‘Fascinating, funny and devastatingly honest, a must-read on modern food culture in all its technicolour cheese-drenched glory’ Felicity Cloake

‘Ruby is a rare and singular voice. I loved this book’ Anna Jones

‘Ruby Tandoh’s sharp, insightful investigation into our evolving mass food cultures – the influences and drivers, weird excesses and absurdities – is a fascinating, sometimes shocking, eye-opener that is also brilliantly funny’ Claudia Roden

‘Witty and profound, informative and original’ Bee Wilson

‘A brilliant and engrossing investigation of what really shapes our desires when it comes to food, and a sharp riposte to culinary romanticism’ Fuchsia Dunlop

‘Brilliant … this book is for anyone who loves food, and wants the curtain lifted on why we love the things we do’ Rukmini Iyer

‘Completely dazzling in its scope, rigour, wit and savage, enlivening intellect. As a tour guide, Tandoh is brutally unsparing but infectiously passionate’ Jimi Famurewa

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 social media. 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 seventy-five years, examining the social, economic, demographic and technological forces shaping the foods that we 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?