“Are you the one off Instagram?” the woman asks Sophie Morris as we near the end of an illuminating journey up and down the aisles of a large supermarket in a Dublin suburb.
“The one with the labels,” the woman clarifies, perhaps sensing that “the one off Instagram” is a bit vague.
“I think I recognise you and if you are the person I recognise you’re doing a great job,” the woman adds, before shuffling off with her basket under her arm.
Morris smiles and laughs. She seems unaccustomed to the social media fame that has come her way since the summer when she started sharing Instagram reels looking in some detail at the food labels on many commonly bought products in Irish supermarkets.
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She might have to become more used to it. In her local supermarkets pretty much everyone knows who she is now and what’s she doing – everyone that is except the shelf-stocking staff, who tend to be oblivious to the fact that she is assessing the products they stack and – sometimes – warning people not to buy them.
It’s an overnight fame of sorts that has been almost 20 years in the making.
After finishing a degree in economics in Trinity College Dublin, Morris started out in financial services just as the Celtic Tiger bubble was popping. Not enamoured of the world of high finance, she went to Ballymaloe Cookery School, where she completed the cookery course before selling home-made, easy-bake cookie dough at farmers’ markets.
That quickly grew into the Kooky Dough business, which she launched nearly 18 years ago when still in her mid-20s.
Within a few years her freshly made dough was to be found in supermarkets around the country and even in shops in France, Germany, the UK and elsewhere. It also made it on to Dragons’ Den where she rejected an offer of €70,000 from Gavin Duffy for a 25 per cent stake in her business. Days later she did a monster deal with Tesco.
A couple of years later and Kooky Dough had an annual turnover of about €1 million after which she sold it and earned a crust instead as a Kerrygold ambassador, TV chef and cookery book writer.
She took time out to have and then to be with her children and trained to be a nutrition coach, taking two diplomas in nutrition, before launching an online platform aimed at helping women with their diets and health.
Then this summer her Instagram account unexpectedly blew up.
On August 11th Morris had fewer than 20,000 Instagram followers. Her posts on food and health and wellness were attracting anywhere from 200-400 likes, a healthy number for sure, but not exceptional.
Then, on August 13th, while in a local supermarket, she recorded herself talking about the health or otherwise of yoghurts and pointed to the high sugar content of some well-known brands, The short reel was liked by just under 3,000 people, while the engagement (how many people interact with a post on Instagram) went through the roof. Next up was a post about bread, which attracted almost 7,000 likes and hundreds of comments.
On the Wednesday morning in early October when we met, she had 185,000 followers and fewer than 48 hours later she had 190,000 and then five days later she had 200,000.
And what is she talking about? The answer can be found in a post from early October.
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“I try to discuss how it’s not necessary to give up ultra-processed foods completely or become obsessive, but that an overall awareness is needed that health claims on food packaging can’t always be believed, that only by understanding ingredients can we truly know what’s in the products we’re buying,” she said.
“And in practical terms it is just not realistic for many people with lots of different life circumstances to only eat whole foods, and I want to empower people by showing that it is very doable to make simple swaps from an ultra-processed food option to a more minimally processed food option – without having to change the kind of food you’re buying and often saving money!”
Her post concluded, “We really cannot assume what is going on in people’s lives and so I hope to be empowering people with knowledge to navigate our modern food environment which is quite frankly a minefield”.
I first met Morris almost a decade ago when we were both guests on The Six O’Clock Show on TV3 (now Virgin Media TV), but it was only this summer that I noticed her reels coming up again and again on my Instagram account. And almost every time her musings led to something I liked falling off my shopping list.
Packaging can be so misleading and a lot of people have this idea that if it is on the shelves and big companies are putting it out there, then it must be okay
After listening to her reels, I stopped buying smoothies and cheap honey and certain types of soy sauce and coconut milk and those weirdly shaped crisp-like treats that can be hard to stop eating once you start.
I’m probably better off for it, physically and financially.
It would be easy to think all her swaps come at a cost, but one of the interesting things about her posts is that many of her alternative options are actually cheaper than the more commonly bought options – sometimes substantially cheaper.
She is bamboozled by the sudden success of her social media posts and when asked why it happened she says she is “still trying to answer that myself because it’s been so fast. But I think what’s happened is that people are very confused and want to make the best choices for themselves and their families. Packaging can be so misleading and a lot of people have this idea that if it is on the shelves and big companies are putting it out there, then it must be okay for me and the Government will be looking after me. Unfortunately, it’s not really the case.”
One thing that has become clear from even a casual interest in Morris’s Instagram adventures is that there are a lot of terms used by food producers that serve only to sell their products to the largest possible audience.
There is much that is apparently “traditional” on offer in our shops that it’s a wonder sean-nós singers aren’t stacking the shelves while comely maidens in Aran jumpers deliver a Riverdance mash-up of Riverdance to a banging bodhrán beat.
And if it is not traditional this, then it’s natural that or hand-carved the other as retailers and their suppliers lean heavily on their thesauruses to flog us things that are sometimes not entirely good for us.
There is nothing really to stop a manufacturer from claiming a product made with a mountain of sugar is “low fat” or “zero fat”. This may be true but it misses the point in the same way that labelling a bottle of bleach “traditional and handcrafted, using only ingredients from mother nature” misses the point.
Morris expresses concern about labelling in general and is particularly alarmed by “the level of ultra-processed foods on our food landscape, in our supermarkets. It’s just everywhere and unfortunately diets that are high in ultra-processed foods – and this is the one thing everyone agrees with – are linked to negative health outcomes.”
