What is it about this recession that is making us obsessed with food? Half of the country wants to dig its way out of misery, preferably on allotments from the National Trust. The other half is flocking to McDonald's, Greggs and Domino's Pizza, which are reporting surging sales. Kentucky Fried Chicken is planning to create 9,000 jobs.

Few things are more polarising in modern Britain than what we eat. For years, caring about healthy food has been regarded as snobbish, promoted by people with double-barrelled names - with the brave exception of Jamie Oliver. Now it screams “profligate”. I meet middle-class mothers who boast that they have traded down to Aldi, but can still be spotted in Waitrose.

The junk-food boom is being portrayed as evidence of hard times. Maybe. But I can pick up a pizza in Tesco for half what I pay at Domino's. I can make my family dinner for less than the £10 family bucket that KFC is so proud of. Joanna Blythman, in her wonderful book Bad Food Britain, points out that poverty has spawned some of the world's greatest cuisines, like that of southern Italy. But these are based on fresh, local ingredients. We Brits seem addicted to our comforting, effortless jumbles of water, fat, sugar and additives. We consume half of all the crisps and ready meals in Europe.

If the economy turns really sour, perhaps we will rediscover fresh leeks and cabbage and the 60 per cent of children who think that potatoes grow on trees will learn better. But it seems more likely we will continue to delude ourselves that convenience food is “cheap”, and that cheap is good.

Most of us are confused. We bleat about animal welfare, but shun the pricey local butcher in favour of meat that may or may not have ever seen a daisy. We balk at paying for raw ingredients, but readily cough up for extortionate ready meals. We spend hours watching TV chefs but apparently only 13 minutes on average making a meal - down from one hour in 1980. Thirteen minutes is about the time it takes to unwrap an overpackaged pie, wait for it to cook and boil up some frozen veg. (I know this because I retain a deep childhood nostalgia for Fray Bentos).

We are aided and abetted in our delusions by an industry happy to tell porkies. One is about where food comes from. At a service station recently, my seven-year-old picked out an M&S corned beef butty that was called “the nation's favourite sandwich” and emblazoned with the Union Jack. It looked pretty disgusting but he was hungry. He also knows my sympathy for British-flagged food. We bought it.

But it turns out that the “nation's favourite sandwich” is not British at all. The meat comes from Brazil, but is labelled British because it is processed here. Apparently, we don't make corned beef any more (another myth shattered). In fact, more than half of what we eat now comes from abroad. Which wouldn't be so surprising if we had run out of land, or farmers. But British farmers are going to the wall while we import meat that can legally, but dishonestly, be labelled as British.

I discovered this yesterday from something called the Honest Food Campaign, a Tory-inspired initiative that is demanding that food be accurately labelled with its country of origin. The campaign has found, among other things, Cumberland sausages from Belgium, Birdseye “Great British Menu” chicken that is neither great nor British, and Tesco “British” bacon from the EU.

Bacon is a particular issue. Our pork production has halved in the past ten years, putting pig farmers out of business. This nation of animal lovers has pushed for higher welfare standards than any other EU country, but we are not prepared to pay the higher prices that result. Instead, we eat bacon and pork from Denmark and the Netherlands, where many sows apparently never escape from the kind of tiny, dark stalls that are banned here.

Our native pigs may live higher on the hog, but there won't be many left to enjoy their new-found freedoms unless we either stop squealing about cruelty or pay the price. We deserve at least to know when a low price means shoddy husbandry.

Manufacturers connive in our delusions about food. In France and Italy, ready meals seem to be generally regarded as something to stuff in the freezer in case of emergency. In Britain, they are called “home-made”, helping us to convince ourselves that the product is still food, rather than containing almost as much synthetic material as its packaging. Or they are “meal solutions” to what seems to have become the insuperable challenge of planning and making our own dinner. What most strikes me about the processed foods listed by the Honest Food campaign is the enormous number of evil-sounding ingredients they contain. Heinz sausages made “predominantly” from UK pork sound like those financial products that brought down the banking system - sliced up and combined with toxic material so often that no one knows what is in them any more.

I'm not arguing that we should rule on “British food for British workers” - that might be more than some can stomach, given our penchant for exotic foods and the very real travails of Kenyan farmers. But it would be good to know when we are supporting British farmers and when we are not - and what is good quality.

I was once lucky enough to dine with Carlo Petrini, founder of the Italian Slow Food Movement. I still remember the contrast he drew between Britain's “pornographic” onslaught of recipes and TV chefs, and the “act of true love” that he believes is making food from traditional, local ingredients. Until there is more honesty about what we are eating, the food divide will grow, and the only people who gain will be the purveyors of hydrogenated fats and porkies.

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