About us
We’ve been delivering all your organic food news, organic stories and organic reviews since 1999… Fresh, original, highest-quality, editorially independent, and well-researched articles that you instinctively know you can trust.
Jump in to find out why organic food is better for you, how you can eat more organic food and spend less, and which organic foods really taste better. And don’t forget to sign up for our free organic newsletter!
Ysanne Spevack
Editor, OrganicFoodee.com
Please note that all content on this web site belongs to each of the creators. No reproduction of any writing, images or any part of this web site may be attempted without the express written permission of the individual creator of the work. To gain such permission, please send the editor an email using the contact form. All creators of content on this site retain their moral rights and remain sole owners of their work. Views expressed by individual contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of all individuals that may contribute to this web site.
Ysanne Spevack – Blogger & Editor
Ysanne loves music, food and this blue green planet, as shown by her features and photos on this site. It’s these passions that so inspire her readers. Ysanne’s thirteen books all focus on organic food and organic living. They include: Organic Cookbook; Fresh & Wild – A Real Food Adventure; and The Real Taste of Japan; plus her industry report for Reuters about the international organic, functional and whole foods market.
Her work has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Food Illustrated, Organic Style, Natural Products News, Natural Parent, Yoga, and Organic Living, plus many other British, American and Asian magazines. She was founding consultant editor of Organic magazine in the UK, and regularly appears on BBC and independent radio as well as podcasting. Her books have been translated into a number of languages, and go down particularly well in France.
Ysanne’s won widespread critical acclaim, including her Organic Cookbook being voted third best cookery book of 2002 by Antony Worrall Thompson. Her writing has been praised everywhere from Observer Food Monthly to Zest. Conde Nast’s Easy Living magazine features Ysanne, as photographed by Ophelia Wynn, House & Home Ideas magazine calls her an eco-hero, and The Grocer is excited about her new company.
A native Londoner, Ysanne now lives in Los Angeles where she’s writing a new book and making music, as an acclaimed violinist, cellist, string arranger and composer.
Steve Taylor – Developer & Webmaster
A freelance web developer and designer, Steve specialises in standards-based, accessible websites and database-driven content management. In his spare time he helps worthy web projects with small budgets, and lives online at dreamflesh.com.
Additional Writers
Silvija Davidson – Slow Food
Silvija’s abiding interest is in artisan produce, rare breeds and biodiversity, which she explores through her writing, workshops and food and wine tastings. She is a member of the Slow Food London steering committee, and is currently organising the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery. She supports all moves to increase organic production in the UK, and is a member of the Soil Association.
Vicky Hayward – Wine
Vicky Hayward is a freelance writer, journalist and book editor whose articles about the arts, travel, social issues and food are published internationally. She works as a consultant on flamenco projects and is the Madrid correspondent for Insight Guides. She lives in Madrid and has travelled extensively around the country, meeting and interviewing food producers and winemakers.
Annie Seeley, BSc, RPHNut – Nutrition
Annie is a freelance Registered Public Health Nutritionist. She has always been passionate about good food and feels that sustainable food production and good nutrition go hand in hand and is just waiting for the science to catch up! Annie’s specialist area’s include nutrition for babies and children, food and low income and school food. She writes for magazines and websites, speaks at conferences, facilitates workshops, provides training and has appeared on TV and radio. She has recently been working with Wye Valley and a nursery in East London giving advice on nutritionally balanced school meal provision.
Mark Steene – Seasonings
Founder of Seasoned Pioneers, an innovative Liverpool based company, producing an extensive and exotic range of organic (and non-organic) spice blends, chilies, single spices, herbs and specialist culinary ingredients. Mark set up Seasoned Pioneers with the aim of producing authentic seasonings. Using only the finest ingredients, all his spice blends are hand-produced to strictly genuine recipes, using traditional production techniques like dry-roasting for maximum flavour. The results are flavours endorsed by many leading UK food writers including Nigel Slater, Antony Worral-Thompson & Nigella Lawson.
