This is unusual for me—a guest editorial! It just so happens that the chef in question is my own son, Magnus. I’ve introduced him to you before. He’s the founder of Food Nation in Dubai, a school meals catering service. He feeds 50,000 kids daily with food that’s healthy, tastes good and even LOOKS good. The kids have learned to eat and love quality food, including veggies. Any chef who can do that is bordering on genius!
Magnus calls it “Eat Bright”. His company Food Nation has won the Best of Arabia in their category for 3 years running.
Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Alternative Doctor
Magnus Mumby. Chef and Food Philosopher
When I first stepped into a kitchen as a young chef, the world of food looked very different. There were no shortcuts, no ready mixes, no packets waiting to be torn open. Everything was made from scratch. Stocks simmered for hours, sauces were built layer upon layer, bread was kneaded by hand, and every plate told the story of real ingredients treated with respect. I still remember the fish that came in from the boats, cod fish as big as me, glistening and firm.
Beef and lamb arrived with a balance of marbling that was both lean and rich, animals raised on pasture, their flesh full of flavor. Even the eggs were vibrant, their yolks golden and deep.
Over four decades I have watched that world vanish. Bit by bit, the integrity of ingredients has been eroded, sacrificed to the power of the dollar and the obsession with gross profit margins. Industrial agriculture, processing, and marketing combined to create what I call the agri-pocalypse. At first it was subtle, an extra shortcut here, a packet there. But soon entire supply chains shifted. The very raw materials we chefs depended upon were altered beyond recognition. Foods that once carried vitality became hollow.
The cost has not only been culinary but human. Today, our food system produces abundance, yet much of that abundance makes us sick. The diabesity crisis, this entangled rise of obesity and type 2 diabetes, is not the result of scarcity but of over-engineered convenience. The foods are a double body blow of calorie-dense but nutrient-poor, designed for profit not health. At the same time, we face a mental health crisis unlike any in living memory. More than ninety percent of our serotonin is produced in the gut, and the gut’s microbiome thrives only on fiber-rich, diverse, whole foods. Strip away that diversity, flood the body with processed starches and seed oils, and the mind itself begins to unravel.
This is the world I found myself confronting when I founded Food Nation. I could not stand by as children were fed the very foods that I knew were damaging their health. Having seen, firsthand, what real food once was, and having trained in kitchens where every dish began with honest ingredients, I knew there was another way. Clean eating had to be scaled. It could no longer remain the privilege of those with time and money. If diabesity and mental health decline were industrial in scope, then the cure also had to be industrial: a new model of clean eating delivered at scale.
Food Nation became that experiment, and over time, that reality. Today, more than fifty thousand students eat meals with us every day. For more than a decade, we have served tens of millions of meals, each one designed to nourish rather than to fill. We called our initiative “Eat Bright,” because I wanted food to be seen as vibrantly as it tasted. Vegetables were unpeeled to preserve fiber. Sauces were built with ‘hidden goodness’ vegetables to deliver extra nutrients and phytochemicals. Plates were designed with variety in mind, each color a nutrient, each meal a lesson in what food can and should be.
Tasty salad boxes. Way to get kids to eat healthy!
But my journey wasn’t only about the food, it was about changing habits and culture. We invited parents to “Top Table” events, brought cookery classes back into schools, created ingredient showcases, and collaborated with farmers. The goal was never to dictate a diet but more to restore a relationship. Children need to see food not as fuel to be rushed through but as something to explore, enjoy, and respect. Parents began to remember the pleasure of cooking, of sitting together at a table, of knowing where meals came from.
Over the years, I have grown ever more convinced that diets do not work. I have seen the rise and fall of every trend – keto, carnivore, paleo, juice cleanses, intermittent fasting. They create temporary change at best, despair at worst. Once the diet ends, the body reverts, because diets are external impositions, not internal transformations. The only lasting cure is a lifestyle change, and that begins not in a clinic or a packet, but in the kitchen.
I speak with the conviction of a chef who remembers when all food was cooked from scratch. Cooking is the act of reclaiming control. Every time you chop an onion, sear a piece of fish, or simmer a pot of lentils, you take back responsibility from an industry that wants you to believe health comes from a packet, a pill, or a powder. It does not. It comes from the daily act of cooking and eating whole foods.
The forces that oppose this are powerful. Big Food, Big Pharma, even the remnants of Big Tobacco, are all aligned in ways that should alarm us. They profit from both ends of the spectrum: first from processed foods that compromise our health, then from the medicines that manage the resulting conditions. Their weapon is convenience. But I have learned that convenience is a shortcut, and a very valuable lesson. “A shortcut is the fastest way to a place you do not want to be”.
The only real resistance is to slow down. To take time to cook, time to sit, time to share meals with those you love. This is not nostalgia, it is survival. Real food heals. It strengthens bodies, steadies moods, sharpens focus, and knits families together. It is not instant, but it is permanent, and progressive once you start.
Smoothies are offered ready to blend. This is how to get kids to eat veggies!
Food Nation proves this is possible at scale. If a catering company can nourish fifty thousand children every day with clean food, then families can certainly reclaim their own kitchens. I know because I’ve seen it: the impact on students, the gratitude of parents, the way teachers speak about the difference in energy, attention, and happiness when children are well-fed.
The agri-pocalypse has stripped us not just of nutrients but of trust. My life’s work has been to rebuild that trust, one meal at a time, first as a chef in kitchens where everything was made from scratch, and now as the founder of a company feeding a generation. The message is simple: Hippocrates had the answer nearly 2500yrs ago, let food be thy medicine. We gave the keys to our health to corporations chasing profit. It is time to take them back, with our hands, our knives, and our kitchens.
Because against diabesity, against depression, against the hollow promises of industrial convenience, the most radical thing you can do is the simplest: cook real food, every day, and never stop. Let the revolution begin!
Magnus Mumby 14th Sept 2025
Food Nation also educates the kids, with instructive posters in the canteen, such as this one…
