Let me throw you a few examples to whet the appetite. Probyn often begins her food explorations with herself, lending an idiosyncratic and sometimes quirky edge to each theme she explores. Going from possible pregnancy convincing her to change breakfast from cigarettes and coffee to phyto-oestrogen-rich folate-fortified cereal, to recounting the battle between pride and shame in her severely anorexic adolescence, Probyn maps her eating body so that we can discover ours. In 'Bodies that eat', and contrary to the tacit claim that eating confirms identity, Probyn describes eating as a way of losing oneself. In 'Feeding McWorld, eating ideologies', she pays a dubious respect to the perversity of McDonald's ingenious blend of 'familial citizenship' and 'globalised eating.' 'Eating sex' departs from popular food and sex couplings in the guise of celebrity chefs and gastroporn for the more restrained sensuality and timing involved in turning a mango inside out. This way of 'thinking through eating to sex', she tempts, may make us 'infinitely more susceptible to pleasure.'

Although Probyn openly admits to passing over specific environmental concerns in favour of more diffuse questions of understanding, her approach does, nonetheless, underscore a vital focus for environmental discourse that has thus far been neglected. In dealing with those smaller, insidious actions hidden within the mundanity of eating, Probyn's rhizomatic exploration becomes a tool to cloud the logic of the worldview pictures of ethical existence. By informing a more subtle ecological sensitivity often neglected by environmental writing, Probyn's work inadvertently contributes to a developing paradigm of environmental consciousness: '[W]ays of living informed by both the rawness of a visceral engagement with the world, and a sense of restraint in the face of excess.'

Although I applaud Probyn's endeavours at what she describes as 'smaller' scenarios rather than 'generalised green politics', I also hope that her sojourn is but the first nibble at this particular rhizome. It's not that Probyn has inadequately critiqued the realms of traditional identity formation - sex, bodies, corporate culture … but that within the category of 'food' many neglected areas still exist. Eating is privileged within research, unfettered by links to all those less glamorous activities which make it possible. The emphasis on eating in Probyn's writing alludes to a more universal cultural emphasis on this consumptive practice, which results in little being written, for instance, about the growing of food. The colours and characters of food production are so easily washed out under the glare of celebrity chefs and shock/horror eating practices. In such a light, consigning food production to the shadows of cultural research, remote edges of 'over-developed' cities, corners of backyards and the insides of industrial sheds may be an understandable strategy. However, with 40% of the world's population facing a future with not enough water to grow their own food and famine currently spreading through parts of Aftrica, I contend that extending Probyn's question 'What does power taste like?' to these nether regions of food practice is a critical next step.

Angela Hirst is doing PhD research in the Department of Architecture, Geography and Planning at the University of Queensland.