In this week’s New Statesman comes more saddening evidence that foodists have trouble understanding any text longer than a menu or a recipe. Self-confessed foodist William Skidelsky’s review of my book, You Aren’t What You Eat, takes the rather courageous tack of actually denying that foodism is culturally omnipresent:

Modern-day Britain doesn’t strike me as a country obsessed by food.

What? Really?

A fast-growing minority of people, it’s true, take cooking and eating extremely seriously, perhaps to the point of overkill. Yet what this group has to do with the millions who tune into Gordon Ramsay’s or Jamie Oliver’s latest TV show, I don’t know.

Um, they are both obsessed with food? Continued →

According to his bio, the Wall Street Journal writer and professional foodist Bruce Palling has “an intense relationship with food”, and “indulges his passion for fine food and wine in most continents”. In a spirit of collegial charity, I will suppose that only an unfortunate pre-deadline overindulgence in this dual passion, “in” at least one continent, can explain the style and content of his review of my book, You Aren’t What You Eat. Continued →

An extract from my new book, You Aren’t What You Eat, was published in the Guardian; another one at Hazlitt magazine; and another in the Herald. It is out now in the UK & Eire, Australia, and North America. More information and reviews now at the book’s own page here. Bon appetit!