A couple of weeks ago I was walking past a shop when a sign advertising bagged salad caught my eye: ‘Fresh and ready to eat. Salad you don’t have to wait for.’ Excuse me? What other kind of salad is there? Was the suggestion that if you don’t buy an airless bag of sterile, washed-in-chemicals, stays-fresh-forweeks radicchio, then you simply won’t have ‘time’ to eat salad this evening?It’s salad. By its very nature, it’s quick.
This airy cynical statement is typical of the ways in which food is marketed these days. Everywhere we look, we see adverts telling us we’re too busy to cook, offering us pre-packaged versions of recipes which, by implication, we’re either incapable of making for ourselves or lack the time to prepare.