Liverpool’s Food Culture – Have we got one?

By Adam Gregg (Group 58)

Food Home and Away: are we making the best decisions?

On Thursday 30 October, I had the pleasure of attending a food sustainability event hosted by Engage Liverpool. It was the third of three events and having just arrived in the city a couple of weeks beforehand, I was eager to see what the city had to offer.  Situated in the engine room on the beautiful Daffodil boat, located on the even more impressive Canning Dock on the River Mersey, the event asked many important questions and sparked many passionate debates. As we entered the engine room from a rainy and cold Liverpudlian evening, we were greeted with a warm beverage and an even warmer apple crumble – something which got the night off to a great start.

Lucy Antal – Foodrise and Alchemic Kitchen

The first speaker of the night was Lucy Antal, who being born and bred in Liverpool, was the perfect person to speak on this issue. She spoke passionately about the need to recalibrate food systems, challenge the status quo of the big supermarkets, support local small food stores, and the importance of food responsibility. It was a real insight into how food is more than just nutrients we need to survive physically, it’s what we need to survive emotionally and mentally too. The closure of small food stores in areas invaded by large hypermarkets decreases social interaction and increases isolation, which is why Foodrise’s Merseyside-based project, ‘Alchemic Kitchen’, who work tirelessly to improve food access across the region is so vital. Their ‘Queen of Greens’ bus, a mobile greengrocer, not only gives local people access to market fruit and vegetables by bringing the market to them, but creates an opportunity for people to develop their understanding of food, and employment opportunities. Lucy spoke about the responsibility that each section of the food industry must take: from the policy setters to make sure the right food is accessible to the right people, to the food producers who, due to seemingly incomprehensible incentives, can find it more economically rewarding to grow bird food than human food, to the parents of children in making sure they are fed well, and to us as shoppers who must start asking difficult questions about where our food comes from, and where it goes when it’s surplus to requirements.

Fozia Choudhry – Fozia’s Kitchen

Next, we had Fozia Choudhry who, during lockdown, started her own business by providing home-cooked, and very importantly, affordable Kashmiri meals to the residents of Liverpool. The popularity and success of her business led to her moving first to a shipping container, then on to opening a restaurant on Picton Road in the city, which has clearly gone from strength to strength as she will soon be moving to a location on Renshaw Street in the city centre. Fozia spoke passionately and at length about the roots of her love for cooking, and her want to bring what she eats at home out to her local communities. She spoke fondly about her childhood, and the importance of cooking with her mother and family – something that resonated with the audience. Like Lucy, she finished by saying that although food sustainability is a global and complex issue, there is a role for everyone to play by starting in a small fashion – by choosing to buy local and cook food surrounded by friends and family.

Education

A running theme throughout the night and one which was shared by both speakers, was that of education. Lucy focused on the vital roles that some organisations, like the Food For Thought organisation based in Merseyside, who possess the capability of going into schools and providing food programmes that not only allow the children to eat what they need to eat in order to be productive, but to understand and learn about what they are eating. As Lucy said: “If you don’t eat well, you don’t learn well,” and unfortunately, this is a vicious cycle and one that is commonplace across the country. Likewise, Fozia spoke about education but not necessarily just in the classroom, but also in the kitchen of your own house. Spending family time together, learning to cook healthy meals using sustainable produce, is something that we need to do more of, and something that Fozia says, is becoming increasingly uncommon for families to do together.

Food for thought

All in all, it was a fantastic event put together, with two insightful and excellent speakers who care about the causes they are fighting for. Just like how it had begun, the evening wrapped up with more delicious food: a selection of sandwiches, bites, and desserts. All that was left to do was to mingle and discuss what we had learnt during the previous hour and a half… do we in Liverpool, or in the UK, have a true food culture? Are food accessibility and sustainability discussed enough, not just at our own dinner tables, but at the political tables up and down the country? And are we running out of time to change our food sustainability habits? Whatever your opinion may be, it certainly leaves plenty of food for thought.