of fake foods out there, trying their best to replicate their real food forebears. The real foods they are modelled on are so good that in many cases, the fake foods have to appropriate their names in order to gain credibility.

Real food made with fresh ingredients will never be fake. It is the original version, that is so good that the food industry needed to try and replicate it in a “convenience” form. In that process, all sorts of additional ingredients and procedures were added to that original recipe. The result is the fakeaway, far removed from the real food dish that inspired the copy.

So, here’s to Real Food February. And March. Why not see if we can make it through to December and celebrate with a Real Food Christmas?