Mindful eating gurus call for silence at the table. Where’s the fun in that?

Let’s hear it for mindless eating: for noise and clamour, for shouting and burping

Amid the blizzard of diet cobblers that fills my inbox at this time of year, generally promising to cleanse you of all evidence that you ever ate anything at all, is one email that made me roll my eyeballs with such intensity I’m sure the neighbours could hear the grinding of flesh. It proposes “mindful eating”. A few ill-advised clicks later and I land on a self-styled food guru’s manifesto. “Have you ever noticed,” it starts, “how incredibly silent it becomes at dinner as soon as the food hits the table? Then you may have experienced mindful eating.”

Honestly, no. Not in my house. And long may that continue. According to our nutritional adviser too many of us eat semi-consciously. We are careless. We give no consideration to taste and texture. We are bad to the core. Part of the solution, apparently, is silence. This, she suggests, will help us towards mindful eating. It’s a new one on me. Ever the diligent reporter, I Google the term. Good God. There are more than two million references to it. Mindful eating is actually a thing.