During his Interrobang talk late last year, Adam Liaw said, “I’m really not big on food trends at all. I don’t think they add a lot other than novelty. And to me, food’s not about novelty. There are huge issues that the world has with food, rather than indulging the novelties of a very privileged few of us.”

This really clicked with me, as much of my writing revolves around alternative food narratives and speaking back to the ‘food as saviour/ultimate comfort’ dialogue we’ve built our food-obsessed culture around.

I got thinking about offal, and how it operates in a different way to most other food trends, in that it doesn’t trade on scarcity, and offers a possible solution to some of those ‘huge issues that the world has with food’. But at the same time, we seem to have a heap of trouble getting on board with offal – and like so many foody things, it seems to revolve around our bodily reality, and the stories we tell about the significance of what we eat.

Luckily, the Wheeler Centre asked me if I had anything to say about food trends for their blog, and were kind enough to let me tackle this weird and wonderful set of ideas. That went up on their blog this week, as a post titled ‘Hating Your Guts: Why we struggle with offal‘.

2016-04-01 20.59.17.jpg
My essay planning process involves post-its and my study wall. Not all of this is in the final piece, but it’s a great way to start!