Once upon a time, “dinner” meant something that grew, ripened, or grazed not too far from where you lived. You might have baked bread, simmered a stew, poured milk from a bottle that still fogged in the morning chill. Today, dinner often comes in a tray sealed tighter than a space capsule. Peel back the film, stir halfway through, and voilà — nourishment, apparently.
We’ve become so used to eating things that last forever, we’ve forgotten that food isn’t supposed to. It’s meant to change, to age, to carry the story of where it came from. Yet our cupboards are lined with edible inventions that can outlive us — colourful, convenient, and weirdly hollow.
If it’s wrapped in plastic, survives nuclear winter, and has 38 ingredients you can’t pronounce — it might not be food.
We’ve arrived at a strange point in human history where the things we call “food” often bear little resemblance to the real thing. We’re surrounded by edible simulations — bright, convenient, shelf-stable shapes that fill a gap in the day but somehow leave us emptier than before.
Milk isn’t milk anymore, it’s been “fortified” and “standardised.” Butter doesn’t melt, it spreads straight from the fridge and proudly announces it’s “40% vegetable oil.” Cheese comes in resealable plastic bags with a warning to “keep refrigerated once opened,” which is the first clue that it’s probably more plastic than cheese. Somewhere along the way, “ready meals” became a normal Tuesday night, and “low-fat yoghurt” started tasting suspiciously like pudding.
We call it convenience food — but convenience for who, exactly? Certainly not for your gut. Your body has no idea what to do with a concoction of stabilisers, gums, and “natural flavourings.” It’s been trained for millennia to handle the simplicity of milk, bread, butter, fruit — foods that grow, sour, ripen, and eventually spoil. That’s the natural order of things. Food that never goes off isn’t a miracle of modern science. It’s a warning label disguised as progress.
And yet, we’ve been seduced by it. By the bright packaging, the promises of “high protein” and “low calorie,” the soft hum of microwaves and the illusion of time saved. We’ve been taught that cooking from scratch is a hobby, not a human instinct. That bread should come sliced and wrapped, that milk should last a fortnight, and that yoghurt should taste like birthday cake. We’ve let convenience become culture — and now we can barely taste the difference between food that nourishes and food that merely fills.
Our bodies, though, still know the truth. They show it quietly at first — the sluggish mornings, the blood sugar rollercoaster, the foggy afternoons. Then louder, through fatigue, poor digestion, skin that can’t keep up, immune systems that can’t tell what’s real and what’s not. We’ve mistaken the numbness of being “full” for the feeling of being fed.
But let’s not get too grim about it — we can laugh at ourselves a little, too. Breakfast biscuits? Really? Yoghurt in a tube? Milk that’s been so altered it needs calcium added back in? We’ve turned food into a science experiment, and then wondered why we feel like lab rats.
Here’s the beautiful bit, though: getting back to real food isn’t difficult. In fact, it’s the opposite — it’s deliciously simple. Real food has fewer ingredients and more soul. It’s milk that sours because it’s alive, not pasteurised into silence. Bread that goes stale because it’s made of flour, water, salt, and patience. Butter that softens in the sun and tastes faintly of the pasture it came from. Eggs that look like the sun cracked open in a pan.
When you eat food that’s actually food, something curious happens. You stop thinking about nutrients and start noticing flavours. Meals stretch out longer. You chew slower. You feel something stir that supermarkets can’t sell — connection. To the farmers, to the land, to yourself.
Convenience isn’t the villain here. It’s fine to want life to be a little easier. But we’ve let it run wild — replaced nourishment with marketing, craftsmanship with chemistry. Maybe the real act of rebellion isn’t going vegan or gluten-free or whatever the latest detox insists upon. Maybe it’s just buying milk that goes off in a few days. Maybe it’s tearing a piece of proper bread with your hands and eating it still warm.
Try eating like a human this week. Nothing extreme — no spreadsheets, no rules. Just real food, made the way it always was. Start with a bottle of raw milk and a slice of sourdough so fragrant you can smell the fermentation. You’ll notice the difference instantly. And more importantly, you’ll feel it — deep down, in the part of you that still remembers what real food is meant to taste like.