Gilly Smith

speaker

1,281 appearances 10 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 30 Jul

Gilly Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 5.

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Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith · Rebecca Seal: Irritated · 16 Jul 2026 podcast

And this week I'm with author, journalist and broadcaster Rebecca Seal and her deep dive into the world of allergies in Irritated.

She spent the last 20 years writing about food, not least as the deputy editor of Observer Food Monthly.

And her life has always been about the deliciousness of food.

But it was her younger daughter's allergy to soy which prompted her to explore the rise in the allergy epidemic.

and to piece together a fascinating puzzle of the way we live.

I began by asking her what she was aiming for as she began to navigate this largely undiscovered world of competing evidence and contradictions.

So let's start going through your food moments, which we wouldn't normally do at this stage in the podcast.

But actually, your food moments tell the entire story.

And they tell the reason why you got into this book in the first place.

So let's go into the story of Poppy, your daughter, who had a really bad reaction to food in a way that you couldn't... I mean, it's a nightmarish scenario to a parent because you couldn't possibly have known that this was about to happen.

That's what I mean by nightmarish.

And you say in your second food moment that you felt you were poisoning Poppy with your breast milk.

And you say that your lifestyle was completely compromised.

What you ate mattered enormously to what you were feeding your baby.

Explain your second food moment, the allergens and breast milk.

I mean, this is even more nightmarish.

That nightmarish scenario you talk about when your children are teenagers is because you are not in control of their diet.

You cannot let them leave the house happy in the knowledge that they're going to survive.

I mean, it is serious, isn't it?

It really is incredibly serious.

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