Foreword to "How to Poison Your Spouse"

[A sample page]

In caveman days, any hunter who came back dragging a bear carcase or a brace of rabbits felt entitled to sing heroic songs about his skills. In our modern society, we don’t have that sort of excitement. True, there is an element of both skill and luck in manoeuvring the car through the supermarket car park without acquiring a ding, but it’s not usually worth composing a hundred-line ode about. The choice between plastic-wrapped chicken and plastic-wrapped beef is made on financial and aesthetic grounds, not because we are better skilled at catching one game animal instead of another.

Making shopping exciting

This book will help restore some sense of excitement to your daily food. In our visits to the supermarket we face unseen risks and hazards, different only in kind from the sort that our prehistoric ancestors encountered. That modest parsnip, those shiny, attractively coloured bean seeds, and the shy stalk of celery — any of them might be capable of poisoning us! Our families rely upon our culinary skill at avoiding or defusing these biological time bombs.

Does a ‘no additives’ label mean risk-free food?

Many consumers in our Western society think they can avoid risk by selecting foods with labels that boast how much has been left out! No added preservatives, no added colour, no added flavour, unprotected from any insects or diseases, all natural. Unfortunately, food products that boast about how many ingredients have been omitted may be more risky than fully protected products.

The kinds of risks we run

There are many ways to be injured by foods. Some foods can cause fatal paralysis of all our muscles, others can give digestive problems. There are well known problems with food-borne infections, but in this book I’ve tried to emphasize problems that don’t arise from infection, or at least not infection of a human. (Plants infected with fungi can be quite hazardous.)

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