Embrace the pleasure of eating as Nigella does

I love ‘The Great British Bake Off’. There is something wonderfully comforting about watching people nervously check for soggy bottoms, panic over an underbaked sponge and attempt to look composed while an entire tent threatens to come apart over a collapsing meringue.

It is delicious TV, with just enough drama to make you grateful that your own baking disasters happen in the privacy of your kitchen (like when my mum forgot to add sugar to her baked cheesecake and we all tried to eat it with a straight face).

When I heard that Nigella Lawson was replacing Prue Leith this season, I had my reservations. Prue had become such a familiar presence with her colourful glasses and gentle manner that replacing her felt a little like changing the recipe for a cake that had always turned out perfectly.

But Nigella has settled into the tent rather nicely. She brings her own warmth, a certain theatrical elegance and that unmistakable way of describing food that makes you want to abandon whatever you are doing and head straight for the fridge.

Something that stood out though was when Nigella tasted the bakers' creations, she took rather generous bites. Not dainty little nibbles. The sort that suggest she had arrived at the tent with an appetite and no intention of leaving it behind.

My first reaction was less than charitable. I thought someone as elegant and accomplished as Nigella Lawson should look a little more refined when tasting food on national television?

Then I read some of the online comments. The criticism was often remarkably unkind, with people scrutinising her eating habits as though she were sitting an exam in table manners rather than judging a Victoria sponge.

And it was these nasty comments that shifted my thinking. Here was a woman who seem to be genuinely enjoying the food in front of her. She was not delicately dismantling a slice of cake with the tip of a fork, pretending that a crumb was sufficient to understand its character as a lot of influencers do when covering food events. She was actually eating it. With gusto. With pleasure. And without seeming particularly concerned about whether every mouthful would pass muster with the internet's self-appointed etiquette police.

Maybe this is precisely what we should want from a food judge. Someone who appreciates food as something to be enjoyed, rather than merely inspected.

Food is an intensely physical pleasure. It has texture, aroma, warmth, richness and the extraordinary ability to improve an otherwise miserable Tuesday. Yet we have become strangely comfortable with the idea that eating should look attractive, even when the whole point is to taste something delicious.

Nigella has spent years encouraging us to embrace the pleasures of the table. It would be rather odd if, having persuaded us to surrender to a chocolate cake, she then approached one as though it were a delicate piece of museum porcelain.

I am not suggesting that table manners should be abandoned altogether. There is a difference between enjoying your dinner and behaving like a Labrador presented with a roast chicken. But perhaps we have become a little too quick to confuse elegance with restraint.

‘The Great British Bake Off’ is about baking, not ballroom etiquette. And if a woman who has built a career celebrating food cannot enjoy a generous mouthful of cake, what hope is there for the rest of us?