Picture this: your grandad’s in the garden with a flat cap and a brew, your nan’s got a loaf cooling on the windowsill, and somewhere in the kitchen there’s a jug of milk that hasn’t seen a barcode in its life. Nobody’s talking about “macros” or “gut diversity.” The only thing fermenting was the cabbage in the pantry — and even that was on purpose.
Now fast forward to today. Half our meals come in plastic, our bread’s baked in a factory the size of an airport, and we need an app to remind us to drink water. Somewhere between ration books and Deliveroo, we forgot how to eat like humans. And our guts? They’ve noticed.
Your nan didn’t start her day with a probiotic capsule. She didn’t “balance her microbiome.” She just had breakfast — real breakfast — made from things that actually existed outside of packaging. Milk that still had some life in it. Butter that tasted like cream. Bread with an actual personality.
Food was simple then. Not boring — honest. It had quirks, it had flavour, it sometimes went a bit off if you ignored it (because that’s what living things do). Milk came straight from the dairy, not a tank. Eggs had yolks the colour of sunsets. Bread took its time to rise, and nobody complained about it.
Then came the age of convenience — the sterilised, shrink-wrapped, shelf-stable “miracle” of modern food. And we clapped for it, bless us. No more sour smells, no surprises, no mess. But also… no life. Our food stopped fermenting, fizzing, ripening. We scrubbed and pasteurised the world until it was squeaky clean — and somehow, our guts ended up miserable.
Our grandparents didn’t have “digestive issues.” They had kefir, sauerkraut, cheese that wasn’t afraid to stink, and milk that could curdle if it fancied it. All those natural, wild, wriggly bacteria kept their insides humming like a well-oiled machine. Meanwhile, we’ve got kombucha in cans and gut supplements that cost more than dinner.
The thing is, your body remembers. It still wants food that’s alive, not engineered. It craves a bit of microbial mischief. But we’ve trained ourselves to fear it — to see bacteria as the enemy. That’s how we ended up with sterile food, dull flavours, and guts that can’t quite keep up.
And maybe, just maybe, we’ve lost more than we realise. The taste of slow food. The pride in a loaf that took all day. The comfort of milk from someone you know. Those old meals had stories. They had microbes, yes, but they also had meaning.
So perhaps the cleverest thing we can do now isn’t to invent a new way of eating — it’s to remember an old one. Pour a glass of raw milk. Tear into proper sourdough. Eat an egg that actually tastes of something. Ferment a jar of veg and watch it fizz like it’s alive (because it is).
Maybe the future of food isn’t forward. Maybe it’s just back a generation — to when food was food, and guts were grateful.