Jo Whitton joins the team at The UK Newspaper

Jo Whitton lives in Far North Queensland where she runs her business, Quirky Cooking, from home and enjoys the country life. Due to food intolerances in her family (herself and her four children), Jo began researching ways to improve their health through diet from the time her kids were very young. In December 2008 she began her blog, Quirky Cooking, to share what she was learning and the recipes she was developing for her family. In May 2014 she published her best-selling Quirky Cooking cookbook, and began teaching allergy-friendly cooking seminars. However, about this time her 13 year old son began to really struggle with his mental health. He was diagnosed with severe OCD and anxiety in October 2014, and Jo’s mission to help her son heal naturally began.

As Jo learnt more about the importance of a healthy gut for reducing inflammation and healing both physical and mental health issues, she began to focus specifically on traditional, healing foods and ‘food as medicine’, rather than just avoiding allergy-friendly cooking to reduce allergies and reactions. Not only did her son’s mental health stabilise, but Jo and the rest of the family all saw massive improvements in their overall health.

Over the next few years, Jo began a podcast to share her family’s journey, interviewing many experts about ways to improve chronic illnesses through health and lifestyle changes. She developed two online programs to support people needing to make food and lifestyle changes for their health; held seminars and cooking workshops around Australia, NZ and the UK; and ran health retreats and events around Australia (and planned to run retreats in Italy however Covid put a stop to that). Her second book, Life-Changing Food, was released in 2017 – a collaboration with whole-food chef and writer Fouad Kassab. This completely gluten-free, whole food cookbook quickly became a best-seller and is now also a popular app.

Quirky Cooking is now in its 12th year and Jo is about to release her third cookbook, Simple, Healing Food (due for release January 2022.) This book will be a deeper dive into cooking for gut health, with over 140 recipes, and a step-by-step approach to improving gut health written by Elyse Comerford, an Integrative Nutritionist who specialises in gut health and food for healing.

Going forward, Jo plans to continue sharing her passion for food to nourish the gut, brain and body (focusing also on deliciousness to feed the soul!), and is working on many new projects including monthly live-streamed workshops to teach people healthy cooking, online coaching programs and even her own range of Australian-made, handcrafted kitchenware.

You’ll find many of Jo’s recipes on her website, Quirky Cooking, and her Facebook, Instagram and YouTube channels, along with a variety of resources, cooking videos and healthy living tips to help you on your journey to good health.