- Ruby! Welcome to Waterstones. - Thank you.
At the beginning of your book you mention
donuts straight away - Yeah, I do.
I've brought you donuts. You talk about the social currency of donuts
which I thought was very interesting - Okay, yes.
The idea of bringing in a box of donuts to work and suddenly everybody likes you
So I'm hoping you're gonna like me because I've brought you donuts.
Yes, I do, this is delightful.
We have to choose one. It's a premium selection
Okay. I feel like because I'm gonna be eating this on camera
I want to go for like the least messy option. That's not to say I won't steal a messier option afterwards
It's a total cop-out but you can do that. - Thank you.
I'm gonna go for this one. I think it's like some kind of caramely, biscuity
Delicious So look, let's - I'm gonna take a bite
we're gonna have to go for it. *hmmm and other contented noises*
How do they get it so soft and plasctic-y. It's perfect.
We probably don't want to know, do we.
Donuts are great. We know they're a bit naughty. Your new book is called Eat Up!
and the subtitle 'Food, Appetite and Eating What You Want.'
Why don't you very quickly tell me sort the impetus for writing the
book and what you hope it will do for people.
How do I make this quick?
So basically I mean I think I just wanted it to be an antidote to...
There are so many confusing food messages out, aren't there? Like, you're told from a
million different directions that you should be eating this or this or this.
And what I wanted to do was look at not necessarily like what nutritional value
certain foods have or anything like that but why we eat things, what the cultural
history is, what our social science is when it comes to eating. Like why do we
pass certain recipes down in a certain way? All of these things that surround food.
So that is basically it, it's everything that happens just off the edge of the plate.
People quite often say that to me like you've done this book
but I've got you here: what if people only ate jelly babies? And its like, yeah, you'd die.
It's not a good idea. I don't want people to - eating what you want
for me it's not like permission to just absolutely
binge until you keel over like that it's absolutely not what I want for people.
What I want is for people to, you know, have a craving for something and to be like
oh, do I really fancy a jacket potato today? I do! I'm gonna have it.
Without thinking oh I better consult that recipe book first to see if potatoes
are allowed. Do you know what I mean? It's having a little bit of faith in
your own body, this regulatory system that you've got.
Your appetite and all of the tastes you have and just in following them as best you can.
I think we've lost touch with our own cravings and our own
desires. And our body has all sorts a weird and wonderful ways of telling us
what we need. And also ways of reacting when we eat something that doesn't feel
right. And I think yeah we've kind of learned not to listen to that stuff and
instead to consult more or less anyone who will tell us what to eat.
One example that I love is my girlfriend. She was convinced that she was lactose
intolerant because her mum was, so she thought I probably am. And so every time
she had milk she felt you know a bit bloaty, a bit stressed and a bit sweaty.
And then we went to Italy and because she was having such a wonderful time in
the sunshine she had cappuccinos every day, she had
ice cream all the time, like constantly. And it turns out that this whole thing
was a stress-related thing. Because your mind is synced up with your
gut in a certain way. So it's definitely about getting to the bottom of what
makes you actually feel good. There's a lot of anxiety around certain foods and
of course there are people who suffer from eating disorders. All of the eating
disorders seem to me to be slightly different and you say in the book
that you yourself had an undiagnosed condition, but you suspect it was
something like bulimia - yeah - And that you acknowledge that everyone sort of
suffers things like that slightly differently. So in terms of finding out
what it is that is the problem it's quite individual. Is that part of the
reason why we don't have a sort of one-size-fits-all,
this is the problem, this is what causes bulimia, this is what causes anorexia,
Yeah, I mean it's so different for everyone. So, yeah, it's impossible and
also I think we're at a tricky time at the moment where we haven't quite caught up
with that reality of everyone having different reasons for having disordered eating.
And so if you want to go to your doctor and say, do you know what, I think I might be anorexic,
chances are he'll look at the size of you rather than your eating habits.
Which is obviously a problem because I mean anyone, any size, can have
these eating disorders. So I think we're a little bit behind on our understanding of these
things but luckily there's a lot of really good resources out there, coming up, but we could do more.
The book itself, it contains recipes - you can have another bite -
It contains recipes but it's not a sort of traditional
cookbook, it doesn't have sort of glossy photographs of spreads of food and it's
not sort of I guess a traditional memoir and it's not a traditional food history
but it contains elements of all of those things. I loved how you were thinking
widely about food in terms of how food is represented in culture, so in film and
television and music - yeah - fiction. You just seem very connected to food.
Has that always been the case?
I've always had a real like food radar so, you know, if
ever there was a scene in a film that had food that'd be the one I paused on.
And I've just always been interested in it. And also I think that within the
arts and culture, food so often stands as a metaphor for other things. And so whereas
in normal life quite often it's just you know like you'll have your porridge
because it's breakfast time, in a book it's rarely that simple.
Usually something will be like oh that links back to their heritage or whatever so I
love unpicking those clues and seeing how they apply to our actual real life.
And you've done loads of research. There's a huge bibliography the back of
the book. Was part of that to do is arming yourself with the facts because
in many ways it's a manifesto you're sort of making some quite bold
statements about food and there's a lot of scientific research in there to sort of go -
don't be coming at me with your rubbish argument because I've got some facts here.
Was it arming yourself or are you genuinely interested in doing that kind of research?
To be honest I think, for the most part, I'm just interested. And also like it's funny
because it comes across as a radical manifesto or whatever. But actually, nothing that I'm saying in there
is particularly innovative. I'd be the first to say that all I'm saying is, you know,
eat what makes you feel good, follow the cues that your body and minds
give you and take an interest in the world around you. None of that should be
radical but unfortunately we've got to this point in our food culture where it
becomes radical because everything else is so tangled. So that's the
funny thing about it. But as for the research, I just loved it. I just
watched music videos and I read scientific journals and I plucked all
these bits from all over just because they were interesting to me. Food is such
an animal thing, isn't it. You're literally taking a bit of the world and putting it
in your mouth and you're chewing it up and it's mixing with spit and it goes into
your gut and then we don't want to know what happens next you know.
It's very animal, it's very visceral and you can see why we 'enlightened people'
would like to think that that's not part of our self concept. You know, we are,
we're better than that, we're more enlightened than that. So I think we
try and draw lines to make ourselves a little bit less animal. I think we do it
with sex, I think we do it with food. We make these rules and these systems so
that it's not just us feasting at the trough you know?
Just to finish off...
I wondered if you had any sort of food writing heroes because as I was
reading the book there were some amazing descriptive passages which had
to do with the sort of the feeling of food which felt very Nigella-esque to me
because you were taking great joy, not just in the food, but in the words around
food. Is she somebody that you've sort of read and admired or is there anybody else
that you would recommend that people tuck into
Yeah I love, I mean I grew up with Nigella books so I will have absorbed a lot of that without even
realizing and now it's coming out in my own writing I do love her. I love Meera Sodha
who wrote Fresh India which is wonderful and is one of the few
cookbooks in my kitchen that's actually used. So many of them in decorative it's
terrible, like I need to cook more yeah they're the ones that spring to mind.
Very good, right we should finish our donuts - yes - and enjoy them from first
bite to last but Ruby thank you so much. - Thank you.