THE VIRTUES OF THE TABLE: HOW TO EAT AND THINK by Julian Baggini

For us humans, eating is not simply about feeding - life giving, sustenance, nutrition, energy and survival. Sure this is part of the package, but what sets us apart from the animal world is that we enjoy our food, we take pleasure in what we choose to eat, we savour taste, texture, smell. Unlike any other creature, we cook food, we transform it from a base state into something else, combining it in various ways with other base ingredients to produce an almost infinite variety of eating experiences.

You would have to live under a rock to not have some awareness of many modern food related issues that blight our newspapers, magazines, television and saturate our social media networks. It can be intensely overwhelming, especially when you are being made to question daily the food choices that you make - organic food sources, GM, Fair Trade, the ethics or morality behind eating animals, obesity, fasting, food as a social lubricant, food as art.

Julian Baggini, is a philosopher and writes about issues such as food and our relationship to it,  in such a way as to appeal to the very general audience that most of us are part of. Very few of us being professional philosophers! So he is well placed to dissect the thinking behind how we eat, why we eat, and our own peculiar relationship that each of us has with food. He wants us to look critically at how we eat, where our food comes from, to question, but to not necessarily feel guilty or judged for coming to a decision that may not be the mainstream or the mantra of the moment. If we consider carefully and thoughtfully what we are eating, how it gets to our table, and how we taste and enjoy what we eat, then we are actually doing ok. At times the author is a bit of a pointy head, wearing his academic philosophy hat a little to tightly, but he quickly brings his theories back to the reality of our daily dining experiences. I particularly enjoyed his chapter on food as art, or food vs art as you will. He writes about restaurants such as Noma and El Bulli which take dining to a whole new level, fast food chains such as MacDonalds winning awards for its of sourcing of non battery farmed eggs, the significance of saying a grace before starting to eat, sharing food with strangers, foods that are protected by the 'protected designation of origin' established by the EU, is there such a thing as locally sourced fruit and vegetables - for example tomatoes in winter. And so on.

Despite at times his logic and rationales making me a little cross eyed, this book really has made me think about how we eat, appreciate the food around us and what we do with it. And if you want more of Julian Baggini, he has written at least 17 other books, pontificating important subjects, and has also given a TED talk about is there really a real you. Watching this TED talk will give you an idea of how he writes, because reading him is exactly like listening to him - entertaining, wide ranging, confusing, moving backwards and forwards within the topic, and quite compelling.

https://www.ted.com/talks/julian_baggini_is_there_a_real_you?language=en