ABSTRACT
One of the most striking changes in recent times has been an explosion of interest in all matters to do with food, especially in cookery both in and outside the home. To turn the pages of weekend newspapers, glance at the lists of best-sellers in bookshops or switch on the television to see cookery programmes competing for top viewing-time with soap operas one might conclude that eating is a principal obsession of our consumer society. Food has become part of a huge entertainments industry in which superstar chefs perform feats of dexterity, critics vie with each other in admiration or vituperation about memorably good or awful meals, while lavishly illustrated books and magazines evoke fantasies in a dream-world of gastronomic delights. In response to a seemingly insatiable appetite, a record 1,170 food and drink-related books were published in the United Kingdom in 2001. 1
