Jimmy Doherty, whose BBC series Jimmy’s Farm engrossed millions of viewers, said that while a small number of middle-class shoppers have embraced farmer’s markets and buy organic food over the internet, many more are embarrassed to be seen buying “posh” food.

Breaking down this resistance is essential if people want to stop supermarkets dictating what we put in our stomachs, he told an audience at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival.

“People need to realise that there’s nothing posh about caring about good food. Last week I was boiling a pig’s head to make traditional brawn, which my nan used to do in the East End when she was growing up. There’s nothing upmarket about it. It’s working-class.”

Mr Doherty, 31, said that consumers were as much to blame as supermarkets for the way we eat. He believes that the only way for food culture to change is for shoppers to “vote with their feet” and take a break from supermarkets. But he said that he recognised that many people were “frightened” of ingredients that were not pre-wrapped and identical in appearance. “They have forgotten how to shop,” he said.

Mr Doherty, a former zoologist, sells sausages directly to the public from his Suffolk pig farm and has written books as well as making the television series. But he was surprised how few other farmers were willing to take an entrepreneurial, proactive approach to promoting their produce.

“Supermarkets spend billions selling us stuff we don’t want, but farmers are not marketing experts,” he said. “They’ve got to learn how to do it.”

He was joined on stage by three other food writers: Joanna Blythman, author of Bad Food Britain, Richard Benson, author of The Farm, and Graham Harvey, a writer for The Archers and author of We Want Real Food.

All three agreed that farmers needed to find ways of connecting directly to consumers, but that they were hampered by urban planning policies that often appeared to favour supermarket expansion over farm shops, by an outdated postwar mindset that still encouraged them to produce as much food as cheaply as they could, and by a reluctance to co-operate among themselves.

Ms Blythman agreed that the place of food in British culture explained why one third of Europe’s obese children lived in this country.

“I used to stick up for the British consumer,” he said, “thinking they were manipulated by the global food corporations. But the more I think about food, the more I have lost patience with the British consumer. A bad food culture is almost endemic here now.”

While consumers in France, Spain or Italy regarded good ingredients as a “democratic right of great importance, like clean air”, she said. “We have always thought of [food] as fuel, to be stocked up on as cheaply as possible”.

The panel agreed that there had been an explosion of interest in food over the past generation, but that it had not been underpinned by a more patient attitude to the kitchen.

Ms Blythman said: “A lot of people now think that it’s perfectly possible to stay healthy and be a foodie and not cook . . . I think our attitudes have become skewed.”

WHATS ON AT CHELTENHAM

TODAY

Julie Walters 12pm
Ralph Steadman on Hunter S. Thompson 4.15pm
Vic Reeves 7.45pm
Robert Harris 8pm

TOMORROW

Simon Schama 2pm
David Blunkett 4pm
Thomas Keneally 6pm
Louis de Bernières 8pm

Book tickets at the box office on 01242 227979 or in person at Cheltenham Town Hall, 9am-9pm

Festival in full online

timesonline.co.uk/cheltenham
Listen to author podcasts, talks and Times debates

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• An officer and a gentle woman
• Dame Helen Mirren is worthy of the Epidaurus
• Foods that can help to prevent swine flu