Giles Coren on taxing the fat, being an "urban food ponce" and why life wasn't better in the 1950s
The food critic's new series Back in Time For Dinner considers what our changing meals have said about us, and society at large...
He’s also optimistic about the power of “bonkers” modern diets such as the 5:2 (eating what you want for five days a week and fasting for two) to reconfigure our warped relationship with food. “Some form of famine is good for people. Not on a global scale, but not being able to eat very often makes you appreciate food more. If you don’t eat for a day, your appetite is piqued and you’re more excited about the food you do have. So with all of these diets, part of it is just thinking about what we eat.
In the 50s, the woman in the family thought about it all day but by the 90s people are scoffing fast food on a train. To meet this demand, the food industry has to move faster and faster, so it’s just grinding up any animals it can find and sticking them in burgers.” If, as he says numerous times, Back in Time for Dinner aims to examine “what the food we eat tells us about the people we are”, what conclusion would an outsider draw about the Coren clan from the contents of their fridge? (Giles is married to journalist and food blogger Esther Walker with whom he has two young children – Kitty and Sam.)
“We’ve got too much money and time on our hands,” he fires back dryly. “Our fridge is full of raw ingredients – bits of animal, bits of vegetables – or leftovers. You know, I like Big Macs and frozen pizza but we just don’t have it. We go up to the butcher or fishmonger and bring stuff home. We just look like terrible 21st-century, urban food ponces, which I guess we must be.”
Filming the series opened his eyes to the fact that it was only surprisingly recently – in the late 1980s thanks to the advent of convenience food – that women finally had the freedom to pursue ambitions outside of the home. It’s a revelation that led Coren to reflect on his own slightly archaic approach to domestic duties. “We have some version of the 1950s in my house. I earn more money than my wife does and she does more cooking than me. If something goes bump in the night, it’s my job to go down with the cricket bat. If the kids throw up in the middle of the night, it’s her job.
But the solution is to both be freelance journalists. My wife can cook my dinner without feeling like the slave to a chauvinist husband because then she can write about it and earn a living.” Coren may be a loose cannon (the Back in Time for Dinner team had to reshoot scenes as he couldn’t help but respond “F***!” every time he stepped into the Robshaws’ newly decorated kitchen) but he’s adamant the series should be taken seriously.
“It’s not a parody. It’s not larking around. They’re eating the actual meals they would have at the time. It starts from a scientific premise. The old-fashioned, Tory thing of looking back to the 1950s doesn’t account for the life of drudgery for women or lack of expression for children, but if you could go back to a situation where we were more in touch with the food chain and all gathered for family meals but the woman isn’t stuck in the kitchen, that would be great. The question is, can we?”
