About Lynn Slovak
Lynn Slovak is a holistic nutritionist, cordon bleu trained chef, food educator, author and natural health advocate who has been passionate about food and wellness for as long as she can remember. Lynn grew up in London, England where she began cooking and experimenting with food at an early age, inspired by both her grandmother, who was a traditional British cook, and her aunt, who was a recipe developer for the UK Milk Marketing Board. Unlike most children, whose cooking skills don’t usually extend beyond cakes and cookies, Lynn loved to cook anything and everything, and annual family vacations to the Mediterranean were wonderful opportunities to try new flavors and dishes that were unheard of in most households in England in the 1960s.
After a stint at the London Cordon Bleu School, Lynn left England to live for 9 months in a small village called Centola in Campania, Southern Italy where almost everything that the locals ate and drank was grown or raised locally, and the simple peasant dishes were in direct contrast to the complicated and fussy food that she had learned to cook in London. Being an isolated mountain village, Centola still retained much of its Moorish heritage, and the local food was typically flavored with many of the ingredients most common to North Africa and parts of Spain – almonds, pistachios, oranges, cinnamon and chili, all of which Lynn makes liberal use of today.
Returning to London, Lynn worked for several years in a number of restaurants and was exposed to many other styles of cooking before emigrating to New Zealand in 1978, where she was shocked to discover that there were only two types of cheese available – mild and tasty cheddar, and no-one had even heard of nouvelle cuisine! Undaunted, she taught cooking classes and ran a gourmet food service which catered for high end parties and events, and also supplied stocks, sauces and desserts to restaurants, regularly appearing on local radio shows and at fundraising events.
Many years later, during a prolonged bout of poor health, Lynn first began to think of food not just as a way to alleviate hunger, or to appeal to our senses, but more importantly as one of the most important determinants of our overall health and wellbeing. Inspired, she enrolled and completed a diploma in Nutrition, and then began to think of ways in which she could combine her culinary and nutrition skills, with the result that Flourish with Food was born.
Now in Reno Nevada, Lynn continues to actively research and educate about the link between a holistic lifestyle supported by truly nutritious food and a reduction in the risk of degenerative disease. This has never been more important than it is today, where not only are we exposed to levels of preservatives, additives, colorings, flavorings and other chemicals in heavily processed foods that were unheard of even 10 years ago, but those same chemicals are in our water, our cleaning products and our personal care products, exposing us on a daily basis to sometimes hundreds of different toxins.
With Flourish with Food, Lynn’s focus is on giving people the tools and information that they need to truly enjoy good health and wellbeing. She is a member of the American Holistic Health Association, the Weston A Price Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to returning traditional foods to everyday life, the Campaign for Raw Milk, and Slow Food, which is a global, eco-gastronomic organization that was founded in 1989 to increase awareness of disappearing local food traditions and the impact that people’s food choices have on the environment. Lynn is continuing her nutritional studies at Clayton College of Natural Health, and enjoys keeping up to date with emerging research on all aspects of health and nutrition, traveling widely to do so.