Too much on our plates: Britain is utterly spoilt by food

The rich array of cookery programmes and the variety of produce available mean we think nothing of scraping leftovers into the bin

Meal time in the Garbutt home, as depicted in The Kitchen, shows British attitudes to food (BBC)

Seven-year-old Daphne Garbutt doesn't like trout because it tastes of "pond". This pithy criticism of her mother's cooking, in the new BBC Two documentary series The Kitchen, could have come from the mouth of my own four-year-old daughter, whose fussy eating seems to be growing as she gets older (although it doesn't help, as I've said before, that when it comes to cooking I am Michelle Jus Ruiner). After saying the trout was "yuk", Daphne hid under the family dining table so she could avoid eating the rest.

I am gripped by this fly-on-the-wall series, made by the people behind Gogglebox, which follows the eating habits of eight families. Not just because of Daphne, whose mother asked her and her brothers whether they preferred "mozzarella or McDonald's". (You can guess that this middle-class tribe has never been for a Happy Meal.) I am compelled to watch because of what it says about 21st-century Britain's attitude to food.

Nearly all the children – from the preteens to young adults – in this series complain about what they are given. From the five children of budgeting parents in Cardiff, who demand variations of the same meal, to the grown-up daughter of self-made millionaires who described her mother's attempt at a tarte tatin as "disgusting". But it would be easy to dismiss these youngsters in The Kitchen (and my own daughter) as spoilt and unappreciative. In fact, they are merely products of our society's casual attitude to food.

Britain is utterly spoilt by food: from the rich array of cookery programmes on television to the variety of produce available – and, as a result, we think nothing of scraping leftovers into the bin, or clearing the fridge of uneaten salad and yoghurts because they are a day or two past their best-by date. From our own kitchens at home, we as a nation throw away a monstrous 7.2 million tons of food and drink. At the same time, organisations such as the Trussell Trust have used food banks to feed nearly a million people who cannot afford to eat.

There is just one family on The Kitchen that seems to be the exception to this: the Evans family from Birmingham. And I think I know why. Before each meal, Sue Evans, a single mother, her 21-year-old daughter Ginny or her 10-year-old son Gabriel, thank God for the food they are about to eat. Saying grace hammers home the point of how grateful they are for having the rich variety. It is no surprise that there are no complaints, and no leftovers. The food is revered and exalted, as it should be.

But for even some religious families (many, I'd guess), saying grace has gone out of fashion. And for secular households – such as mine – it would be beyond the pale. But what if we introduced a secular grace that still allowed us to be thankful for our daily bread in a non-religious way? Rather than thanking God, we can say blessed are the cheesemakers, farmers, growers, supermarket delivery drivers and shelf-stackers, the slaughterhouse workers and the fruit-pickers. Or we could just keep it simple and say, to coin a phrase, for what we are about to receive, may we be truly thankful.

A lesson in Hippocratic oaths

In an era when so much of what we do is written – by text message, email, Twitter or Facebook – saying something out loud carries more power and meaning. Yet the proposal unveiled last week by Tristram Hunt, the shadow Education Secretary, for teachers to take a Hippocratic oath has been roundly ridiculed. But why? Hunt's idea, modelled on Singapore, is to elevate the status of teachers and contribute to their ongoing professional development. For a struggling child, a good or bad teacher makes all the difference. The man who could be in charge of our education from next May is making teaching standards a priority. It is lazy to reject Hunt's plan as a gimmick. But it is a radical, eye-catching idea – and just one part of a wider agenda to make our schools world class.

Fine state of things for some

I believe David Cameron when he says he is committed to sending his daughter Nancy, 10, to a state secondary school – and become the first Conservative prime minister to do so. He told Good Housekeeping that no one should have to send their child to a private school, and it is admirable for someone educated at Eton, whose wife went to Marlborough, to be committed to the state system.

It is true that the state school system is fantastic, but in the most oversubscribed areas, parents have zero choice about where to send their children. Free schools – which will be renamed academies if Labour is elected – are part of the answer, but only if they are going where they are most needed, which at the moment they are not.

Empty in the centre

Last week I wrote of how the centre ground of British politics was being overlooked by politicians desperate to outdo Ukip and suggested a new party that could welcome Jeremy Browne, Nick Boles and Tessa Jowell into its ranks would be an election winner. Three days later, Browne stunned Westminster by announcing he was standing down as an MP. I was shocked because his friends had continued to talk about the Lib Dem MP for Taunton as a strong leadership contender, an Orange Book candidate to fight the left-wing Tim Farron, as recently as the party's conference in Glasgow a week earlier. He had been angry about being sacked by Nick Clegg as Home Office minister – but that was a year ago, so why quit now?

Browne's departure follows those of other centrist politicians who have become disillusioned with politics or their party – like David Miliband and James Purnell. They may not be the type of anti-politician like Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, but politics is all the poorer without them.

Boris's little kingdom

Speaking of the Mayor of London, does he know that he has been immortalised as a character in the children's elves and fairies cartoon Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom? The mayor of the fairy kingdom is a posh, straw-haired buffoon, voiced by Alexander Armstrong. Surely it cannot be a coincidence.

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