A Greedy Man In A Hungry World Review

Confidentials 5 July 2013

I like Jay Rayner. He’s a funny man in a seriously foody world.

This time the hungry people will have had a burst of a western lifestyle. They won’t be prepared to go back to eating willow tree leaves

Most food writers take everything in too severe a manner; usually they are terribly worried that someone else knows more than them. The rare ones that are happy in their own skins, those that take the piss out of themselves, are the ones to watch out for. And learn from.

Mr Rayner has written a really good book, one which all foodies should read. Why?

Firstly, it teaches us all the art of self-deprecating humour, one which this writer feels is the way forward. An eminently readable piece, touching on the hilarious (sex education from helping his famous mum with her postbag from her advice column) to the pretty serious (running out of food in the coming years).

Jay can mess with heads when it comes to his piece on the reality that it is far better to eat New Zealand lamb than, say, the little luvvies finished on salt marshes in North Wales. Sod the ‘food miles’.

The book's blurb says he shoots a few sacred cows of the food world. He also offers a few new ideas for me to shoot at when he buys that dinner he promised me. All this because of doom-mongers like me.

I believe that you, the happy reader, are in for a few shocks in the next fifty years. There is a fifty/fifty chance that you will experience the third world war; this being based on hunger. Because this time there will be no Mao Zedong prepared to see 90 million of his people die of starvation, literally eating trees bare of leaves, whilst sending millions of tons of food abroad, trying to justify his brand of politics.

This time the hungry people will have had a burst of a western lifestyle. They won’t be prepared to go back to eating willow tree leaves until their teeth drop away from malnutrition. They will come looking to share your stash, whilst their ammo still works.

Well, that’s only a fifty/fifty likelihood. For your kids, it’s more like 100 per cent.

Anyway, back to Jay. Apart from his readable and laugh-out-loud style, he will open your eyes, giving you something worthwhile to discuss around your currently groaning dinner tables.

Funnily fore-warned is usefully fore-armed.

Buy A Greedy Man In A Hungry World on Amazon.

Follow Gordo on @GordoManchester

Follow Jay Rayner on @jayrayner1