Simon Toseland – News
Simon is Press and PR Officer for the Soil Association. He lives in Bristol where he grows organic fruit and vegetables on an allotment.
Kate Wood – Raw Food
From 1997-2000, Kate edited Fresh, the magazine of the UK raw food network. Her first book, Eat Smart, Eat Raw, is the UK’s first raw food recipe book, published by Grub Street. She has written for many local publications, and is currently working on a book about holistic parenting. Kate lives in southwest London with her husband and three young sons, and the whole family eats raw vegan organic food.
Dorothy Woodend – Roving Reporter
Dorothy Woodend is a freelance writer based in Vancouver, Canada. Her work has been featured in newspapers and magazines across North America. She has been known to eat her body weight in organic chocolate.
Lady Tracy Worcester – Ecology
Tracy is an ecologist who campaigns for farmer’s land rights and livelihoods in developing countries, and for local food markets in the UK. As Associate Director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture, and a trustee of the Gaia Foundation, she’s working to shift development from dependence on giant banks and corporations to local interdependence between people and their real needs. She’s a wife and mother, and lives with her family in Badminton.
Cheryl Thallon – Supplements
Cheryl is co-founder of Viridian Nutrition, an ethical vitamin and herbal company, founded in 1999. Viridian was named Best Ethical Company of 2003 by readers of Here’s Health magazine in recognition of the company’s commitment to the environment, purity of ingredients and charity donation. The Viridian range comprises more than 100 products including vitamins, minerals, herbs, amino acids, nutritional oils, tinctures and ointments and features more than 30 products that are Soil Association certified organic. Viridian charity donations to environmental and children’s charities so far have reached £45,000.
Fi Bird – Children’s Cookery
A mother of six, Fi is married to a doctor and lives in rural Angus, Scotland. She was a finalist of Scottish Masterchef, and is hugely keen on passing on her knowledge and skills to children. To this end Fi organises children’s cookery workshops and demonstrations throughout the UK. She encourages children to cook with real, raw ingredients for a healthier diet. Fi develops recipes for television, writes child-friendly cookery columns, and runs www.stirrinstuff.org with her daughter Lili and her webmaster son, Xander.
Craig Sams – Organics
Craig Sams founded Whole Earth Foods in 1967 and Green & Black’s chocolate in 1991. He co-published Seed, The Journal Of Organic Living in the 1970s, and is the author of About Macrobiotics (1972), The Macrobiotic Brown Rice Cookbook (1993) and The Little Food Book (2003). He is now Chair of the Soil Association and a registered organic producer (woodland coppice and orchards).
Consultants
Kate Bootle Pengelly – Pesticides
Kate Bootle Pengelly has been involved with organic food issues for the last 13 years, and has written for a number of ecological and organic magazines, and websites. Her special areas of knowledge are organic food (food being her main topic of conversation!) organic clothing and pesticide issues. She currently works for the Pesticide Action Network.
Martin Christy – Chocolate
Martin has been a passionate follower of fine chocolate ever since an encounter with the Valrhona stand in Harrods in 1993, having previously been a lifelong victim of good old British ‘candy’ chocolate. Martin has been actively raising awareness of the quality and origin of the chocolate we eat since 1999. His goal is to help the rediscovery of chocolate as a complex, ancient, spiritual food. These ideals naturally lend themselves to supporting organic and fairly traded chocolate production. He is also a web usability and accessibility consultant, and a creator of jazz-influenced eclectic beats music.
Guy La Fayette – Sustainable Development
Guy is a researcher and developer, writer, producer, urbanist and designer. Guy’s aim is to demonstrate the integration of urban life, nature and vital energy systems in order to create a global modular model for deep green sustainability. His recent projects include researching and developing sustainable towers, modular housing with building integrated renewable energy systems, market barriers to renewable energy systems and an urban research project in Caracas, Venezuela. Guy’s latest venture is to develop projects for the Sustainable Communities Initiative in Canada.
