Thermidor - Part 2

Jun 23, 2018

Welcome back. About time. What you been messing around at? Oh, nothing. Just off in that there London, after being nominated for two prestigious food writing awards. Yeah, you lost them both. Ha. Loser. Thanks. You do know that our book was the only one up for two separate awards, after being chosen out of a list of hundreds by a panel of expert food writers. They said it was ‘startling and important’. Whatevs. Donald Trump becoming US president was startling and important. I’m pretty sure

Thermidor - Part 1

Jun 07, 2018

I didn’t really think much about it at the time, but a while ago I starting getting called a Neo-Marxist on Twitter. In fact, along with Captain Science, I was painted as the head of a vast Neo-Marxist conspiracy, mainly comprised of people criticising pseudoscience and dietary extremism. And a small number of Twitter users seemed to be very cross about it. I thought this was a little strange, especially given that I was not really sure what a Neo-Marxist was. Even now I am not 100% clear on

Find a Quiet Place

May 14, 2018

I am now well into my mid-forties. I feel pretty fucking old most of the time. I am on the downward slope towards my demise, with my best years firmly behind me. These days, when something minor goes wrong with my body, I tend to shrug and grimly expect that I will have to put up with it until death. I have problems with my left ear and my right shoulder, neither of which are ever likely to improve. This could be quite depressing I suppose, but I actually quite enjoy getting older. I am wiser,

Rise of the Ultra Foods Part 2

Apr 14, 2018

Part II As regular readers will know, I am not very keen on being told what to do. I am certainly not keen on sweeping, judgemental statements being made about people’s food choices. For these reasons, the rhetoric around Ultra-Processed Foods has always made me deeply uncomfortable. The language seems deliberately inflammatory, designed to create fear and disgust, things which have no place in the world of food. I have spent most of my career in kitchens, and I fully admit to making every