The importance of food

The great press baron, Lord Northcliffe, used to tell his journalists that four subjects could be relied upon for abiding public interest: crime, love, money, and food. Only the last of these is fundamental and universal. Crime is a minority interest, even in the worst-regulated societies. It is possible to imagine an economy without money and reproduction without love but not life without food. Food, moreover, has a good claim to be the world’s most important subject. It is what matters to most people most of the time. Felipe Fernandez Armesto, Food: A History (2001) For reasons, I’ve been trawling long-lost archives and found this. I saved it in 2009, long before I’d thought about starting the Masters or worked in farming. Maybe the signs were there all along.