Talking Meals Matter

CHECK OUT my online chat with senior Economist journalist Dominic Ziegler, organised by Brisbane’s Avid Reader Bookshop here.

Leading Brisbane bookshop @avidreader4101 hosts a conversation between senior journalist for the Economist magazine DOMINIC ZIEGLER, and Meals Matter author MICHAEL SYMONS

I’ve had a writerly go – extending beyond 100,000 words – to demonstrate that Meals Matter, but now I persuade you on Zoom that the book’s not just a pretty cover.

It’s one thing to agree, yes, meals matter, but another to recognise just how much that shapes our politics, economics, and social analyses.

Two centuries of laissez-faire, then free enterprise ideology, and, lately, neoliberalism belittled meals. Our lives had to centre on money instead.

The book demonstrates the upending of economics – once the management of households, with meals at their heart, it became the mathematical depiction of competitive money-making. Once associated with wellness and well-being, “wealth” became financial. Concern for appetite became glorified greed. And so on.

But read the book, and catch up with the conversation from 18 January.