“It’s been an interesting journey,” said Haslam, who earned an undergraduate degree in graphic design and illustration, with a focus on photography, from the Glasgow School of Art.
“I couldn’t get away from the subject of food, that was just my entire focus. Every piece of portfolio work, every output was always food-focused. And while I was at university, I was kind of grappling with this idea of was it food through art or was it cooking? Was it the food itself?”
That million-dollar question led Haslam on quite a ride, from being a contestant on the BBC’s Master Chef that she described as fun, but “absolute chaos”, to moving to Brooklyn where her coffee cup art got her backstage at Fashion Week. She eventually moved to Italy to pursue her master’s degree in Gastronomy at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, where she gained a deep understanding of global food systems, sustainability and the role of food in culture, society and human health.
She later found herself back in the UK cooking at some incredible restaurants, but something was missing. “I was very firmly [thinking], I need to be writing, and I want to be writing, and this is what I can offer here. And so a job came up with NutraIngredients,” Haslam said.
And the rest is history, with Haslam officially finding her calling.
“I think once you’ve gotten into this space and you get really into the science and you get really into the politics of it, I think it’s really hard to then take yourself out of it,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine being elsewhere at this point.”
Another place Haslam can’t imagine is being anywhere other than home. While she has left a number of times, she keeps returning. She and her younger sister spent much of their childhood in Scotland with their herbalist mum:
“She was talking about the gut-brain-axis and the gut-skin-axis way before, like 30 years ago, before I heard anyone else talk about it for another 20 years.”
Haslam and her sister also lived with her dad and stepmum, along with their little brother.
“I love moving away and I love getting to live in other places, but at the same time I’ve never not loved a city as much as I love Glasgow,” she said.
When Haslam isn’t spending time with family or cooking, she can be found running, practicing ballet and wild swimming with her partner in Glasgow’s lochs and rivers.
