Julian Baggini challenges our beliefs about food

Julian Baggini’s mission is to make us think about what we eat and to learn more about it by exposing some of our absurd beliefs about food production, sourcing and cooking. Tony Clayton-Lea enjoyed the repast.

The Virtues of the Table: How to Eat and Think

Julian Baggini

Granta Books, €14.90

DOES a humble slice of toast or an artfully designed, Michelin-starred dinner taste any better when you know what went into their preparation?

Do you feel guilt, shame or concern if you walk into McDonald’s of a morning and buy an Egg McMuffin? And what about those strawberries you really like?

Are they grown in local allotments, or in sci-fi-like polytunnels? Would you rather tuck into a rice salad or crack your dentures on crispy pork belly?

Are you an early-bird type of person, or do you have few problems spending a week’s shopping money on one meal? And then there is, perhaps, the biggest unasked (or don’t-go-there) question of them all when it comes to food: is it always unethical to kill animals just because we fancy a fry-up for breakfast?

As in life and with food, it’s different philosophical strokes for different philosophical folks.

Socrates — by all accounts a man who could tell the difference between black pudding and brown bread — dutifully pronounced that we should eat to live and not live to eat.

Across the world in a different time, Confucius had an even more Spartan attitude: “coarse rice for food, water to drink, and the bended arm for a pillow …”

Clearly, this was a man who would find no comfort in the tantalising aromas of a Chinese takeaway, a roaring fire, a glass of Pinot Noir, and the Breaking Bad boxset.

And then, of course, we have the contemporary philosophers; Ludwig Wittgenstein, for example, wasn’t for changing his mind or his tastes. In 1929, while visiting the Cambridge home of British economist, John Maynard Keynes, Wittgenstein was served Swiss cheese and rye bread for lunch, and thereafter insisted on that repast for the remainder of his stay.

Keynes later wrote that Wittgenstein “declared that it did not much matter to him what he ate, so long as it remained the same.” (Interestingly, Richard Wall’s 1999 study, Wittgenstein in Ireland, noted that while in Dublin, the philosopher visited Bewley’s café daily and always asked for the same lunch of omelette and coffee.)

Obviously, there are people out there — some of a highly intellectual bent — who would rather have dry bread morning, noon and night.

So what and how does food matter? And is how we eat, farm and shop for food more than just a matter of taste?

These questions and many more are posed by Julian Baggini in The Virtues Of The Table, a book that aims to be — cue intended pun — a recipe for how to think about the food we swallow.

For some people, this is more than a tall order. How many of us seriously consider how the food we eat from our plates actually arrives there? From breakfast to dinner to late night snacks, do only but the most considerate eaters really care about the ‘farm to fork’ aesthetic?

Or are the vast majority of us only too happy to tuck into whatever is placed in front of us, and if it tastes reasonably good then to hell with the provenance? Pass the wine, the beer, the salt, the gravy, the butter, and so on.

Baggini — the writer of several well received books of what have been termed ‘light’ philosphy; one such bestseller is titled What’s It All About?: Philosophy And The Meaning Of Life — would want us, perhaps even urge us, to slice our way through the myths and the confusion that surrounds the way in which we engage with the topic. The first step, he advises, is to think about local produce in a more shrewd way, and not to place too much faith in nature.

‘The educated urbanites who often lead these calls to localism have simply lost all sense of how fickle nature is,’ he argues.

‘Their allotments should teach them better, but like gamblers, hobby gardeners tend to remember only their wins.’ Baggini continues, temporarily taking on the guise of Devil’s Advocate: ‘Isn’t nature bountiful?, we think, ignoring the scrawny beans and piddling green tomatoes destined never to ripen.’

He ends this particular (and, we think, well-reasoned rant) with the pay-off line: ‘Anyone who trusts nature to provide does not know nature’.

Certainly, Baggini is passionate about his subject, and throughout this collection of essays — some enlightening, some provocative, some argumentative for the sake of it, and all of which close with a food recipe — he highlights extremely knowledgeable and interesting points.

One of these (bound to cause upset among the fine dining community) is that there is nothing more tedious than culinary innovation for the sake of it. He decries restaurant trends of routinely enhancing menus with what he deems to be frankly ludicrous creations.

Every restaurant trend of recent decades, he points out, has ended in customer boredom. Routines, he emphasises, should not be limiting, but rather should be enriching and liberating.

We see his point, and it’s well presented, but try telling that to a somewhat lesser skilled fine-dining chef that has to do school lunches every day of the working week.

There are, then, irritating if not objectionable flaws. One that rankles is contained in the essay ‘Use The Right Kit’, which focuses on kitchen gadgets and how useful/useless they are in the preparation and enjoyment of food and beverages.

While casually passing off the nugget of information that the Nestlé-owned Nespresso company supplies its shiny coffee capsules and sleek machines to more than 100 Michelin-star restaurants (including, at the time of writing the book, Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck in England, and L’Arpége in France), Baggini professes almost profound admiration for the end result of what he calls ‘perfect crema’. This eulogy despite the ethics of Nestlé — the world’s biggest coffee company that has done much over the decades to effectively keep millions of coffee growers in varying levels of poverty.

As if to balance, assumptions are exploded. Intriguingly, Baggini touches on the topic of ‘food miles’, wherein he explores the hardly scandalous topic of New Zealand butter, and why we’re not buying it in bucket loads. Well, wouldn’t you know it, Kiwi butter is produced by methods that emit less than half the carbon dioxide of butter produced in the UK — and that includes the transportation from New Zealand. Hands up who knew about that particular ethical quandary?

Of course, there are contradictions in even the most persuasive arguments, but there are many examples in this most interesting book where you’re hooked in — sometimes despite head-shaking objections.

If anything, though, Baggini throws out considered notions rather than subjecting the reader to trenchant absolutes, and that’s part of the pleasure.

There’s also an open-mindedness at play here that seems only too aware that it might be questioned.

Ultimately, Baggini’s mission is to make us think about what we eat, to learn more about it, and — perhaps most importantly, but no less easily — to reflect upon ethical, social and cultural options when selecting food.

As if to broaden his thoughts — or perhaps to even place them into context — he interviews farmers, chefs, restaurant critics and members of the clergy. It is, then, a complex subject viewed from all angles — or as Baggini himself reasons, a matter of positioning the commonplace ‘at the heart of ethics’.

Julian Baggini surely succeeds. Virtues Of The Table is so well written, its assertions so well presented, its theories laid out with just the right level of common sense and touch, that only the most uncaring among us would choose to ignore it.