"What passes for cookery in England is an abomination" Virginia Woolf

As a French person living in England, I have to admit honestly that I do not enjoy English food at all. It is commonly said that English food is bad and I could check it by myself: this is not a myth. However, English people I live with do not seem to be aware of this since they never complain about what the eat and never think about eating something better. So, I wondered: why do they prevent themselves from eating good food?

Here are examples of food I tried in England (and I will never try again)

The first question is: why do British people do not give much importance to pleasure as long as food is concerned. The main reasons seem to be that:

-57% of British men and 38% of British women say they have little interest in food;

-only 50% of Britons say they really enjoy eating;

-50% of all British shoppers say they do not care where their food comes from.

Other British beliefs say that:

-eating is about refuelling, not pleasure. A part of life's routine ;

-home cooking takes too long ;

-food is not important. Pretty much everything else in life matters more ;

-a microwave is the only piece of kitchen equipment you really need.

(all these things about British food were taken from Bad Food Britain: How a Nation Ruined its Appetite by Joanna Blythman)

I just want to say, about the last comment referring to microwaves, I effectively did not know we could cook so many things with a microwave, I sometimes feel a bit... flabbergasted. I felt the same when I heard British people talking about their national dishes: bacon, beans, steak pies, battered cod... According to me, a national dish is supposed to be something you prepare yourself, something particularly tasty that a people can be proud of. But these dishes are only industrial food and this is bizarre to me to consider them as national dishes. The British are following the American model consisting in "no-cook eating", a concept that does not ask for any explanation... A survey showed that the approximative time a British person devotes to the preparation of a meal is 13 minutes, which is 47 minutes fewer than in the eighties. The food manufacturer Geest observed: "People generally are trying to fit more pleasurable things [than cooking] into their lives". This way of considering cooking is really similar to the American point of view. I tried very hard to make my flatmates taste French food like saucisson, strong cheese or pâté croûte but any of them really wanted to try. As Joanna Blythman writes "[their] habits are fairly constant; the odd food scare here or scandal there".