Nutrition coach Sophie Morris on the dangers of Ultra Processed Foods and her favourite supermarkets swaps
If you’ve noticed customers in your local supermarket taking out their reading glasses to scrutinise the small print on the packaging of everything from yoghurts to hummus to frozen chips to sliced pan, it’s probably down to the #sophiemorriseffect.
This summer, Sophie Morris’s Instagram account hit 500,000 followers. It’s an extraordinary number for someone who’s neither a celebrity nor an influencer for hire, who actively declines opportunities to promote the products she endorses.
But her daily to camera videos of ‘clever swaps’ – supermarket foods that are better quality and often cheaper than the ultra-processed alternatives – filmed on her phone in different supermarkets near where she lives are compulsive viewing, and they are having a big impact on the shopping habits of Irish consumers.
“I don’t know what it is about me that has struck a chord,” she says, talking to me in her Co Wicklow kitchen, “but something definitely has. Knowledge is power, and while before people were shopping with their blinkers on, they are fully informed now. There has been a bit of an awakening, and they’re savvy to the supermarkets’ marketing tricks.”
Morris, whom you may remember from her former life as the face of Kooky Dough, from frequent TV cookery appearances and as the author of Sophie Kooks, is on a mission to educate consumers to make better food choices, while at the same time supporting small Irish producers.