The star food writer asks, are our appetites are really our own?
The iconic New Yorker and Vittles food writer asks: Why do we eat the way we eat now?
Being into food - following and making it, queuing for it and 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 and 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?
About the Author
Ruby Tandoh is a food writer who has written for the New Yorker, Guardian, Vittles and Vice. A finalist on the Great British Bake Off, she has published Eat Up, about the pleasures of eating, as well as three cookery books: Crumb, Flavour and Cook As You Are.
Industry Reviews
'Praise for Eat Up' - -
'I read it greedily. Thank you' - Nigella Lawson
'Eat Up is brilliant. Buy it. You won't regret it' - Meera Sodha
'A wonderful read, whatever you eat' - Reni Eddo-Lodge
'Eat Up is a joyous manifesto for flavour and sanity ... I loved it' - Bee Wilson
'Brilliant and essential, it's everything I want in a book about food culture and I couldn't put it down. From a witty yet rigorous analysis of social media's impact on home cooks, through to restaurant criticism, food trends, the cookbook industry and more, this book is for anyone who loves food, and wants the curtain lifted on why we love the things we do.' - Rukmini Iyer, author of THE ROASTING TIN
'Completely dazzling in its scope, rigour, wit and savage, enlivening intellect. All Consuming ranges stylishly across modern cuisine's misunderstood recent past and hyperactive present, offering reframing context and a buffet of ideas that is, all at once, perceptive, challenging, funny and, ultimately, unexpectedly comforting. As a tour guide, Tandoh is brutally unsparing but infectiously passionate; forensically obsessive but self-aware. It taught me so much and will completely change the way you think about food culture, and how tastes and trends form and proliferate.' -Jimi Famurewa, author of SETTLERS and PICKY
