Being into food, following and making it, queuing for it & discussing it, is no longer a subculture. It’s become mass culture, and a national obsession. Our food culture is more expansive and chaotic by the day. Recipes aren’t passed from hand to hand; they’re on TV and in newspaper supplements, flooding YouTube and Instagram. Our tastes are painstakingly engineered in food factories, shaped by supermarket shelves and hacked by craveable Instagram recipes. Ruby Tandoh’s startlingly original analysis of today’s food landscape traces the roots of this extraordinary transformation over the past 75 years, examining the social, economic, demographic and technological forces shaping the foods that we consume and hunger for today. As she explores the evolution of the cookbook and light-speed growth of bubble tea, the advent of Tiktok critics & qualities of the perfect dinner party, Tandoh’s laser sharp and wry investigation leaves her questioning her tastes and ours: are they, in fact, our own?
