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More than half of what Brits eat is ultra-processed. Now we’re a nation of food snobs – with no ingredient safe from judgment, writes Zoe Williams
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Opinion — Zoe Williams
Lewis Bassett is a young sociologist and chef who I first encountered through his podcast, The Full English, where he thinks about the cultural meaning of, say, Delia Smith; gazpacho; whelks. This was thinking you didn’t know you needed until you heard it. Now he’s written a book of the same name, asking: why do we eat the way we do in Britain, and why do we think the way we do, even about the stuff we wouldn’t be caught dead eating?
About 57% of all the food eaten in Britain is ultra-processed, which feels familiar from at least a decade of hand-wringing about it, but is radically defamiliarised when set against the rest of Europe. In France it’s 14%, and Italy is also in the teens. It’s amazing they don’t all live to be 150. And while this plainly has its roots in inequality, there is a hefty side order of attitude, which Bassett contemplates while working through the history of sourdough, curry and olive oil, and describing his own life cheffing in fancy kitchens and gastropubs.
Basically, we think posh food is pretentious; but what counts as “posh” constantly morphs, partly through the sheer cost of it, until even food that wasn’t posh before (like fish and chips) becomes posh, and therefore pretentious (also smaller portions: absolute sitcom signifier of despised posh food). I’m freestyling, of course, and you should read The Full English for the meat of Bassett’s argument, but it is fascinating to consider how any given ingredient is freighted with political self-fashioning.
There are so many foods – the chickpea; the Findus crispy pancake; tomatoes; the Turkey Twizzler – that have had their moment as the thing some people hate other people for eating, and it’s all shorthand for a low-level class war, mediated through food. It amps up to a thousand when parents get involved.
Bassett has this lovely, curious, unjudgmental thinking style, and concludes that “ours is a peculiar diet formed by a peculiar experience of modernity”. Still, you can’t help but think, if we could let go of some of the political and emotional charge around food, we’d end up eating things that were more delicious. I don’t mean Findus crispy pancakes – I know they’re ultra-processed. They were delicious, though.
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About 57% of all the food eaten in Britain is ultra-processed, which feels familiar from at least a decade of hand-wringing about it, but is radically defamiliarised when set against the rest of Europe. In France it’s 14%, and Italy is also in the teens. It’s amazing they don’t all live to be 150. And while this plainly has its roots in inequality, there is a hefty side order of attitude, which Bassett contemplates while working through the history of sourdough, curry and olive oil, and describing his own life cheffing in fancy kitchens and gastropubs.
This report is published with credit to The Guardian. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on The Guardian →
Source: The Guardian · Zoe Williams. Published 25 Aug 2026, 10:00 am.
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