Way back in 1987, just as I was starting work on a major history of English food, my eighteen-month-old son and his father were diagnosed with dairy intolerances. Back then the alternatives for those on dairy-free diets were few and far between and pretty unappealing so, after some months of experimentation, I launched Berrydales Special Ices, soya based ices which were dairy and additive free – and tasted delicious!

While manufacturing the ices I started a newsletter, The Inside Story, about food allergy and food intolerance and, by 1995, it was a quarterly magazine circulating to over 35,000 health professionals. In 2000 The Inside Story, re-named Foods Matter, became a subscription magazine and in due course, the magazine gave way to websites (ten of them!) covering everything to do with food allergy and intolerance and all of the many health conditions related to them. See www.freefrommatters.com for links to all our sites.

And out of the websites and the rapidly expanding market for ‘freefrom’ (gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free etc) food have grown our stable of ‘freefrom awards: the Freefrom Food Awards, the FreeFrom Skincare Awards and the FreeFrom Eating Out Awards.

We also now have a significant presence on Twitter and Facebook (see the individual sites for links) and I am building a following for both myself and our awards groups on Linked In.

I write a blog which focuses, mainly, on my professional interests (food allergy and intolerance and ‘freefrom’ foods) but there are many other topics which do not directly relate to food allergy and intolerance but about which I still feel strongly and therefore feel impelled to put finger to keyboard. These include electrosensitivity from which I suffer (although not badly I am very grateful to say) and, on a lighter note, gardens and cats… https://michellesblog.co.uk