1.19. They say “On the Continent people have good food; in England

people have good table manners”. Scan the text and comment on the

above saying.

How can you explain the peculiar British attitude to food?

Do the Russians have any special attitude to food that makes them

recognizable? Use the italicized words and expression to discuss

peculiar attitudes to food around the globe.

Britain and good food are two things which are not commonly associ­ated. Visitors to Britain have widely varying opinions about all sorts of aspects of the country, but most of them seem to agree that the food is terrible. Why? One reason could simply be that British tastes are different from everybody else’s. However, the most common complaint is not so much that British food has a strange, unpleasant taste, but rather that it has very little taste at all. The vegetables, for example, are overcooked, to put it mildly.

Another explanation may be that most visitors to Britain do not get the opportunity to sample home cooking. They either еat the food cooked in an institution, such as a university canteen, or they eat out a lot, usually in rather cheap restaurants and cafés. These places are definitely not where to find good British food. Typical British cooking, which involves a lot of roasting, does not suit the larger scale production or the quick preparation which is required in such places. For one thing, food should, according tо British people, be eaten hot, which is difficult to arrange when feeding large numbers of people. In addition, the British have not got into the habit of preparing sauces with grilled food in order to make it tastier.

The explanations above can only serve as a partial excuse for the unfortunate reputation of British cuisine. Even in fast food restaur­ants and everyday cafés, the quality seems to be lower than it is in similar places in other countries. It seems that British people simply don’t care enough tо bother.

The country has neither a widespread “restaurant culture”, nor a café society. In the middle of the day, people just want to eat up quickly and are not interested much in quality (the lunch break is an hour at most). Young people and families with children who eat at fast food places are similarly not interested in quality. Little effort is made to make the hamburgers tasty because nobody expects them to be. The coffee is horrible not because British people prefer it that way but because they don’t go to a café for a delicious, slow cup of coffee - they go there because they need the caffeine.

Even at home, food and drink is given relatively little attention. The coffee is often just as bad as it is in the cafés. British supermarkets sell far more instant coffee than what a few people who drink it often call “real” coffee. Instant coffee is less trouble. Meals tend to be eaten quickly and the table cleared. Parties and celebrations are not normally centred around food. For example, if a British person expresses a liking for barbecues, this does not necessarily mean that he or she likes barbecued food - it is understood to mean that he or she enjoys the typical barbecue atmosphere.

When the British do pay attention to food, it is most frequently not tо appreciate it but to notice what they don’t like about it. Food hits the headlines only in the context of its dangers: for example when a government minister announced that the country's eggs were infected with salmonella. In the early 1990, everybody in the country knew about “mad cow disease” (= a disease affecting the brains of infected cattle). There are quite a large number of vegetarians in Britain and an even larger number of those who are aware of the implications for their health of what they eat. “Health food shops” are as abundant in the country’s high streets as delicatessens.

British people have been mostly urban, having little contact with “the land'” for longer than the people of other countries. Perhaps this is why the range of plants and animals, which they will eat is rather narrow. To most people, the idea of going out to pick wild plants for the table is exotic. It is perhaps significant that when the British want to refer to the people of another country insultingly, they often allude to their eating habits. Because of the strange things they do with cabbage, for example, the Germans are “krauts”. Because of their outrageous taste for frog legs, the French are “frogs”.

However, the picture is not entirely negative. While the British are conservative about ingredients, they are no longer conservative about the way they are served. In the 1960s, it was reported that the first British package tourists in Spain not only insisted on eating traditionally British fish and chips all the time but also on having them, as was traditional, wrapped up in specially imported British newspapers! By now, however, the British are extremely open to the cuisine of other countries. The country’s supermarket shelves are full of the spices and sauces needed for cooking dishes from all over the world. The increasingly multicultural nature of the population has helped in this respect. In addition, there is increasing interest in the pure enjoyment of eating and drinking.