I always suspected that I liked bread a bit too much, but ensconced inside a gated villa with only the finest, gluten-free food in the fridge and the dangerous nature of my dependency is writ large.
‘This is how teenage looters must feel about Nike,’ I ponder, as I imagine all kinds of scenarios in which I obtain bread, crisps, potatoes and pasta. (I’m afraid that some of these scenarios do involve me climbing over walls.)
My friend is not only a leading authority on food intolerances and healthy living, he is also a coeliac. So he doesn’t just talk about nutrition, he lives it. I don’t know what I was expecting, but when he opens his cupboards it is clear that he does the rather inconvenient thing for my purposes of practising what he preaches. His body is a temple and he puts only the most suitable ingredients into it.
My body is a ramshackle, low Anglican church where pretty much anything goes. I am ecumenical about food. I don’t mind what it is or where it has come from, so long as it tastes vaguely inoffensive and stops me feeling hungry.
I draw the line at McDonald’s, but only because I have doubts about whether it is actually food. Its so-called hamburgers look to me as if they might be polyester resin-based. But in an emergency I will do a Burger King, which seems to have a higher than average proportion of meat to synthetic material.
A Byron Burger, or one of those other fancy burgers that come with goats cheese or aubergines, I consider haute cuisine. Haute cuisine itself I find meets McDonald’s coming round the other way. It ceases to be food when it has been played with so much it has not only shrunk but has also arranged itself into a pattern and affected to taste of more than 26 different flavours at once, which can’t be natural.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in