All Consuming

The star food writer explores how our tastes have been formed and how they shape our lives

Over the past century our tastes have radically transformed, seduced by supermarkets, hacked by craveable Instagram recipes and painstakingly engineered in the depths of food factories. We used to learn about food from those close to us, but today we're just as likely to be influenced by a TikTok restaurant critic halfway across the world. Food culture is now mass culture, and it's more complex, exciting and absurd by the day. From the viral appeal of restaurant queues, to the mind-bending inventions of the wellness industry and lightspeed growth of bubble tea, Ruby Tandoh's startlingly original exploration leads her to question - as we surely will, too - how our tastes have been shaped and how much they are, in fact, our own. 'Straight-talking, endlessly inspirational' Nigel Slater