Food For Thought

I once had a conversation with some Times people about reader interests, which are something the paper knows much more about than it did in the pre-digital age. And what they said, ruefully, was that what readers really seem to care about is food — sure, they may email a hard-hitting column or a revelatory piece of investigative reporting, but the sure-fire stuff is about eating (and health, and using animal training techniques on your husband).

Actually, I’m fine with that. Most people don’t live their lives obsessed with policy and world events, nor should they. In fact, a time when political or economic analyses are at the top of the agenda is almost surely a bad time, with everything going wrong, whereas a return to food-and-lifestyle is an indication of at least a partial return to normalcy.

Still, the top of today’s most-emailed list is striking:

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Now excuse me while I throw out that piece of salmon I was going to cook and prepare some steak with nuts instead.