Processed Progress

Going to parties these days has become like playing Russian roulette. Is this the canape that will give me salmonella poisoning? Have those rosy prawns been rinsed in diluted sewage? And (for the pregnant) will that tasty cheesy morsel damage my unborn child?

The 1980s was the decade when we stopped worrying about whether we had enough to eat in the West. Instead we discovered (or re-discovered, after the excesses of the twentieth century) that what we ate did not necessarily do us any good. Will the 1990s, then, see wide-scale rejection of the value-added artefacts of the chemist's lab which tempt us at the supermarket?

The editor of the Good Food Guide certainly hopes so. He has declared, controversially, that since good wholesome food takes longer to prepare, then ideally women should be staying at home to do so. However, demographics are against him, as well as outraged womanhood everywhere.