This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Tim Hayward’s case for gluttony’
Lilah Raptopoulos
This is Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos. My colleague Tim Hayward writes about food professionally. He’s been our restaurant critic here at the FT for 12 years. Tim also makes food very successfully. He owns a bakery in Cambridge, and he’s put out eight books about cooking and making food from scratch. So he was pretty surprised recently when somebody called him a glutton. He thought, of course I’m a glutton. Do people still think that that’s a bad thing? Today we’ve invited him to join us from London to defend gluttony, or at least to encourage us to embrace the pleasures of eating. Tim, welcome to the show. It’s always such a pleasure to have you on.
Tim Hayward
Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.
Lilah Raptopoulos
OK, so to start, can you tell me what happened? This is a few months ago, right? Who called you a glutton?
Tim Hayward
It sort of came up in conversation. I was chatting to a chef friend, and he just said, you know, but you’re a professional glutton. I thought, well, yeah, but you know what? What do you mean? Why say that in that negative way.
[LAUGHTER]
Lilah Raptopoulos
Did you think does this person know what I do?
Tim Hayward
Well, exactly. But it’s not just that because it made me go away and think about it, because I run a bakery in Cambridge with three or four branches and, and what we do, we make cakes and, and sweet things that are all very delightful. And I realise that, of course, none of those are, they’re what you call in marketing discretionary purchases. People aren’t coming in to buy them because they’re starving. They don’t need it for sustenance. They need it because it’s a pleasure and a joy. And I realised then that if gluttony is bad, I’m a drug dealer, but I’m not. And so we’ve got to find some way of sort of repositioning gluttony, as it’s not really a terrible mortal sin.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Let’s just make, I would love to like, linger on the definition. So the Oxford English Dictionary defines gluttony as the habit of eating and drinking too much. But it feels sort of like the thing that you’re pushing back against is the excessive enjoyment of food. It’s not really just about the excessive eating of food.
Tim Hayward
I think for me it’s, it’s when people get moral about it. I mean, when they first started listing sins, I think Song of Solomon or something like that’s got some of the earliest ones, they never mentioned gluttony at all.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.
Tim Hayward
Absolutely not a problem. You know, lying to people or, you know, just doing unpleasant things with their oxen. I mean, those kind of things were fairly prescribed. That’s OK. But then suddenly it becomes this thing about and I think it really hits on the idea that if people are really enjoying and getting into food, they’re possibly not thinking about suffering and going to heaven.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah.
Tim Hayward
I mean, that notable joyous fellow, Saint Thomas Aquinas actually ended up with a list of five separate ways you could commit gluttony. The five terms are Allaute, which is eating food that is too luxurious, exotic, or costly; Nimis, which is eating food that is excessive in quantity; Studios, which is eating food that’s too daintily or elaborately prepared; Pripropere which is eating too soon or at inappropriate times; and, Ardenta which is eating too eagerly. And I mean, he actually bothered to, but you know, by that, by that point they were trying to find almost getting down into the granularity of why this thing, all of us did that was really so nice and so pleasurable and enjoyable, how can we turn it into a sin? Oh, we’ll find a way. But no, you know, it isn’t. I mean, if I couldn’t eat food that was too luxurious, that was excessive in quantity, that was daintily or elaborately prepared at inappropriate times and eat it eagerly, I’d be entirely out of a job. I mean, people wouldn’t want to read anything I wrote. Anyway. So yes, I live in Cambridge, these are the kind of conversations you get into with people.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. OK, so before you go on, so what you’re saying is that gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins. But as you say, it’s not even one that you find in the early Christian texts. It’s newer. And then the other question you’re saying is just, why do we keep it around at all? Right? Like we’ve changed our beliefs around so much. Why haven’t we changed our beliefs around this?
Tim Hayward
Yes, I think so. And not just to sort of throw it out because we now know other things about gluttony. I mean, obviously, we’re living in a world where our health systems are utterly crushed by the dangers of obesity and the way they affect people’s bodies. We’ve got, we’ve got a surplus of food. And therefore gluttony is a bad thing in some ways. But we have to question what we mean. The other thing that I suppose really brought it to my head was we’ve known for a while that the National Health Service is about to declare, I believe, next month, that a lot of the new, injectable weight reduction drugs will be available on the National Health Service.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Like Ozempic
Tim Hayward
Exactly. And it’ll save a load of money for the National Health Service. It’s an all round, generally brilliant thing. And I’m sitting here wondering, how are we going to find a way to really screw that up? Because morally, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to find some way of telling people that it’s somehow morally imperfect to cheat like that and inject something that, and of course, we’ve never really been in a position where we’ve ever been able to electively do away with a human desire. I mean, we’ve never experimented with a drug that completely suppresses libido or . . .
