East

Roadkill

For the last three or four years Dave Butler has been collecting road kill and cooking up feasts for his family:

"It’s almost become a bit of an obsession really.

Dave cooks up a roadkill meal for the cameras!

"I’ll spend loads of time on the look-out. It makes car journeys more interesting too, because you’re never sure what you’re going to find."

Dave lives in the middle of the Norfolk countryside with his partner Alison, and three children, Jasper, Theo and Felix.

Dave first read about cooking and eating roadkill on the internet and taught himself how to butcher a dead animal. 

Alison and Dave both think the meat is a good natural source of food because the animal has lived free range and has not been farmed.

They also think it’s really good for the children to see where their food comes from.

Alison says that so many children don’t know or understand where food comes from, and some don’t even realise it’s an animal. 

However, Alison herself doesn’t tuck in to Dave’s roadkill feasts – she’s a vegetarian!

Dave says that they originally tried to hide the butchering of the meat from the kids.

But he feels that there’s no point, he believes that it's natural for them to see what happens, and they can learn from it.

Vegetarian, Alison, doesn't eat roadkill.

Helathy, free food

Eating roadkill has almost become part of their way of life.

In Dave’s opinion, the roadkill meat is healthy food and free and should therefore be rebranded "innocent meat".

Dave only takes animals that are already dead and says he would never deliberately knock one down for dinner.

Even so, he says there's so much free meat out there on the roads, he finds it difficult to store all of it!

Dave says, "I’ve eaten all sorts that I’ve found - squirrel, fox, hare, rabbit and of course deer…"

Dave's even been showing locals in the village how to butcher roadkill deer:

"For ages now people in the village have been on at me to show them how to do it.

"They’re all very different people. But all very genuinely curious about learning how to butcher a deer."

But the thing that people are most shocked about isn’t the roadkill in the pot - it’s that Dave and Alison don’t give the children any sugar!

Sugar free

Dave and Allison’s decision not to eat refined sugar started as a temporary idea for the benefit of their small children, but has now developed into something permanent.

In 2003 they read that if they could avoid feeding their children sugar for the first two years of their lives, it would help them to appreciate a wide range of tastes and flavours, and not be so focused on only the sweeter foods. 

They decided to give it a whirl and Dave's been impressed with the results:

"As we have tried to avoid refined sugar in our diet, we have had our eyes opened to just how much this product is added to our foods. 

"Biscuits, cakes and of course sweets are off the menu, but other foods such as fruit yoghurts and breakfast cereals can have surprisingly high levels of added sugar. 

"We also avoid any artificial sweeteners because they don’t help reduce your appetite for sweetness."

Real food, real flavours

The more they look into the issue of sugar and healthy eating the more they feel convinced they are doing the right thing. 

Dave and Allison say that they do not feel they are depriving themselves, but rather that they are for the first time in their lives, eating real food. 

"Without the bland but overwhelming sweetness of refined sugar, we are really tasting what we eat," says Dave. 

"Subtle and delicious flavours previously masked by sugar can now be identified."    

So, they say, food tastes better as well as being nutritionally healthier - empty calories have been replaced with vitamins, minerals and fibre in abundance.