What’s in your kitchen?

Basic staples – porridge in winter, wheat-free muesli in summer, pulses – puy lentils, split peas and a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables. My wife and I shop by bike. We gave away our car ten years ago.

We shop in the street market on Northcote Road in Battersea. It is a culinary nirvana full of stalls, cafes, the Lighthouse Bakery, Hamish Johnston cheese shop, a fish stall and an Italian deli. It is an excellent example of food-led urban regeneration.

The pressure of rising rents is a growing problem for small, speciality food shops in many parts of the country and certainly in a prosperous area like Northcote Rd, Battersea. But one response is heartening. Some leave the sector but others, like the cheese and fish shops, are returning to a proper market economy, by diversifying into turning their businesses into market stalls. That's why for a long time, I have been suggesting that we need design investment into a new generation of markets. The stall system is a mediaeval relic, fine in good weather but, from the 19th century, local authorities built covered markets to give stall-holders and customers a better experience. We now need a new generation of covered markets or mobile covered markets suitable for the 21st century.

What’s your food philosophy?

Decent, nutritious food; I use simple fresh ingredients, which I like to be in season. We are also zero-salt household.

I try to eat nine portions of fruit and vegetables a day - at that point the whole philosophy of your diet changes. The fruit and veg are at the centre of the plate and everything else fits around them rather than the other way round which is the norm.

I try to eat lots of greens – cabbage, kale. I have a vegetable patch in the garden and I’m going to have homegrown spinach for dinner tonight. In the Mediterranean they have a saying which is: “A day without greens is a day without sunshine” and recent nutritional studies have borne out how important it is to eat them.

How have our attitudes to food changed?

On one level, things have really improved. The English were famously neurotic, defensive eaters but we’ve relaxed. The European experience we have had while on holiday has made us more confident.

But a large percentage of our population is still eating very badly. Popular tastes remain with a sweet, over-processed diet. Attitudes are varied to the point of being schizophrenic.

All our current food experiences are locked into the history of British colonialism and imperialism. We were the first industrial nation to sever people from the land. It meant we had a food disenfranchised urban population and tastes were warped by that.

What annoys you about food in Britain?

We are such a rich society and there are terrible pockets of food poverty. I live around the corner from Chez Bruce and at restaurants like that very good food is open to the middle-classes like it hasn’t been since Victorian times. But there is a schism - a quiet abandonment of people on low incomes. People are not starving, but there are pockets of deprivation with poor shops and facilities where life expectancy is lower and health is worse as a result. And we are not talking about it.

What’s Britain’s best-kept food secret?

Rhubarb is wonderful. I am looking down my garden at two huge clumps of rhubarb. It is very democratic - you can dig a clump from a clump and give it to a friend. The biggest secret is that this very British plant isn’t British at all. It is originally from Tibet.

Do you prefer eating in or eating out?

In. I work away quite a lot and there is nothing nicer than having a good meal at home with some great wine and friends. Restaurants are the bastions of salt addition.

What is the next big food trend?

The real struggle is to try to build nutrition into ecology and vice versa - I call it eco-nutrition. Right now affluent people in countries like Britain are literally eating the world. Produce from all over the planet is being air and sea freighted to us because we can afford to buy it.

But if you try to eat nine portions of fruit a day and stay eco-friendly by buying fruit and veg closer to home you can’t because our farmers don’t grow food for us. They grow rapeseed oil, grain for animals and soon they will grow grain for bio fuel.

We will have to re-think food chains to take into consideration the twin environmental and health arguments.

I think another big trend will be food security. I’m one of the people who is disagreeing with current Government thinking that you can always buy food on the world market.

Climate change, water shortage, and other issues such as battles for agricultural land between bio fuel, food and carbon sequestration could all make the world food and grain markets very volatile.

We must start investing in skills and people must start working on the land for direct human consumption. I would like to see a ring of market gardens 50 miles wide around each city in the country.

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