Sarah Ratty – Eco-Fashion
The original eco-fashion pioneer, Sarah started making environmentally friendly, high fashion clothes whilst most eco-clobber was still itchy-scratchy hippy numbers. Her label Conscious Earthwear sold throughout the world, in such stores as London’s Selfridges and Harvey Nichols, Tokyo’s Isetan, and Fred Segal in Los Angeles. Her new label is Ciel, specialising in fabulous quilted eco-coats, plus a range of womenswear to rock your socks!
Michael van Straten – Organics
“My interest in organics began as a child growing up close to Champneys when it was a pioneering natural health centre in the 1950s. I learnt the importance of organic food as a student at the British College of Naturopathy and Osteopathy — now the British College of Osteopathic Medicine in London. But the real turning point came when I was lucky enough to meet Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, and the first person to highlight the environmental issues of agrochemicals. In 1969 I moved back from London to the area I grew up in, acquired a piece of land and started organic growing myself. I’m happy to say I’ve been doing it ever since and have constantly promoted the organic ethos to my patients, listeners to my radio show — Bodytalk on London’s LBC — many television programmes, countless newspaper and magazine articles and my books, two of which are specifically about organic food and living.”
Steve Cook – Designer
Steve’s simply one of the top designers in the wonderful world of comic books, graphic novels, and the music industry. His seminal work includes logos for Superman and 2000AD, covers for William Orbit and Vertigo, and a new set of digital photomontages set to change graphic history.
Photographers
Alexander Brattell
Alexander Brattell’s food and interiors photography has appeared in Organic Magazine, Arena, Tandoori, GQ and Square Meal. He regularly exhibits his fine art photography for which he is represented in London by Britart.com and in New York by Nonstock.
Susan Cook
A web designer and developer, Susan is our Brooklyn, New York contributor. Her gorgeous fruity photos feature in the Organicfood logo lozenges, and her spirit of support for this site continues since her time as our web developer in less busy days.
Lou Gibbs
A fine artist and photographer, Lou primarily paints modern ‘landscapes-not-landscapes’. An example is ‘The Far Pavilions’, which illustrates the article about water in the Stories section of Organicfoodee.com.
Ben Gold
Ben’s mouth-watering images of organic food encourage us to eat well, whilst his portraits let us glimpse into the lives of wild and wonderful characters. A recent Editorial Photography graduate, Ben Gold is currently carving his niche with style. Having previously worked as a lighting technician for stage and screen, his instinctual understanding and skilful manipulation of light is demonstrated throughout his portfolio. Watch this space!
Future contributors
You!
Simply use the contact form to let us know what you’d like to contribute. But please note — nobody gets paid at Organicfoodee.com… We just do our thing here for the love of it!
Site philosophy
Organicfoodee.com is published in the spirit of the Internet’s original founders. Their intention was to create a forum for free speech and an encyclopaedia of knowledge, as well as an arena for e-commerce. Our intention is to give you the facts and information you want, plus the opinions and experiences of people who eat organic. Plus to direct you to more sources of inspiration, wisdom, or purveyors of your favourite foods.
The site is built to be accessible to as many people as possible. On the web, accessibility means whether or not your site can be accessed by people with disabilities (such as blindness), perhaps using non-standard devices, such as Braille or speech browsers. Maximising accessibility is an ongoing task for us, and we’d appreciate any feedback if you have any problems using the site.
Disclaimer
The content in this website is presented for informational purpose and as a reference for anybody interested in organic food, organic farming, natural health, nutrition, wholefoods and green lifestyle choices. We endeavour to write accurate and enjoyable descriptions, however we cannot ensure the accuracy of any statements on this web site.
The information contained in this website does not replace any medical advice or medical treatment. If you are suffering from a particular ailment consult your General Practitioner or a qualified Health Practitioner of your choice. Organicfoodee.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any form of damage whatsoever resulting from the use (or misuse) of information contained in or implied by this website.
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