We are what we eat. Today times2 gives the recipe for power eating. Get your diet right, and you can rise to the top of your profession. Waste your theoretical meal times on coffee, junk food, sandwiches and alcohol, and your career may be bound in the shallows and in miseries. That is the advice of anxious mothers down the centuries, telling their children to eat up their raw carrots. The children reply that raw carrots are fine for those who live in hutches, and are looking forward to Easter, but, as far as they are concerned, bring on the chocolate, fizzy lemonade, sausages and burgers.

In our Age of Anxiety, grubology has become a branch of existentialism. For food is the roundabout of life. Worm eats grub. Toad eats worm. Snake eats toad. Pig eats snake. Man eats pig. And grub eats man. The pig farmers of Britain were in Downing Street yesterday to protest about the decline in their industry.

The way to eat well in England used to be to have three breakfasts. But bacon and eggs have become dietetically incorrect, since the arrival of Birchemüsli and other healthy slop. Man is, in part, a stockpot on two legs. And what you put into the stockpot has an effect on performance. Waterloo was in part a battle between the beer and beef of the north against the wine and patisserie of the south. Indeed, to eat and drink healthily is a necessary condition for getting on in the world. But it is not a sufficient reason. The mind is fed by more than soya beans and natural yoghurt, buckwheat noodles and tofu. It is stimulated by the pursuit of happiness. In that sense, a little of what you fancy does you good.