Food without religion

Food culture builds hierarchies too: a real ingredient needs no sauce, correct taste needs no additions, and the wrong sort of person ruins everything with mayonnaise. Cooking, however, has been creating new things out of combinations for centuries.

Cheese, spices, soy sauce and mayonnaise are themselves foods and part of cooking. Many dishes are built precisely on a combination of flavours. A tomato with salt is not proof of a bad tomato.

A more useful principle is this: an addition should improve the food, not make edible something that would otherwise have to be thrown away.

A strong flavour can hide staleness, bad texture, too much sugar or salt, monotonous ingredients and the absence of any real cooking.

This is especially visible in industrial food, where intensity helps sell cheap components and makes you want to keep eating after you are full.

But cultural superiority through “the pure taste of the ingredient” is no better than worshipping ketchup. The world’s cuisines have used fermentation, smoking, spices, fat and sauces for centuries not only to mask things but to create new flavour.

It makes more sense to learn to tell the food and your own state apart:

Am I eating because I am hungry?

Because it tastes good?

Because I am bored?

Because it is hard to stop?

Sawdust with melted cheese is still sawdust. Though a restaurant menu would probably call it deconstructed wood texture.

An argument about sauce quickly turns into a wider argument about “clean” and “bad” food, when it is more useful to look at the overall diet, the dose and what the food actually does.

Foods are declared clean, toxic, addictive or the final ruin of civilisation. Then along comes someone selling salvation in a jar, a book or a thirty-day programme.

Diet really does affect health. But a single food rarely deserves the role of chief villain.

Sweet drinks, confectionery and other very calorie-dense food easily deliver a lot of energy with little satiety. Ultra-processed products can be built so that you want to keep eating them.

It does not follow that a person who enjoys a bun is a “sugar addict”.

Addiction is a medical concept, not a way to shame someone for dessert.

It is more useful to build a diet around ordinary foods:

• vegetables;
• fruit;
• pulses;
• whole grains;
• suitable sources of protein;
• nuts and seeds;
• enough water.

The exact set depends on health, culture, availability, ethics and budget.

Variety reduces dependence on a single source of food and helps you get different nutrients. It does not guarantee the automatic removal of every contaminant from the body.

Fish, meat and vegetables may contain unwanted substances, but the risk depends on the type of food, its origin, the quantity and the rules of inspection. Panicked rejection of a whole category sometimes creates a new problem in place of the old one.

Food preferences change after repeated exposure to a food, a change of recipe and a change of environment. Gut microbiota can take part in metabolism and appetite, but it is not a little parliament voting single-handedly for pizza in the evening.

A new habit is easier to build gradually:

• add a vegetable to your usual meal;
• replace some sweet drinks with water;
• keep suitable food at home;
• do not go to the shop very hungry;
• cook simple dishes in advance;
• do not demand a perfect diet starting Monday.

Eating without a screen is sometimes useful: it is easier to notice the taste, the speed and the fullness. But a film with pizza does not destroy your food awareness.

What matters is the overall pattern, not the moral purity of every meal.

In the kitchen this sobriety is completed by understanding the processes: heat, safety, storage and a few basic techniques are more reliable than a cult of the one correct recipe.

It makes more sense to understand a few processes:

• how heat is transferred;
• why food dries out or softens;
• how salt, acid and fat change flavour;
• what temperature makes food safe;
• how to avoid carrying contamination from raw food to cooked;
• what can be prepared in advance.

A recipe then becomes one of the options rather than a sacred text that collapses when there is no parsley.

Good home cooking has to fit into a real life.

Not every dinner requires its own cultural project. What helps:

• simple basic dishes;
• cooking several portions;
• freezing;
• using the oven or another method with little active time;
• a clear set of ingredients;
• a plan for the leftovers.

But “minimum attention” must not mean unsupervised heat. Appliances, fire and food still require following the instructions and keeping to a safe temperature.

The healthiest food does not have to be the tastiest for everyone, and baking things in a bag is not universally the best method.

An argument about a particular food almost always stands in for a conversation about how the week is arranged. Someone who has cut out sugar but still eats dinner at eleven at night from whatever was lying around feels virtuous and worse than before. Conversely, someone who banned nothing but started cooking on Sunday for three days ahead changes his diet more than any list of prohibitions — simply because there is now food in the fridge and no decision has to be made at nine in the evening.

Hence the boring rule: your schedule affects your food more than your beliefs about food. A list of forbidden things takes effort every day; having dinner ready takes none at all.