Joe Bloggs

I've wondered the same thing, and someone told it's the water. If you rinse, then the plates will look dirty after they dry. You get these stripes on them.

Don't know if this is true, though.

heh - that was the first thing I noticed when I moved here! I had to supervise the washing up until I managed to get a dishwasher. Never got an explanation for it though.

The food thing is more complex and probably stems originally from the types of foods that were available until food trade picked up a few hundred years ago. You'll find food in many Northern European countries is also quite bland, while food in hotter climes is spicy - often to mask the taste of meat that's going "off"?

Then I suspect that the war(s) also had a big effect on the foods people were used to eating. Actually it seems like an awful lot of the English psyche was formulated during the wars and the period in-between. It must have been very rough indeed.

There's actually a rib-cracking scene dealing with this topic in 'Gravity's Rainbow'. Joe, you must!

Marko, at least you were given a reason. I've only ever been told 'it isn't necessary'. Never 'why' it isn't necessary.

Lisa, the northern European countries explanation is certainly one I use a lot. The war explanation is more interesting and I suspect very close to the mark. However, I did have one business visitor who always leaves Japan even fatter than he comes because as a 'war child' in England he was told (and wanted to) to eat everything on his plate. I find that many of my visitors just will NOT even try anything that looks marginally suspect from their very limited point of view.

I'll brush the dirt off Gravity's Rainbow ASAP.

The spices were used (and still used, I think) to preserve food. Some countries has done this with salt, obviously. In Finland the meat and fish was preserved using two techniques: in the winter by just keeping it outdoors and in the summer by smoking it (if that's the correct verb for the operation). I don't know when preservation with salt started, but those two were used for thousands of years.

Isn't there a Finnish delicacy that is effectively just rotting fish? Came about from some time in your history when that was all there was to eat? Some past war? Have I got it totally wrong?

I've just asked my husband who comes from a family of non-rinsers (don't worry, he is educated in the Banerjee ways)and he thinks it is just laziness.

Talking of bland food, my husband's family eat very traditionally English food - meat and two/ three veg and after a while it gets very boring. His parents were brought up in wartime England and are willing to try different foods if abroad but wouldn't cook it at home. I crave rice when I leave there.

> just laziness

I have a feeling he might be right!

> crave rice

I think living here in Japan makes me crave rice even more. I don't feel I've eaten properly unless I eat rice at least once a day.

I can't think of a food like that (with rotten fish) but then again I'm not an expert on the subject.

> rotten fish

I'll check with my Finnish contacts next week. I'm sure they were the ones who told me about it.

I think you'll find British food has changed remarkably over the last few decades. It probably started with the 'second coming of Delia' (a popular cookery presenter who disappeared in the early 80's as she discovered God). She started a trend for popularising cookery programmes on TV and when she 'came back' in the late 80's, her popularity really took off. She almost single handedly raised the profile of cooking in Britain. When the BBC published Delia's book "How to Cook" and it became almost printed permanently in to the best seller lists, everyone else woke up to what was happening. This has been carried on by many other TV chefs (now most notably by Nigella Lawson).

I think that the Eurotunnel also had a big impact - you could just about sensibly have lunch in Paris if you lived in London and the restaurant food in the UK really was worth leaving the country for in the 80's. London restaurants certainly improved immeasurably over the 90's.

Cookery is now 'cool'. This is an astonishing change in attitudes for the UK. It has got to the point where I look forward to cooking for everyone when you come over the week after next. (This comes from someone who hadn't successfully cooked toast before University). You can tell everyone whether or not the trip was worth while once you've tasted my version of 'Modern British' cooking!

Looking forward to eating at your place John. Though I do think the underlying taste buds haven't been altered dramatically in the UK. Let's hope I'm wrong and I look forward to being proved so.