When asked what exactly ultra-processed food is she suggests that “if you look at an ingredients list and would not be able to – theoretically at least – buy them in a shop and put them together and make that product at home then it is an ultra-processed food. Typically you will see long lists of chemicals, words you can’t even pronounce.”
Then she takes me shopping.
We start in the bread aisle where I pick a wholesome looking wholewheat brown loaf – with seeds for added goodness. She looks at the ingredients and points to the seeds (good), oats (good) then highlights the sugar, the caramelised sugar (not so good), the emulsifiers and the range of vegetable oils including environmentally dubious palm oil. “It’s definitely not one of the worst I’ve seen but I would much prefer to choose an option that is more minimally processed,” she says.
She suggests bake-at-home rolls. “They are a really handy swap and have literally got flour, water, yeast, salt and ascorbic acid, which is absolutely fine. So that’s a really great ingredient list.”
She stresses that seed oils are “not inherently bad but they are in almost everything and we are just having way too many of them.”
There is, she notes, a reason so much of what we buy now is ultra processed. “It is food that is designed to be very hyper-palatable and it is very easy to digest and very easy to over-consume.”
She insists that she is “never, ever saying to people that they need to cut them out completely. I don’t think that’s realistic but if the predominant amount of calories in your diet is coming from ultra-processed foods, then that’s when we’re getting into issues with health risk.”
She points out – reasonably – that many of the products on our shelves, particularly the sugary, salty, fatty treats we all love, are made by a handful of giant multinationals companies who “want to deliver financial growth. That is their main concern and many products are designed for us to just want more, more, more because the more they sell, the better their shareholders do and the cheaper that they are to produce, then obviously they’re delivering their financial growth. They don’t want to actually hurt us but they want to make money.”
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“Ultra-processed food tends to be high in sugar, fat and salt, and a lot of money is spent to give them the perfect ratio that makes them so delicious. If you put a whole bowl of caster sugar on the table, you’re not going to sit there eating it by the mouthful, but it is the combination [of those ingredients that makes the difference]. They design their products to have those ratios and that can drive over-consumption.”
When it comes to how manufacturing works, she speaks from personal experience. “When I started my own food company, there was a lot of interest from the food industry and I got a real insight because I was a small food producer and my product was made with butter, sugar and other ingredients you could find at home. But we were being really pressurised to swap out butter for margarine to bring the cost down. It was just wild and it gave me a real insight into what the food industry is and how hard it can be.”
As she talks we walk to the dairy aisle, where she looks at the Greek and the Greek-style yoghurt. They sound similar but are not quite the same. “There is nothing wrong with Greek-style yoghurt but actual Greek yoghurt has a higher protein content, which is great for the mornings,” she says.
While the Greek-style yoghurt is okay by her, it’s a different story when it comes to many of the brightly coloured flavoured yoghurts that are aimed at children. “They do tend to have a lot of sugar in them,” she says, and as she speaks she picks up one tub that has 22g of sugar per serving. “That is five teaspoons in one pot,” she says.
Smoothies made with concentrated fruit juices are similarly problematic, she suggests, with some products containing almost the entire recommended daily allowance of sugar for a child in a single small carton.
We reach the biscuits. Unsurprisingly, many of the ones beloved of Irish people are not the healthiest. The good news is the ingredient list of some shortbreads is pure and simple – “if you see butter on the label as opposed to palm oil, then that is a good thing,” she says.
Rich tea are good too. They aren’t slathered in chocolate, though.
Keogh’s crisps and Manhattan popcorn pass her “could you make this at home” test – while Tayto and Pringles do not. Knorr stock pots are heavily processed while bouillon powders are a better option: “They don’t have all the gelling agents and are much cheaper.”
She points to all the soy sauces that have long ingredient lists and to others that are just made with water, soya beans and salt. It all seems obvious when she says it but having bought soy sauce for more than 30 years I never once thought to look at the ingredient list. I do now.
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Morris says some of the ‘no added sugar’ claims on packaging irritate her. “Some mueslis make that a big part of their pitch, and while we are getting other nutrients from things like the dried fruit, there is still sugar in them.”
Sometimes there’s a lot of sugar. She notes one brand that is sold as having no added sugar has 14 grammes of sugar per 40g serving. “And to be honest, most of us would have way more than 40g in a serving.”
The way her platform continues to grow amazes her. “I have been asking for feedback, and people are saying that they love that I’m not telling people not to eat things, there’s no judgment and I’m always trying to give good swaps. Basically all I am saying is: [if] we make clever choices and small changes, those kinds of changes are going to impact us in the long term. Ultimately it’s about awareness.”
We arrive at the plant milk – or milk-like – shelves. “This is a bit of an issue because these products are sold as an healthy alternative to cow’s milk but cow’s milk is a healthy and nutritious product if you are not lactose intolerant or vegan. But people have this idea that plant milks can be really healthy but some have long ingredient lists and not much of what is supposed to be the main ingredient. I think people just need to be mindful of what they are choosing and why they are choosing it.”
She is also wary of calorie counting and says it should not be a singular obsession. “Take sandwiches: they can be ultra-processed but low calorie. A heavily processed wrap might have 500 calories. but if you made your own version that was less processed, it might have more calories but leave you fuller for longer.”
She is not sure where she is going to take her platform but for now is loving the response she is getting from people who have started following her. “It is amazing. It is hard to comprehend, but people are just loving having their eyes opened and I want to keep doing that.”
