Stop, think, chew
Rather than looking for secular surrogates, we should look for other ways to cultivate the virtues that ritual promotes. Such practices need to be at least as embedded in our daily routines as prayers are for believers.
ReadCategory: Food
How allotments lost the plot
The arrival of the BBC’s The Big Allotment Challenge shows that grow-your-own is a pursuit worthy of the same attention as baking, dating and home improvement. As an allotment holder myself, albeit very much the head gardener’s lackey, I’m ambivalent about this. Allotments are wonderful things but the rise, fall, and rise again in their popularity tells a story about social change that is both encouraging and dispiriting…
ReadThe Death of the Dining Room
Eating at table should not be equated with formality and outmoded etiquette. Its main association should be conviviality. We sit around a table, but in front of the TV. We eat together at the table, but merely at the same time elsewhere. Even when eating alone, however, dispensing with a dining table comes at a cost. When we have our meals while doing other things we are not eating, we are merely feeding. We cease paying attention to what we are ingesting and our food becomes mere fuel.
ReadOn taking food seriously
It is absurd to claim that anything that is not essential to our survival is a “luxury” we should not be concerned about. This is not a humane viewpoint, but a deeply anti-humanist one. Why, after all, are we so concerned that many people do not have the necessities of life? Not because we think that mere survival is the purpose of existence. We want people to have food, shelter, health and education so that they can thrive and flourish. To put it another way, we want our “middle-class indulgences” to be available to everyone.
ReadHow we eat and what we eat
Too much of the received wisdom about good eating is based around a list of foods we should avoid. But knowinghow to eat – with balance and moderation – matters much more than making lists of what we should or should not eat.
Read