Cambridge Edition August 2019

BOOK CLUB

“Food trends are changing all the time”

“Cambridge food is amazing now, isn’t it? I do a lot of my writing in Hot Numbers and Espresso Library, I love both of them: I think it’s incredible how much good coffee you can get in Cambridge now.” BEE’S CAMBRIDGE “I love all of the Mill Road shops – I particularly love Bread on a Bike bread: I just think she’s the most incredible baker.” “We’ve had a Cambridge Organic Food Company vegetable box delivered for well over ten years: I’m a big, big supporter of their work.” Bee is Chair of TastEd, an educational charity which offers a system of fun sensory food lessons based on the Sapere method – where children learn to respond to many different foods with all of their senses, not just taste. The charity’s work has been trialled at primary and secondary schools in Cambridge: if you’d like to knowmore about this innovative approach to food education, visit the website or find them on Twitter. twitter.com/tastedfeed tasteeducation.com

an academic you know you don’t know everything: you know you just know the tiny amount of information in your PhD, and you don’t even know that. I feel like being a generalist, being able to join things and put things together, is a joy.” The final section includes Bee’s thoughts on how to navigate this “world of choice” (Bee’s previous small publication This Is Not A Diet Book contains more of these calm tips for navigating one’s relationship with food) which leaves the reader hopeful for change, and empowered to make small alterations to their own eating for the better. The Way We Eat Now is a veritable tasting menu of a read, bringing together carefully considered evidence from across the globe that leaves you dazzled by the author’s breadth of knowledge but grateful at having her guide you through the research. It will make you hungry, but probably not for the same snacks you’d been hankering for beforehand.

style organic vegetables at every meal.’ It’s a depressing comment on our bewildering food supply that not-food can now be seen as a better option than food, to thoughtful people like Dan Wang.” Bee’s abilities as a generalist are clearly on show throughout the book – looping together concepts, bringing back earlier discussions and making connections between previously disparate disciplines – and she highlights these conversations as having been hugely satisfying work. “There is no specialist who can oversee what food means in the world: there is no single scientist who could do that,” Bee says. “Even the super-brainy people I interviewed – they don’t know everything: they don’t know what the consumer market researcher or the food trends researchers know – so I felt like the conversations were really important. Having once been an academic, I know that academics are slightly in awe of specialists. When you’re

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