In case it has slipped your notice, food is fashionable in Britain right now. Gone are the days when talking about food was considered impolite, when the average dinner meant meat, over boiled, unseasoned veg and lumpy mash that may or may not have come from a sachet. Globalisation, the rise of the internet and camera phone have revolutionised our attitude to eating. Brits have come to realise that good food does not just mean beef wellington or "something French" , that vegetarian food means more than just cheese and lentils, and that countries that care about their food, incidentally, have better food.

Thanks to social media, eating is no longer a simple necessity but a fashion statement. Whether it's hand-ground coffee beans in a cup with elegantly patterned froth, a dainty plate of sushi, an oozing burger on brioche or, god help us, a sodding avocado, we are surrounded by people who are constantly showing us (up close and in technicolour) what they ate today.

But the obsession goes well beyond instagram. We're not only photographing food but talking about food - the restaurants we've frequented, the recipes we've found or the outrageous equipment we've bought. The Great British Bake Off has caused nothing short of a culinary revolution - and as a nation we are rising to the challenge to make more cakes and pastries and pies, and to make them more complex and delicious than ever before.

And then of course there are the newspaper articles, the magazines, columns and blogs, all with something to say about the diets of the day, the best places to find the latest trend item (current favourites being kombucha and bone broth apparently) and recipe after recipe after recipe. Finding myself among the noise I sometimes ask myself why I am writing, and what I can possibly hope to contribute. I have drafted and half typed a number of posts over the past three months and have ultimately discarded each, feeling there was nothing to say that hasn't already been said before.

Then I noticed a book a colleague was reading in preparation for a marathon: "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" and it got me thinking. I'm sure runners will tell you that there is so much more to training than putting one foot in front of the other, and my hope for this blog is to demonstrate, in my own small way, that there is so much more to food than putting fork to mouth.

Food is habit, ritual and memory. As a most basic and fundamental of human acts it forms an underlying constant in our lives, taking on a significance far beyond simply keeping us functioning. Food impacts upon and reflects our emotions, and can define certain stretches of our lives, so that when we revisit certain dishes we are shocked by a flash  of memory. I remember distinctly the first meal my dad ever cooked alone (roast lamb with too many boiled leeks and carrots), the slab of chocolate cake I ate in a wood on the most romantic day of my life, the unspeakably bad porridge at university that caused me to make a friend with a fellow early riser, simply because we had to vent our horror aloud, and the hot cross buns sent from home that I nibbled at 1am, weeping profusely, while alone in bed in Italy.  Each of these foods was represented a landmark, signifying an acknowledgement of irrefutable change, the making of bonds and the ache of homesickness. Always so much more than a mere satisfaction for my rumbling stomach.

Eating with other people has its own significance too. Sitting and breaking bread with another forges relationships in a unique way; we acknowledge our shared humanity, we see one another at our most basic, and thus, by extension, at out most vulnerable. It is intimate and special, something we often take for granted. To share a good meal with someone is to partake in the simple joy of being alive. And it is my belief that that is something worth writing about.