Western industrial civilisation is eating itself stupid. Cookery programs bloat the television schedules, cookbooks fill the bookshop windows, and celebrity chefs hawk their own branded ranges in the supermarkets. The average Briton now spends five hours a week watching TV food programs, and only four hours a week cooking. It is an age of virtual eating.
Worse, the products of modern food media routinely promise to reveal the secrets not just of cooking but of the good life, of happiness itse...