What Is The Food Magazine and How Can You Access Its Archived Food Investigations?

Updated

The Food Magazine was the publication of the Food Commission, a UK food watchdog known for investigations and research on nutrition, health, and the food industry. It ceased print publication in 2010, and from 2011 the Food Commission has operated as a volunteer-run virtual organisation. Its magazine archives and reports remain available for free public access online, with paper copies also held at the British Library and the Wellcome Trust Collection. If you want to read past investigations or cite the magazine's research, the website archive is the practical starting point.

What the magazine covered

The Food Commission's stated focus was improving nutrition, health, and enjoyment of food, and it described itself as essential reading for anyone with an interest in food. Its work centred on scrutiny of the food industry and campaigning for healthier diets that are affordable to all. The topics visible in the site's own archive give a sense of that range:

  • Tree foods in Africa — the role of tree foods in food security, framed against the British habit of thinking of apples or hazelnuts.
  • Nanofoods — technologies that manipulate matter at the atomic and molecular level, and what they mean for food.
  • Minimum income diets and carbon — exploring the carbon footprint of diets based on minimum income.
  • Cuba's food production revolution — Cuba as an example of responding to a sudden, severe shortage of resources, following the 2006 documentary The Power of Community.
  • Baby Milk Action — the long-running campaign against Nestlé's marketing of baby milk, which the Commission notes continues despite campaign gains.
  • Plan B farm — an organic farm near Toronto positioned as a model for a different food system.
  • Fishy business — an investigation into the fish trade (the excerpt cuts off here).

This mix of UK food policy, international food security, and corporate campaigning is the clearest guide to what you will find in the archive.

How to access the archive

  1. Go to the Food Commission website (foodcomm.org.uk). The homepage is the entry point to the magazine archives and reports.
  2. Use the site's own navigation — the homepage lists sections including Articles, Magazines, Press, Campaigns, About, and Links. The Magazines section is where the back issues sit.
  3. Read online for free. The site states that The Food Magazine archives and Food Commission reports are available for free public access. No subscription is described for the archived material.
  4. Check a physical collection if you need the printed issues. Paper copies are housed at the British Library and the Wellcome Trust Collection, which is useful if you need to verify a citation against the original print edition.

Expected result: you should be able to open individual articles and back issues directly on the site. If a page fails to load or a link is broken, the site notes it is maintained by volunteers, so try the British Library or Wellcome Trust catalogues for the print copy.

What to know before you rely on it

  • It is an archive, not a live magazine. Print publication ended in 2010, so there are no new issues. Treat everything you read as historical reporting from the period before that date.
  • The organisation is volunteer-run and donation-supported. The Food Commission describes itself as a virtual organisation maintained by volunteers, supported by donations and by the Food Commission Research Charity, with occasional grant-funded projects. Content and site maintenance may therefore be uneven.
  • Independence was its selling point. The Commission presents its independence and advocacy work as what supporters valued, which matters if you are assessing the perspective of a piece — it is campaigning material, not neutral trade coverage.
  • Copyright and reuse are not stated on the page. If you plan to reproduce or republish archive content, check with the organisation via the contact route on the site rather than assuming permission.

Who this is for

The archive suits students and researchers tracing UK food campaigning history, journalists looking for earlier investigations into industry practice, and anyone interested in the nutrition and food-policy debates of the 2000s. If you need current food news, this is the wrong source — the magazine stopped publishing in 2010, and the site's role now is preservation rather than reporting.