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. That’s true. It’s you know, it’s funny. Ozempic is an interesting one. I think about it a lot because it is bringing in this new era of like weight consciousness again. And in some ways, it’s good people who really struggle with weight and have health problems that are related to it are taking them, and it helps them. But then on the other hand, now there’s people who are already thin that are taking them too and, trying to be even thinner. And so I feel like it’s all going back to the same question over and over again, which is, how do we balance being healthy with having a happy, fulfilled, even kind of like tangible, sumptuous life.
Tim Hayward
Well, I, I don’t think the semaglutide drugs are going to wipe out people’s enjoyment of food. I don’t think they do that. They reduce appetite, but not in a way that’s going to be risky. I do know that there’s a lot of worry among the food manufacturers that people are not going to be so hungry so often, the amount of food sold may reduce. I certainly think our advertising and marketing industries have spent the last, possibly 100 years, advertising into greed, as it were, or encouraging greed and then fulfilling it. And they’re going to have some interesting questions to look at. But I think some of those questions are actually philosophical. But it’s going, it’s going to be really interesting, isn’t it? I mean, we’ve certainly, as long as my generation has been around, being thin was actually a privilege of the well-off really. Which is, that’s the first time that’s happened in history. Now, what are we going to do when everybody can afford to be thin and hot? That’s going to be terrible, isn’t it? How on earth will the entire English class system be, it’ll fall apart. I have no idea.
Lilah Raptopoulos
I know the American, too. Yeah, I know.
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You know, Tim, that reminded me, I was talking to our food and drink editor Harriet Fitch Little about this, and it feels like there’s a little bit of a cultural difference between where Americans are and where Brits are with this. And you tell me if you’re seeing it, too. But in the US, I feel like people are very focused on health. They’re focused on gut health, eating clean, drinking less, going to bed earlier, less processed food, all that stuff. But she said that in the UK, it feels like you’re all in a sort of F-it mentality that there’s a lot of smoking during dinner parties and press releases that restaurants are decidedly not doing vegan-uary.
Tim Hayward
And that’s absolutely right. Yeah.
Lilah Raptopoulos
That the UK sort of embraced gluttony a little bit more.
Tim Hayward
But I think there’s a possibility that we’ve gone through it and come out the other side. I mean, I mean, the vegan thing in the UK was absolutely huge for about three years. Many, many people, the entire catering industry leaned into it really hard. I mean, I’ve most of my life known and deeply respected a few lovely vegans who’ve all been lovely vegans, and they’ve done it because they loved animals and didn’t want to pollute themselves with meat. And they’re still there, the same number of them, whereas the millions and millions of people who were sort of part-time vegans who felt it was OK to do it four days a week, have suddenly collapsed under the sort of the weight of absurdity of trying to keep that logic going.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Is there anything else that, like, now that you’ve written this piece as you’re going to restaurants and you talked a lot in your piece about how there’s like, you know, that actually reaching satiation and then pushing through it is part of the job.
Tim Hayward
Yes. Well, I’m constantly trying to question what the restaurant experience is about. Funnily enough, I’ve been reading, rereading, something that was huge when I was at art college, which was, Susan Sontag’s essay on camp, because she was trying to find a way between high and low culture. And it strikes me that we need to find a way through that with food. I’ve been to several restaurants recently that were kind of knowingly self-mocking whilst being truly brilliant. And there’s a line in one in, in the essay somewhere where you just don’t trust people who take food too seriously. That’s just ridiculous. You also don’t like people who don’t take it seriously enough. And if you can balance those two notions in your head, which I think is what I probably have to do for a living if I’m ever going to be any good. And I think that’s intriguing me at the moment is trying to find that balance.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. That’s interesting.
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[PROMO FOR THE RETREAT PODCAST]
Lilah Raptopoulos
Tim, I would love to hear while we’re on the topic of gluttony, and while I have you about some food and meals that you enjoy the most, if we could do a sort of lightning round. OK. What is the meal that’s given you the most sort of gluttonous pleasure in the last, say, three months.
