About Jody
Jody Vassallo trained as a Home Economist at East Sydney Technical College and has been working as a recipe writer and food stylist for the past 20 years. She has collaborated with many leaders in the Australian food industry, including Jamie Oliver, Bill Granger and Donna Hay. Her work has been published both nationally and internationally in The New York Times, Sainsbury’s magazine, Vogue Entertaining, Good Living, Gourmet Traveller, Feast, Mind Food and donna hay magazine.
For the first four years of her career Jody worked with Donna Hay, assisting her in recipe writing, styling and demonstrating. When Donna moved to marie claire magazine Jody became Food Editor at Murdoch Books. Within a year she was promoted to Food Director where she managed the production of all marie claire cookbooks, Le Cordon Bleu cookbooks, Bill Granger’s Sydney Food and Family Circle Step by Step & mini cookbooks. During this time Jody wrote seven very successful marie claire style cookbooks, entitled Noodles, Pasta, Brunch, Supper, Seafood, Drinks, Sweet., Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. After 6 years in this role, Jody left Murdoch to work as a freelance writer and food stylist. She travelled the world researching new recipes and creating books for French publisher Hachette Livre. Her titles with Hachette Livre include Easy Curries, Salt and Pepper, Grains Legumes and Pulses, Basic Pasta, Basic Chinese, Basic Thai, Basic Indian & several of the Mons Cours De Cuisine Series.
Jody’s strong interest in nutrition and health became a trademark of her work. In 2001 she was approached by the National Heart Foundation of Australia to develop recipes for their new look Deliciously Healthy Cookbook. This book sold twenty five thousand copies within the first six months of its release. From 1996 -2003 Jody worked as a food consultant to the New South Wales Institute of Sport. Her primary role was to teach elite athletes to cook healthy nutritious meals and provide simple food solutions for their specific dietary requirements.
In 2000-2002 Jody worked as Food Editor for the Australian Institute of Sport cookbooks Survival of the Fittest and Survival from the Fittest. Realising that the market for health-based cookbooks was severely lacking Jody started her own publishing company in 2002. Fortiori Publishing was born and the Health for Life series developed.
In 2003 Fortiori won the Gourmand World Food Media Awards Best Nutrition Series. Jody has written and styled 18 books for Fortiori. The titles include, Low Fat, Diabetes 1 & 2, Allergies, Pregnancy, Baby and Toddler, Wheat and Gluten Free, Christmas Food, Detox, Vegetarian, Fitness Food, Omega 3 and Low Fat for Kids. Jody has managed all aspects of budgets, scheduling, design, sub contracting and production for each of the books. Jody has created 4 cooking DVDs for the Health for Life series. These were released in October 2006. (Visit www.healthyfoodforlife.com).
Jody worked as a Food Consultant to Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food from 2011 to 2013 where she was responsible for training all of the centre and mobile truck staff. Jody currently writes a fortnightly healthy food blog for Jamie Oliver’s website and continues to work as a Freelance Food Writer and Food Stylist both in Australia and overseas. She also runs healthy cooking classes in Bangalow Australia.
Jody’s passion for health extends beyond her cookbooks. She also teaches regular yoga classes in Tilba and is constantly researching new ways to help people improve their health, wellbeing and happiness.