Healthy Convenience Foods

Healthy Convenience Foods

Life is so “fast-paced” these days that it’s difficult to avoid the temptation of the “ready-meal”, however much we know we really shouldn’t. Wouldn’t it be great if there were healthy ready-meals foods? The great news is, there are!

Grant Recipient Stevan Taylor, of The Foodamentalists

I “bumped into” Steve the other day in an on-line business networking site. He was explaining that he hadn’t been online a lot because he’d been having a major push with his business. Before that I didn’t know much about what he did, but it turned out that his products could be just what many of us are looking for. I asked him to tell me more, and here’s what he had to say.

At the Foodamentalists we believe in convenience foods without compromise which is why there are three values that sum-up our ready meals: local, ethical and homemade.

Our meals are frozen so there’s no need to add anything ‘nasty’ such as artificial preservatives. We believe in supporting our local farmers and butchers so where possible we source our ingredients locally. Our meat comes from local farms and is outdoor-reared / free-range.

We seek to minimise our impact on the environment. As well as using local food to reduce food miles, we have sourced biodegradable packaging.

We passionately believe that consumers shouldn’t have to compromise their ethics when buying ready meals: that they don’t have to be and shouldn’t be a “necessary evil” of modern life. This was a key inspiration in developing a product with a unique combination of convenience, local produce, traceability and good ethics.

Our main motivation was to produce great tasting food. As busy people we had come to rely increasingly on convenience food, but were disappointed with what was on offer. We didn’t understand why it couldn’t taste as good as a home-cooked meal. This is why we cook all our meals just as one would at home: in a kitchen, using great ingredients and without adding anything nasty.

We believe part of offering great food is providing choice to our customers so they can enjoy favorites or get excited about something new. This is why we have developed our menu to include traditional favorites, such as our “Thyme for Rabbit Stew” or more contemporary dishes, such as our take on the Italian dish Agro Dolce, which we make with a red wine marinade and a touch of dark chocolate.

We called ourselves the Foodamentalists to reflect our fundamental belief in great tasting home-cooked food made using quality local ingredients and sound ethical practices. We offer convenience without the compromise, because we know our customers don’t want to compromise on the quality of their food or their ethics and we don’t believe that they should have to.

It has been a lot of work from concept to product and there has been a lot of development in getting the recipes right, we are still developing our menu with 2 new ranges 1) lunch time meals with less than 200 calories per serving, 2) A range of children’s meals with hidden vegetables in them to help children get their 5-a-day. They sound great Steve, no wonder you’ve been so busy lately! Visit Foodamentalists at one of the farmers’ markets listed below.

Wetherby 2nd Sunday in the month
Harrogate 2nd Thursday
Boston Spa 2nd Friday
Easingwold 3rd Wednesday
Keighley 3rd Sunday
York Last Friday
Otley Last Sunday

These “healthy convenience foods” can be found at www.foodamentalists.co.uk and now in selected CostCutters.

You can ring Steve on: 07884064130