This time last year the British media was buzzing with stories about the demise of marmalade. In January, The Grocer reported that sales of marmalade fell by 4.4% in the year to 4 November 2006. Worse still, most marmalade consumers have their best toast munching years behind them — 81% of marmalade is consumed by people over 45.

According to The Spectator’s Rachel Simhon, marmalade’s decline "is due to ‘younger consumers’ – or rather their parents, who bow to demands for honey, jam, Nutella and other sickly concoctions." Market researchers say that children find marmalade too strong. "Well, of course they do", writes Simhon:

Seville orange marmalade is for grown-ups. It’s one of life’s great adult pleasures and cannot be allowed to disappear because of feeble-minded pandering to infant whim.

Now the Sydney Morning Herald’s Richard Glover has unearthed the story — and the implications are more serious than anyone realised. The demise of marmalade is part of an ominous trend. Like Simhon, Glover argues that parents are becoming more indulgent and food is becoming sweeter and fattier:

Sometime in the early ’90s parents were convinced that it was OK to give their children sweets for breakfast. The product was called "hazelnut spread" to make it sound healthy, although the main nuts involved were surely the parents who served it.

And once children become used to food that’s loaded with fats, sugars and colourings, normal, healthy food will look and taste bland in comparison.

But unlike Simhon, Glover traces the problem to its root — capitalism. According to Glover, it infantalises us all by creating products that appeal to our "basest, most primitive instincts". This is why "our food gets steadily sweeter, our TV drama more violent and our ice-creams ever more fattening."

Does Glover have a point? After all, there is a trend towards sickly sweet adult products that taste like they’re made for children. The latest example is beer that tastes like marmalade. But sweet, citrus flavoured beer, ought to make us wonder — is the demise of marmalade really a best example for an argument about the insidious effects of capitalism on food preferences?

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Who has eaten at Masani in Carlton lately? I’ll call my chef cousin tomorrow but wider input would be very much appreciated. It is becoming a long trek I tell you – almost a saga. The wedding plans hit a dead stop earlier this afternoon when I found it absolutely impossible to match wedding venue with eating venue. We have now decided the two should be one and the same to accommodate for people’s comfort, their age, wet weather and transport whew!

Problems occurred when places I thought were just grand have become different – what has happened to the Botanical? And Tolarno’s has been gutted/refurbished and gone nineties bland. Tamani’s is probably still OK but on second thoughts a little too casual – that is, the complete opposite of the twee “we will ring your bells for you” at soulless Sherbrook Lodge. So, I’ve been speaking to the ‘event manager’ at Masani. I remember that restaurant from the mid eighties – good solid food and an easy fairly robust atmosphere. Has it been at all wankerised – we have found a restaurant called the ‘Red Orange’ – go figure – we are not red orange types when it comes to a family get together. Thanks Rex for the link to Le Gourmet – I think we might be earthier than that though – we’ve been in Darwin a long time you know.

If you know Masani or you can think of somewhere else that has a bit of real continuity – same owners, traditional or just somewhere you can eat and drink a fair bit of good food and wine that also has a spot with a bit of atmosphere for a quick ceremony of “I do” – please let us know. Signed the increasingly moving toward the soulless package wedding Darwinites.

Sixty percent of a rabbit’s meat is in its hind legs. That’s why it’s so difficult to make one rabbit into a meal for four people. If you need some ideas on how to do it, then Anthony Georgeff’s Spiceblog is the place for you. Georgeff’s blog has the most amazing food pictures and some pretty startling writing as well. How about this:

If I were to tell you that I’d flown to a place where I’d eaten Macadamia Nut Chicken Kiev, been served drinks by an East German woman in her underwear*, enjoyed a performance by an acoustic guitar playing female singer supported by a cellist and a harmonica player over vodka tonics, went gourmet food shopping where we bought unpastEurised French cheese, attended a seafood dinner for 500, drank French beer with lamb cutlets, and had capers and olives with Little Creatures in a sunny beer garden; where would you say I’d been?

If you want to know the answer you’ll have to visit Anthony’s blog. And yes, you can find out about the blowtorch there as well.

Spiceblog is one of the food blogs featured in a piece that Trevor Cook has contributed to the December issue of the Walkley magazine.