When Food Matters Live launched last year, one of their ‘initiatives’ was to run Twitter chats/debates to engage their followers and others in the various aspects of healthy food and living that the show was intended to highlight. One of these was, of course,’freefrom’ food which occupied a significant amount of both floor and seminar space. And their interest in ‘freefrom’ has certainly not waned!
For 2015 there will be a full three days of seminars plus….. The presentation of the FreeFrom Eating Out Awards as last year, the launch of our latest new project (and no, not saying any more – all will be revealed at the FreeFrom Food Awards presentation next week…) and, on day 3, a cook off between three of the winning chefs from last year’s FreeFrom Eating Out Awards!!
As part of the build up to the show, FML have been staging Twitter forums – an hour when anyone can log in and discuss a specific subject with a couple of luminaries – such as myself!!!! We ran a few last year and although they were OK, they never really quite got off the ground. But this year….
We ran the first yesterday – Ruth Holroyd (What Allergy?) chairing, with me and Chris Bridge, FreeFrom Eating Out Awards winning chef from Ravenstone Manor. (#FreeFoomFood for Twitterati who want to look for themselves.) We had two topics planned but in fact, so busy was the chat and so many people got involved that we never moved off the first topic – how to educate chefs and food service operators about the new allergen regulations as they apply in food service.
Twitter Master Alex was logged in and if you want to get a flavour of the debate, check out his report on the FML site here.
It was an amazing debate and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Definitely the best Food Matters Live twitter forum I’ve attended so far. So many people joined in. Some really interesting points raised because this isn’t rocket science but clearly we still have a long way to go.