Changing attitudes to foodPrint
Katy Davidson shakes her head as she recounts an anecdote told to her by a friend who works on the pizza counter in a supermarket. “This young guy came in and, picking up a pizza wrapped in plastic, asked her: ‘So, will this just dissolve when I cook it?’ It terrifies me how alienated people are from their food!”
Which is precisely why Katy, 34, founded the award-winning Youth
Food Movement (YFM) - a network run for and by young people,
striving to connect them to food culture. "We aim to do it through
pleasure," she explains, "We focus on the positives to achieve our
goal of bringing better, cleaner and fairer food to our
tables."
The inspiration behind YFM, the youth branch of the Slow Food
Movement, comes partly from Katy's dad, a restauranteur who sourced
all his produce from local farms. "There was always home-made wine
fermenting by the fire, bread being baked or yoghurt cultivating in
the airing cupboard." Katy channels her passion through YFM like
"skillshare", where young guests mingle to swap tips on anything
from butter churning to oyster shucking. "It's a fun way to get the
kids asking questions about where their food comes from and that
creates a ripple effect."
Such a focus on sharing and support drew Katy naturally to Team
Green Britain. "The hardest thing," she says, "can be to think,
'Ooh, I could never do that', but when you see the other ordinary
people who have - you realise that you can."
