Emma Wight-Boycott MSc mBANT is a Registered Nutritional Therapist who specialises in helping women find their health mojo with the best foods and supplements for their lifestyle. Emma’s blog Emma Nutrition reached the BiBs 2014 shortlist this year, today she shares her thoughts on food bloggers and nutritionists.
What’s with all the foodie bloggers out there? Are they putting us ‘nutrition experts’ out of business or are they helping to spread the word?
In 2013 I had the pleasure of competing in a bloggers cooking competition. It was there I met my first 2 blogger friends; Gourmet Mum and Michelle from Mummy Rates It. I found them inspiring and hoped that I could one day have the huge following they had. Since those early days I’ve grown my own blog and while I blog about food and recipes I also discuss the science of nutrition and the art of natural health; I’m all about making small changes that have a big health impact. But more importantly what stuck with me from those initial meetings with other bloggers was their professionalism and the way they took their ‘job’ very seriously. Since meeting Filipa and Michelle I have met hundreds of other bloggers at the Brit Mums Live event as well as through other forums and mostly through Twitter. I came away from Brit Mums Live with the realisation that blogging has the potential to be a legitimate career; that food bloggers are passionate about food and its role in our lives.
You only have to google one of your favourite recipes to find it listed on loads of different websites. If you’re anything like me you skip the bigger names and go straight to the recipe written by a blogger. Why? Because I know that the food blogger will have tried and tested it; their name and their reputation rides on that recipe actually working. In an amateur kitchen. By a home cook. You wouldn’t believe how many recipes I’ve tried from the big name chefs or recipe websites that simply don’t work in my kitchen. Frustrating! It also makes me feel like a failure. That’s not good. So I have learned to go straight to my favourite food bloggers websites and to ignore the listings that come up when I google a recipe – it’s generally the only time I click to page 2 or 3 of google, because let’s face it most of us bloggers don’t have the links and hits in place to compete with the big names.
So where does this place me and my fellow nutrition experts? Where do we fit in if we too are writing recipes and discussing foods? Well, for me, I try to focus on the health benefits of particular foods and recipes. I also see it as a sign that we need to step up our game on our websites; it’s no longer enough to write a few recipes and inspire people to eat well. In practice a nutrition expert will delve deeper into the why’s and how’s of your diet, nutritional status, the complicated web of hormones, fat metabolism and state of mind in relation to eating. This is done via one on one or group consultations and workshops and this is why we have to record CPD hours, do advanced training and stay on top of our game. We need to display this ‘expertise’ on our websites and embrace the movement that is food blogging. We need to work together.
Food bloggers are, in my opinion, fanning the flames for food fervour and quality ingredients as well as showing people how they can cook well on a budget when they need to. Food and its subsequent health benefits can be a dry topic but if presented in the right way, with the right flavour profile and the right photography, has the potential to change lives. Renowned activist and author Michael Pollan argues that “cooking is one of the simplest and most important steps people can take to improve their family’s health, build communities, fix our broken food system, and break our growing dependence on corporations”. Anyone can use software to analyse a meal these days but the true secret to reigniting passion and enthusiasm for food lies in focussing on the beauty and the finesse of ingredients and home cooking. Plus, most of the food bloggers are amazing creators who can teach us a thing or two about cooking!
Emma Wight-Boycott MSc mBANT is a natural health expert with a passion for simplifying the science. Helping you and your family to make small changes that reap big health rewards. Emma is the Nutritionist for Spatone Iron Supplements and blogs at Emma Nutrition the online natural health resource.
About Marianne Weekes
BLOGS AT: Mari's World; TWITTER: @maris_world. Mother of four and nana to three, Marianne Weekes has spent half her life in the UK and the other half in Italy. Blogging since Jan 2010, she finds it hard to drag herself away from her laptop and writes about food, travel and lifestyle. Always on the lookout for the next thing which takes her down many surprising lanes.
SouthwarkBelle
Wednesday 9th of July 2014
What worries me is that there is now so much food and nutrition information on the web - how do we know what to trust? There are of course lots of great nutrition experts out there but I've also come across plenty who give "information" that I know simply isn't true, or who claim there is "scientific evidence" for what they are writing, but provide no links to any decent research to back that up (or often just no links at all).
So we can't check out the claims for ourselves and are left taking things on trust, from a stranger online, which worries me. Especially if those "experts" also have products to sell. They may be absolutely genuine but I'm sure there are people just making a quick buck too - how can we know who to put our trust in?
SB
Camilla @FabFood4All
Wednesday 9th of July 2014
I can so relate to what you say about recipes not working which is partly what inspired me to start my blog! There's nothing worse than investing in ingredients for a recipe for it to either not work or your family not like it - as you say I don't want to put my name to anything that's not up to scratch and will burn the midnight oil sometimes to get a recipe right:-)