Hello! I'm Fran McElwaine
Formally a C-Suite Executive advising some of the world's largest food manufacturing corporations, I faced down my own health crisis, and had to re-think my whole approach to food and health. This led to an existential crisis, and ultimately to a new career as a Functional Health Practitioner in which I have helped hundreds of people prevent or reverse chronic lifestyle disease. As poacher turned gamekeeper I am in a unique position to shine a light on why and how the food industry offers up false choices, the negative impact this has on our health, and exactly what we can do about it.
Now, as a Functional Health Consultant, Longevity Coach, CEO of Real Health and Wellness and founder of the Get Real! Movement, my job is to understand the root causes of disease and help people find relief from chronic health conditions at a cellular level. I have studied extensively, and qualified in Integrative Nutrition and Applied Functional Medicine, and feel passionately that we all have much more control over our health than we realise.
This knowledge and experience of functional medicine, in conjunction with my many years on the other side of the fence - as a creator and implementor of marketing and communication strategies for some of the biggest global food marketing companies, gives me a unique insight into why food is so important to our health and also why it is so difficult to make healthy choices these days.
I know from my own experience, and that of the hundreds of people I have worked with over the last ten years years, that making consistent healthy choices is very difficult in the face of a barrage of advertising messages and the universal availability of cheap, hyper-palatable, ultra-processed foods.
Let's face it, multi-national companies are not stupid, and they wouldn't spend billions on advertising, marketing, communications and design if these things didn't work. This, in addition to the deliberate obfuscation of food science, through financing think-tanks, health charities and research programmes, has led to us feeling overwhelmed, confused and dis-empowered when it comes to food choices.
Hard Cell is my attempt to redress the balance in favour of the consumer. To help people understand more about the tools deployed against them so they can resist the psy-ops and make the healthy, rationale choices that will protect their health, and the health of the planet as a whole, well into the future.