Tim Hayward
That’s an absolutely great question. Well, so the answer is always it’s the last meal. The last one was always brilliant, and I love it. As long as that keeps going, I’m going to stay alive. That’s fine. But this one was particularly interesting because I went to a west African restaurant. And I had a meal that included a porridge made of the seeds of breadfruit. And it’s a marvellous, marvellous thing. And it comes with this tremendous story about during the Nigerian civil war, people were surviving on this stuff because it filled their bellies. And it was wonderful. And I loved the story. I’m obviously making notes on this and thinking, this is great. This is tear-jerkingly intense. And then I left the place and I realised that my stomach was swelling, with the incredible amount of the stuff that I’d consumed because it was so delicious. And I was actually thinking, I’m going to go and be interviewed about gluttony. Now, this is the most gluttonous thing I’ve done in years. So yeah, it was, it was that, that was a pretty gluttonous lunch.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Amazing. What about, is there, like, a certain cuisine or type of dish that gives you that kind of sumptuous pleasure we’ve been talking about?
Tim Hayward
I think you can sort of take it apart, pass it in different ways. I think, you know, when you have a very, very classical French meal in a French restaurant in France, which I’ve had the chance to do a couple of times in the last couple of years. And you think there’s, there’s nothing that’s ticking all of my cultural buttons as hard as this is. And then, for example, we have a lot of new Korean stuff happening in the UK at the moment, you know, and then you start going to Korean restaurants and you think, oh my God, there’s an entirely different culture with an entirely different approach to this. And my, my levels of gluttony and joy in this subject are as high, but different.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, the number of dishes at a Korean meal is . . .
Tim Hayward
Can be absurd. Absolutely. Whereas but on the other hand, for example, with Chinese food, where in the UK most Chinese food is in sort of the feasting tradition. I’m now finding myself going places and having a single dish of something in a much more sort of Chinese soul food way than I’ve ever experienced before. So that’s opening up to us as well. And those meals can be incredibly sumptuous.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. For sure. What about at home, Tim? I know you do a lot of cooking at home from your Instagram. Is there a trick to indulging an inner, glutton of ours in our own kitchens?
Tim Hayward
Just treat yourself well, honestly. Keep the freezer full of interesting things. Never keep it full of dull stuff.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. My last one is sort of related, but it’s, I just wrote this piece about reviving recipes that have gone extinct. It’s coming out the day this episode drops. And I’m wondering if there’s an old family recipe that you go back to that’s just, like, very over the top.
Tim Hayward
You know that’s intriguing. My mother called me just before Christmas and said, when you come down, do you know any way you can get pork knuckles? So I went to all my specialist butchers and called and I found some. And so mum and I had been cooking pork knuckle, which she got from her grandmother.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Wow.
Tim Hayward
So years and years and years ago. And find, just finding our way back into that. And there’s so much in the liquid that the hock will be boiled in, the gelatin that builds up and the way it sticks to your lips, and you can have it cold, you can have it hot, it’ll self jellify into its own charcuterie effectively if you let it go. That is an amazing thing, and it’s incredibly old fashioned. And then I find myself applying sort of modern feeling to it, and it’s lovely.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh, I love that. And it might give you gout.
Tim Hayward
It’s almost certainly going to give me gout, but by the time we get there a little bit gout pill, and it’ll will be fine.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Exactly. Tim, thank you so much. My very last question is just if there’s any final thought you want to leave listeners with, you know, like, what should we go away thinking about when it comes to enjoyment of food and over enjoyment of food, even?
Tim Hayward
Gosh, solely to be questioning, you know, if you, if you feel you’re being gluttonous, or you feel, or if you’re feeling guilty, the question is why? And sort of work back from there.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. That’s great, that’s the thing I keep telling myself, like robot brain, don’t use robot brain.
Tim Hayward
Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Lilah Raptopoulos
When it comes to the decisions you make . . .
Tim Hayward
Don’t use robot brain.
Lilah Raptopoulos
And I find myself, now that I have a word for it, I’m finding it everywhere. So, it’s a great place for it.
Tim Hayward
There’s also, the other one is the limbic system, your lizard brain, which basically just responds. I think you need to balance your robot brain with a little tiny bit of your lizard brain, which is just going to say eat pork. Lovely.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Pork knuckles. Tim, this is such a delight, as always. Thank you so much. And please come back.
Tim Hayward
It’s lovely to speak to you. Thank you. Goodbye.
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Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. Tim wrote about gluttony for FT Weekend Magazine. I have link to that piece in the show notes, as well as the Susan Sontag piece he mentions and a few of his recent reviews. Every link to the FT in the show notes will get you past the paywall, and the show notes also has discounts to a subscription to the Financial Times, really good ones, and ways to stay in touch with the show and with me, whether that’s by email or on Instagram. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos, and here’s my incredible team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco, with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer, and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have a lovely week, and we’ll find each other again on Friday.
