ABOUT
Vanessa A. Clarkson
B.Sc., Dietetics, M.Sc., Food Policy
Vanessa is a researcher and consultant with over 15 years’ experience, specialising in infant, child and maternal nutrition, sustainability and food systems.
Vanessa has a first class degree in dietetics (clinical nutrition) and achieved distinction in her masters degree in food policy. She has worked across sectors including governments, public agencies, nonprofit organisations, academic institutions and food businesses, to support a transition to food system that nourishes all.
Vanessa’s recipes and commentary have been widely published in national media outlets in the UK and Australia, where she has advocated for the importance of traditional foods that bring us pleasure and connection, as well as nourishment.
Vanessa is a published author, with her first book Real Food for Babies and Toddlers, winning the Smallish Parenting magazine award for Best Family Cookbook. She is a mother of three boys and works, writes, cooks and grows on the beautiful Mornington Peninsula, in the Melbourne foodshed.
FOOD PHILOSOPHY
M.F.K Fisher once said, so beautifully that:
“With our gastronomical growth will come, inevitably, knowledge and perception of a hundred other things, but mainly ourselves”
I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. Though I have been immersed in a world of nutrition for more than half my life, I have come to realise and appreciate the infinite other ways that food can nourish us, far beyond the nutrition it provides.
For me, food at its heart offers the opportunity of connection – connection to each other, our place in this world, and ourselves.
Our modern way of food has detached us from the things that matter. We live in a time when many of us have had little involvement in our food before it arrives at our table, and this has had notable effects on what we eat and how our food is produced.
Reconnection is central to reimagining a way of food that is healthy for us and the natural systems that we are part of. Even though that is a challenge in and of itself. Our busy lives can leave little time or headspace to entertain new ways of doing things, even something as fundamental as how we go about feeding ourselves. But I believe we must try. We owe it to future generations to create a world in which they can thrive.
