Health and the Modern Food System: Understanding Sensitivities and How to Heal – Recap

From soil degradation to the microbiome –  we held an event at The Conduit to help understand why our changing world is making us reactive to our food and how to reclaim our health.  Discover what happened on 13th May 2026 and access useful resources to help restore a cycle of health.

We are witnessing a global spike in food allergies and intolerances, but the cause isn’t just in our genes—it’s in our environment. This event at The Conduit explored how the disruption of our natural food cycles has fundamentally changed the chemistry of what we eat and how our bodies respond. A panel of experts helped to connect the dots between.

The Systemic Shift: How industrial farming, soil depletion, and heavy chemical use have altered wheat and dairy proteins, while our “ultra-clean” modern environments have inadvertently weakened our immune resilience.

The Biological Impact: What “leaky gut” and microbiome loss actually mean for the individual, and why our bodies increasingly view modern food as a threat rather than nourishment. Dr Jenny Goodman (who was also on a Women in The Food Industry panel at The Conduit on fertility – June 2025)  and Dr James Kinross are excellent sources for more in this area.

The Path Forward: Moving beyond the guesswork of elimination diets to find the right clinical support and choosing foods that our bodies truly recognize as fuel.  Nicola Moore’s feature has a number of useful references on restrictive elimination diets and the complexities in this field.

The evening explored why our environment is making us sensitive to our food and we learnt practical, systemic ways to restore the cycle of health.

Aimee Graville wrote “a brilliant evening listening to Claire Mackenzie, Nicola Moore and Lucy Williamson (what a room) discussing the importance of nourished soil and its link to nourishing food. A great panel, sharing hope for holistic health and systems, with lots of useful information.

🐄 The nutrient values of crops (grain, fresh and animal) are higher when grown in regenerative systems, and although there is still lots to learn, we know that the effects on the human gut microbiome from food like this are hugely beneficial. 🦠

💰 More support is needed for farmers wanting to move towards regenerative practices, especially smaller market growers who can get very little support when farming less than 5 acres. 🪏

💪 The body wants to help us, we just need to give it the good stuff – fresh, clean, uncomplicated food, grown in nourished soils. Complicated and expensive testing is available but the microbiome is changing all the time, so the first and best line of defence is to really focus on what we consume. 🍽️

We can all move towards these achievable changes by connecting to local farmers and growers 🙌
Thank you to Women In The Food Industry , Mex Ibrahim , Liz Varones and The Conduit ”

Meet our Panellists

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.

She has a background in TV production, charity fundraising and event organising. 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. When she can she works at Sweetpea Market Garden (one of the farms featured in Six Inches of Soil). In 2025 she set up ‘Regen Cam’, an ever growing group of soil / agroecology loving folk in Cambridgeshire.  She is hosting  Soil to Feast on 6th June 2026 – an immersive afternoon, and evening, on a stunning regen-organic farm near Bury St Edmund’s, Suffolk – celebrating all things soil and good food!

Check out Claire’s short 4.3 minute Animated History of Soil

Nicola Moore is a highly respected nutritional therapist, educator, and thought leader with over 20 years’ experience at the forefront of nutrition, mental wellbeing, and behaviour change.

A Fellow of the Institute for Optimum Nutrition, Nicola spent 12 years on the senior academic team and four years as Head of Clinics, mentoring hundreds of practitioners and shaping modern clinical practice.

Her work focuses on the powerful relationship between nutrition, mood, hormones, and eating behaviour, helping individuals move beyond restriction, emotional eating, and diet culture to achieve sustainable health and emotional resilience. Nicola is known for translating complex nutritional science into compassionate, practical strategies that work in real life.

Alongside her clinical work, Nicola mentors practitioners, speaks regularly in the media, and has worked with elite performers and public figures. She is passionate about how mood-supportive nutrition can drive innovation in health, wellbeing, and the future of food. Be sure to sign up for her free monthly Lives & Forks online lunch club. 

Dr Lucy Williamson is an award-winning Public Health Nutritionist and former Vet with 30 years’ experience across soil, livestock, food and human health. She communicates the evidence base on soil-to-gut nutrition for optimal health. Lucy holds advisory roles to advance food system change, working at the intersection of regenerative agriculture and human health. A former lecturer and ambassador for the Love British Food campaign, Lucy’s book ‘Soil to Gut‘ will be published in July 2026.  You can join her on a number of farm-based workshops in Rickmansworth throughout the year.

Lucy also offers a CPD Approved Gut Microbiome course.

This collaborative event was put together by Community Champion of The Conduit’s Health Community Group, Liz Varones and Community Champion of The Conduit’s Food Systems Community Group, and co-founder of Women in the Food Industry, Mex Ibrahim.

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 along with Catherine Archer.

Mex also runs her own successful freelance business in social media, content creation, and digital strategy.

Liz Varones is a seasoned marketing and sales leader and the Vice President of Growth at Mendelian, whose mission is to make rare diseases a priority. Mendelian’s  team have built software, which enables doctors to help patients earlier, by finding the undiagnosed. Liz has led numerous transformation initiatives that helped drive new solutions for customers (predictive model for chronic pain conditions), marketing capabilities (key account management, digital), and ways of working (content management platform, portfolio storytelling).

She is also founder of Anthos Consulting Group, through which she offers services in brand narrative development, visual representation and aligning core offerings to customer and market needs.

The Solutions Bar: After the panel attendees enjoyed an interactive showcase and tastings of innovative, sustainable, and “allergy-friendly” food and drink.

Including Mindfuel Flow – mind and body fuelling functional lattes.

Luxwells, a botanical infused water beverage range created to encourage better hydration.

All That Matters – Superfood Puffs – Built on just 3 core ingredients – crafted by resilient women in local communities.

microbz – powerful probiotic products made from soil-based microbes and medicinal herbs to support gut, home, animal & soil health.

We loved this section from a LinkedIn post by Jitesh Banwari from allthatmatters: “I attended a brilliant panel lead by Mex Ibrahim  & Liz Varones with Claire Mackenzie from Six Inches of Soil, Lucy Williamson author of the book “Soil to Gut” & nutritional therapist Nicola Moore around soil degradation and gut microbiome. Usually when people hear words like soil degradation they instantly imagine a very serious documentary voice and someone pointing at dry land from a helicopter.

But guess what…..the future of food does not need to feel depressing.

Brands today are finding ways to make this conversation enjoyable, approachable and part of everyday life.

Because at the end of the day most people are not going to wake up one morning and suddenly become soil scientists.

But they will eat snacks.
They will cook dinner.
They will buy beans.
They will make daily choices.

And that is where change quietly begins.”

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR MORE PHOTOS AND RECAPS OF THE EVENT.

You also may like to join our Sustainable Gastronomy Day event on 8th June at Mercato Mayfair and our  Women in the Food Industry event for London Climate Action Week on 23rd June at Corner Corner.