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The Food Programme: Jack Monroe: A Life Through Food

24/04/2022

Jack Monroe: A Life Through Food

BBC Radio 4 - The Food Programme, Jack Monroe: A Life Through Food

Leyla Kazim meets food writer and poverty campaigner Jack Monroe.

Food writer and poverty campaigner Jack Monroe talks growing up, campaigning and social media with Leyla Kazim.

Jack Monroe, the food writer and poverty campaigner sits down in her living room in Southend-on-Sea to share her 'Life Through Food' with Leyla Kazim. It has been almost a decade since Jack first made a name for herself as a blogger and food writer - documenting life as an unemployed single mum.  Her blog, A Girl Called Jack (now Cooking on a Bootstrap) first focussed on local politics, but became popular when she started sharing her costed out low budget recipes. Since then, she has written six cookery books, has written 10,000 tweets, and become a voice for those living in poverty in the UK. 

Jack's most recent campaign against the way inflation data is recorded and presented, resulted in the Office for National Statistics saying it would do more to represent the experiences of people living on different incomes in the UK. It also led the supermarket chain Asda to bring back and expand it's budget range of products. Jack is currently working on creating her own 'Vimes Boots' index to document the way food prices have changed over the past decade for people living on lowest incomes. 

In this programme, Leyla finds out what motivates Jack to keep speaking out about inequalities, and how she deals with social media backlashes. She talks about her early food heroes, the pleasure she gets from cooking, and  why she believes there needs to be more equality and inclusivity in the food world.  

Presented by Leyla Kazim
Produced in Bristol by Natalie Donovan

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