Big Food vs The People : Recap – 22nd October 2025

What Big Food Doesn’t Want You to Know: ultra-processed food is quietly dominating our diets, driving ill health, and negatively reshaping policy. It is fuelling a slow-motion public health emergency – yet the truth about its impact remains buried.

On 22nd October 2025 as part of Cookery School at Little Portland Street’s Fight Fake Food Campaign,  a panel of experts laid out their concerns, shared insights and offered hope for the future. The event was chaired by Community Champion of The Conduit’s Food Systems Community Group, and co-founder of Women in the Food Industry, Mex Ibrahim.

However this wasn’t another evening of talking heads. It was an interactive event, as together with fellow participants, the audience broke out into groups to share knowledge, spark solutions, and develop a shared action plan to challenge the status quo.

All photography by Liesel Bockl

This event marked the launch of a collaborative mission to ensure that we reclaim our food future.  It can no longer be left to the government to continue to ignore this crisis. It is our duty to inform the public about the dangers lurking in their food.

A large group of  journalists and writers covering food, farming, public health, or consumer culture, and anyone with an interest in the future of our food system,  joined us at The Conduit for the start of a movement that cannot be ignored.

What happened at Big Food vs The People

This was a collaborative event. The audience had the opportunity to work alongside the panellists, in small break-out groups, to develop a shared action plan to reveal to the country the truth about our food.

Meet the Panellists who set the scene

Lily Blacksell Head of Programming at The Conduit welcomed us all to the event.

Mex Ibrahim is passionate about gender equality, co-founding Women in the Food Industry in 2019. The organization supports women across the food sector, advocating for equality, inclusion, and leadership opportunities, and empowering women to achieve their career goals in the industry. It became a non-profit social enterprise in 2023. With expertise in sustainability, entrepreneurship, and ethical eating, Mex is a trustee of the charity School Food Matters, a member of the Guild of Food Writers, sits on the advisory board of New Food Magazine, is an associate of the Royal Society of Public Health and manages The Conduit’s Food Systems Community Group. Mex also runs her own successful freelance business in social media, content creation, and digital strategy.

Claire Mackenzie is a film, impact and content producer. She is the producer of independent environmental documentaries ‘Six Inches of Soil’ and ‘From the Ground Up’, both exploring our current farming system, and the recently launched ‘Six Inches of Soil’ podcast. As an environmental campaigner she set up eco community groups both in London and Cambridgeshire – with food and farming at the heart of her campaigning. Claire is never happier than when she has her hands in the soil. With a passion for holistic health care she has been a trained therapist for 15 years, specialising working with those affected by cancer and a trustee at Cambridge Cancer Help Centre.

In 2003 Rosalind Rathouse decided to set up Cookery School at Little Portland Street. This was spurred on by 50 years of teaching experience both in secondary schools plus her passion for food and cooking, which led to founding her first food business in the 1980s: Piemaker, making and supplying wholesale pies and cakes to the likes of Harrods, Waitrose and the Orient Express. Classic, simple home cooking are principles embedded in the school’s ethos. Rosalind is keenly aware of the decline in people passing down home cooking through the generations, and feels that proper teaching can enthuse even the most unconfident cook. By 2008, the school was thriving, with fully booked classes, courses and corporate events gaining in popularity, so Rosalind took on a second larger kitchen in the same building. Recently, Rosalind spearhead The Fight Fake Food march and campaign which received national press coverage and was featured on Radio 4’s Food Programme.

Spencer Hyman co-founded Cocoa Runners over a decade ago, expanding his knowledge and passion for craft chocolate. Spencer has a background leading operations across retail, technology and startups — setting up Hasbro in Japan, launching Amazon’s Software, Video Games and Electronics stores in the UK and COOing Last.fm’s music service. He is passionate about saving, and savouring, the world through Craft Chocolate. He often appears on TV, media and at conferences, including The Financial Times, BBC World Service, Sunday Brunch, World Cocoa Conference, Great Taste Awards, Society of Flavourists, International Wine Challenge, Barista Connect, Academy of Chocolate and multiple podcasts (Zoe, Possible, Dr Karan, etc.) Spencer is always on the hunt for great new craft chocolate makers and farmers, exploring how cocoa is grown and crafted — and understanding more about flavour, and how Craft Chocolate pairs with other great craft experiences like wine, tea and coffee.

Dev Sharma is a 20-year-old Food Activist, former Youth MP in the UK Youth Parliament and a founding member of Bite Back 2030, a youth activist movement challenging the rigged food system. With accomplishments from helping spark the UK’s child food poverty campaign to most notably spearheading the world’s first online junk food marketing ban campaign, successfully getting it included in the Queen’s Speech in 2021.

Dev’s influence is felt globally. He has been recognised for his work in campaigning to ban online junk food advertising, advocating for holiday hunger and free school meals, and speaking on international platforms like the UN and the House of Commons on issues such as climate change and food poverty. His relentless efforts have earned him a Diana Award and praise from figures like Jamie Oliver.

We heard real passion in the room at The Conduit — frustration, yes, but also hope, creativity, and determination.

Every idea, every story, every spark of action you’ve shared matters — and we’ll be gathering it all to help shape what comes next.

But the truth is, change won’t come from the top down. It will come from us — from people demanding better, from communities pushing back, and from refusing to accept a food system that puts profit before people.

This will not end when we left the room.  We urge you all to take this passion  forward — into our homes, our schools, our workplaces, our communities.

Let’s keep talking, keep challenging, keep building the movement for real food and real choice. To keep updated with this campaign – please sign up to the Fight Fake Food mailing list and join the Fight Fake Food LinkedIn Group.