‘Food is about mothering – how nature provides for us, how we’ve been fed and by whom’

We have more culinary choices than ever, yet we’ve never been as spiritually malnourished. We need to ask deeper questions about food.

Three days before my mother died, she stood beside me, bent over from nausea from the chemotherapy, as her ruby grapefruit marmalade bubbled on the stove.

“How long must it cook for, mum?” I asked.

She held out a spoon and said, “when it gets to this consistency, you know it’s ready.”

We bottled six precious jars of what we labelled MoJo marmalade (for Mom and Jo). A year on, a final mouthful lingers at the bottom of my last jar. Somehow, I just can’t bring myself to finish it.

It’s not hard to recognise that this is more than just a sweet treat I should indulge in sparingly given that the recipe is half grapefruit, half sugar. Whenever I open the fridge there it is – those last precious moments with my mother as we supervised the alchemy of those grapefruits caramelising and she imparted marmalade-making wisdom. This jam has a history. It means something.

We all have our own food stories embedded in our early years – like Proust’s madeleines. Different dishes evoke memories and feelings of comfort, security, scarcity, hunger, nostalgia, taboo, seasons, festivals, celebrations, a particular person or moment.

But these are rare.

In our modern lives, our consumption decisions from our grocery shopping to UberEATS or restaurant orders, are driven by cost, convenience and control, rather than conscience, consciousness or connection to the produce.

The fact that so many of us have tormented relationships with food is due, in part, to our detachment from the source, history and story of what we put in our mouths. This is just one of the many corruptions of a hustling life. In an age with more culinary choices than ever before, we’ve never been as spiritually malnourished.