Eating is literally supposed to be the most fun thing we do three times a day.

So why is it filled with anxiety and guilt and shame for so many of us?

With me to talk about the dysfunction embedded within our food culture and how we might

try and change it is Ruby Tando, author of Eat Up and Cook As You Are.

Ruby, thank you so much for joining us on Downstream.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks.

I mean, this is, I guess, maybe not a nice question to start with, but one of the things

that struck me reading your book Eat Up is that anxiety has become the defining feature

of our relationship with food.

So why has that happened?

I mean, I think that, I like that you just like gone in hard.

I think that food has always been a proxy for things much bigger than food itself.

So it's kind of an entry way for us to talk about religion and death and sexuality and stress

and like economic systems and all of these things.

So it is a portal to many things that are much bigger than like a chicken burger or whatever.

So it makes sense to me that like here and now when things are kind of reaching, reaching

ahead into personally, culturally, economically, that food would become something that we are

giving quite close attention and maybe attaching loads of anxiety to our diets because it's

something that we can easily manage, even though obviously it's just like the tip of

this vast iceberg and so many of the things that stress us out are untouched.

It's interesting to you talk about religion there in an increasingly secularized world.

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