The Vitamin Murders

Synopsis

Publisher – Portobello Books Ltd (United Kingdom)
Year – 2007

ISBN – 9781846270147
Format – Paperback – 240 Pages

Short-listed for the Andre Simon Food Book of the Year award

Dashing out of the maternity hospital clutching his first-born tight, James Fergusson felt that universal urge to protect his child from the world. However, from all he’d found out in the preceding months, he also knew that the battle for his daughter’s dietary health was already all but lost.

He and his caterer-wife knew too much about the chemical contamination of our food supply to relax. James discovers that back during WWII, against all the odds, the besieged Britons ate better, nutritionally, than ever they had before or since. And one man was responsible for keeping the country fit to fight the Nazis: Sir Jack Drummond, Churchill’s Chief Food Scientist, a hero in his time, unjustly forgotten now.

Could the man who named Vitamin A and Vitamin B have saved the Englishman’s food? Might James’s daughter have had a less contaminated beginning in life? Curious as much about the career and legacy of the remarkable Drummond as about his own family’s chemical cocktail, Fergusson sets off for la France profonde to find out what we have lost.

The Vitamin Murders

Synopsis

Short-listed for the Andre Simon Food Book of the Year award

Dashing out of the maternity hospital clutching his first-born tight, James Fergusson felt that universal urge to protect his child from the world. However, from all he’d found out in the preceding months, he also knew that the battle for his daughter’s dietary health was already all but lost.

He and his caterer-wife knew too much about the chemical contamination of our food supply to relax. James discovers that back during WWII, against all the odds, the besieged Britons ate better, nutritionally, than ever they had before or since. And one man was responsible for keeping the country fit to fight the Nazis: Sir Jack Drummond, Churchill’s Chief Food Scientist, a hero in his time, unjustly forgotten now.

Could the man who named Vitamin A and Vitamin B have saved the Englishman’s food? Might James’s daughter have had a less contaminated beginning in life? Curious as much about the career and legacy of the remarkable Drummond as about his own family’s chemical cocktail, Fergusson sets off for la France profonde to find out what we have lost.

Reviews

“A fascinating history of the nation’s postwar eating habits and a wake-up call to the dangers lurking in our food”

Observer (Clare Davies)

“An engaging and topical book about the long-term damage done to British food by the post-war agrochemical revolution”

Sunday Telegraph Seven (Katie Owen)

“James Fergusson has written a brilliant polemic against the modern food industry… An eye-opening, extraordinary story”

Mail On Sunday

“Deft and compelling”

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

“This fascinating book is not just a revealing exposĂ© of our country’s bad eating habits and chemically-skewed farming practices, but also literally an investigative crime story…get the book…A great story”

Paul Quinn, Organic Life

“Fascinating”

Independent on Sunday (Laurence Phelan)

“An important book and utterly brilliant”

Tim Smit

Gallery

Watch

Watch the author explain how his book is about a murder and toxic chemicals. The link is a man who was brutally killed with his wife and daughter while on a camping holiday. A true story.

Related Articles