About the Book
AN OBSERVER, GQ, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, THE WEEK AND BLACKWELL'S BOOK OF THE YEAR, 2025
Longlisted for the André Simon Food and Drink Book Award
'Entertaining, alarming, illuminating, alive'
NIGELLA LAWSON
'Brilliant and original'
NIGEL SLATER
'Ruby is a rare and singular voice. I loved this book'
ANNA JONES
The iconic New Yorker and Vittles food writer asks: Why do we eat the way we eat now?
Being into food - following and making it, queuing for it and discussing it - is no longer a subculture. It's become mass culture.
The food landscape is more expansive and dizzying by the day. Recipes, once passed from hand to hand, now flood newspaper supplements and social media. Our tastes are engineered in food factories, hacked by supermarkets and influenced by Instagram reels.
Ruby Tandoh's startlingly original analysis traces this extraordinary transformation over the past seventy-five years, making sense of this electrifying new era by examining the social, economic, and technological forces shaping the foods we hunger for today.
Exploring the evolution of the cookbook and light-speed growth of bubble tea, the advent of TikTok critics and absurdities of the perfect dinner party, Tandoh's laser-sharp investigation leaves her questioning: how much are our tastes, in fact, our own?
Discover All Consuming Bubble Tea | Critics | Recipes | Martha Stewart | Mob |Fast food | Hype queues | Nara Smith | Tiktok | Viennetta | Weekend supplements | Wife Guys | Cult Cookbooks | Lobster | Influencers | Wellness elixirs | Entertaining | Keith Lee | Wimpy with Ruby Tandoh this autumn.
About the Author :
Ruby Tandoh is a food writer who has written for the New Yorker, Guardian, Vittles and Vice. A finalist on the Great British Bake Off, she has published Eat Up, about the pleasures of eating, as well as three cookery books: Crumb, Flavour and Cook As You Are.
Review :
The British food media world can be a quarrelsome place, but for a brief moment everyone is in agreement: All Consuming, a laser-sharp analysis of the last 75 years in eating, is superb
A compulsive, opinionated delight. The chapter on bubble tea is as good as any piece of food writing you'll read all year.
A book that pays serious attention to the pop-culture side of food... Most chapters have the heft of an academic dissertation, but delivered with the easy, narrative charm of a great magazine writer.
The baking star turned firebrand food philosopher examines our decadent, crispy, sticky, turmeric-dusted, thirst-trap recipe economy. She wades through the chaotic food world of the 2020s armed with delightful snark and historical analysis in equal measure
It's entertaining, alarming, illuminating, alive - and, naturally, always beautifully written
We are living in a TikTok world - and Ruby Tandoh is the translator and tour guide we desperately need... A funny and freeing read
Brilliant and original
Witty and profound, informative and original. I loved this book
A fascinating, sometimes shocking, eye-opener that is also brilliantly funny
A major new history of contemporary food culture, written with a deft and humorous touch that belies the depth of its research
Fascinating, funny and devastatingly honest - a must-read on modern food culture
A brilliant and engrossing investigation of what really shapes our desires
Tandoh peels back the layers of modern food culture with precision and wit, revealing the many forces that have shaped global eating habits
Fascinating.... Tandoh's conversational tone belies an impressive amount of historical research.... Written with warmth and humour... All Consuming will make you think differently about why you eat what you eat
A razor-sharp look at our edible world... All Consuming has deft observations that, once stated, you kick yourself for not noticing
An exceptional survey of the 'shared culinary grammars' that have shaped modern life... Tremendously funny, forthright and tightly-stitched
On boats, in hotel rooms, during turbulence: I'll read anything that Ruby Tandoh writes, anywhere. Her latest book dissects food culture with her usual forensic style
I loved this book and nodded empathically through each chapter
Bubble tea, 'trad' wives, and the CREAMIEST pasta you've ever tasted; no food-adjacent trend gets past Ruby Tandoh without warranting careful examination
Brilliant. It's everything I want in a book about food culture. This book is for anyone who loves food, and wants the curtain lifted on why we love the things we do
Sharp, insightful, and wildly refreshing, All Consuming rewires how you think about food culture and changes the way you crave and consume food today.
Tandoh highlights the exciting and absurd in this must-read book for foodies the world over
Thoughtful, provocative and often hilarious, full of tasty little nuggets. Brilliant.
An absolutely brilliant analysis of modern eating that delves into some of the most outrageous, controversial and funny aspects of today's food world and takes us on a mind-blowing journey through recent-ish history to explain how we got here. I loved it
The smartest, most thoughtful, most interesting book on food I've read in an age. It's sure to become an instant classic
A sharp and funny dissection and skewering of how modern ideals have shaped out tastes
An entertaining, endlessly instructive look at why we like what we do in our "anarchic web of desire
A joyous blend of curiosity, intelligence and generosity
Her fascinating cultural history traces the social, economic, political, and technological forces that determine how we discover new foods, who we listen to, how we shop, and how (and if) we cook. An entertaining and informative read for foodies and non-foodies alike.
A bold, wry, exacting, and rip-roaring ride through our modern food culture..Tandoh is a marvellous and mischievous writer and thinker
From Viennetta to wellness elixirs, this fascinating volume looks at the way our tastes and appetites have changed over the past 75 years and explores the complexities and absurdities of our modern food culture in entertaining prose.
Completely dazzling in its scope, rigour, wit and savage, enlivening intellect. As a tour guide, Tandoh is brutally unsparing but infectiously passionate; forensically obsessive but self-aware
Her inventive angles of enquiry, her curiosity and comic genius for showing the absurd, cynical and tender ways our food culture has evolved are gripping
Effervescent, sharp and full of heart, this is essential reading for anyone curious about what fuels today's food culture. I devoured it
A completely new perspective on food culture in contemporary life
Intimate and universal at once; carefully researched and reported but full of wit and opinion; of-the-moment and timeless
Ruby Tandoh takes us on a journey into the new global pantry that is as gripping, surprising and expansive as if she had opened the door to Narnia
A smorgasbord of thought-provoking commentary. Everyone from the most ardent foodie to the cultured gourmand will find morsels here to savour
A real treat: somebody thoughtful and sharp taking a subject that everyone has to think about but rarely does so deeply
A tour de force. Ruby's extensive research and wonderful prose reveal everything you never knew about the evolution of current global food culture, in all its (often bonkers) forms
Extraordinary. Ruby Tandoh is a genius and All Consuming is everything
A wonderful read, whatever you eat
The perfect Christmas gift for foodies
The modern history that Tandoh tracks is a vital and largely hidden one, a behind-the-scenes look at how food gets onto our plates. Tandoh breaks down the mechanics and economics of these phenomena in wry pages that are as incisive as they are amusing
Tandoh wades through the chaotic food world of the 2020s armed with delightful snark and historical analysis in equal measure
