The sunshine tastes like the strawberries that cascade from their straw-lined beds as June draws to a close. But not all the flavours of summer are as pure. It also tastes of a Twister ice lolly – packaged some place far away, a long time ago, but seasonally hand-picked from the corner shop freezer – and funfair bales of candy floss.

It’s not just what you eat, then, it’s how you eat it. Eating food that you enjoy, in a context that’s relaxed and pleasurable, is a step towards more efficient digestion and better health.

any association between consumption of dairy and coughs has been shown to be negligible.)

‘Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken.’ That’s just the trouble with eggs. As with so many good things, you never really know what blessings you’ve got until something, or someone, gets broken.

It’s a strange split: in our society, food and women are traditionally dismissed as frivolous, fanciful, feminine things, while also being the stuff of nightmares.

The concept of waffles is that you can pile indulgence on top of decadence and finish it with a drizzle of hedonism, and that this constitutes a real and valid meal. The concept of waffles is that a waffle will never, ever be a staple food, or a convenience food, or a health food, and that it is all the more special for this uselessness. They are j

Often, mindful eating is a tactic used to encourage people to eat less (‘Listen to your stomach,’ they say, ‘and you’ll realise you aren’t even hungry’), but you can’t really use it as a tool. Mindful eating is something that will sometimes awaken a fierce hunger inside of you, and other times have you satisfied after a single square of chocolate.

But the food narratives we create when we shop, cook and eat don’t need to be exotic, expensive or rarefied. They shouldn’t be estranged from the humdrum, ugly, familiar mess of everyday life. They don’t even have to taste good. The important thing is giving yourself time to imagine your food, to touch, taste and smell the ingredients, and to reall

The magic lay in how the show eschewed the melodrama of American-style contests, with their set menu of competitiveness, sabotage and self-centredness. Instead, it was polite and neurotically perfectionist.