Messages about 'healthy eating' can play into an agenda that frames health as a 'lifestyle choice', sidelining the impacts on our health of things like poverty, climate change and mental health issues. Dominant public health messages can create anxiety and shame around food. As a result, eating can become stressful, rather than a source of nourishment.

How could things be different?

Join us for a supportive and thought-provoking workshop with radical dietician and poet Lou Aphramor, to explore:

alternative ways of thinking and talking about food and nutrition
how to name and make space for what we often struggle to express
the links between food, health and wider issues like poverty, mental health and climate justice
what skills we want to grow — and what outdated beliefs we’re ready to recycle

There will be an input from Lou and the event hosts, followed by an exercise which aims to prompt discussion. The venue is relaxed and there will be quiet space available.

Stay on afterwards for food, and to make zines (small, DIY publications) with the Madzines team, and browse our zines about food and eating.

Who can attend this event?

This workshop will be of interest to anyone with a personal andor professional interest in understanding the links between food, self-care, body respect and the common good. Please get in touch if you have any queries.

Who are the organisers?

This event is being hosted by Jill (Madzine Research) with Charlotte, Silvia, Felix and Vaz. We are a collective of people involved in: Food Futures, The Good Things Collective, The Division of Health research at Lancaster University, Madzine research, Morecambe and Lancaster Zine Library & Queer by Gum.

This is a standalone event, but builds on an earlier session with Lou, held on Friday 16 May 2025 at the Institute for Health Research at Lancaster University.

Thanks to the Institute for Planetary Resilience and Community Transformation (PACT) at UCLAN and Food Futures (Closing Loops project) – for funding for this session.

DOWNLOAD FLYER

Why do we eat what we eat? Questioning nutrition