One of the many endearing peculiarities of academic life at Harvard is that even routine departmental meetings sometimes turn out to be catered. Email announcements specify not just time, place and purpose, but also the name of the catering firm. I mention this only because I've just arrived there, and the first such meeting gave me immediate occasion to observe my new colleagues refecting themselves en masse. The victuals were, as is usual, high-end sandwiches and wraps, and, at the end of the meeting, it seemed that most of my colleagues, and some of the staff, had left the bread, and even the excellent chipotle tortilla wrappers, on their plates. I needn't have asked, but I did anyway: some of them told me they were 'doing Atkins' and others that they were 'doing South Beach'. Dietary virtue, it was apparent, lay incongruously between the buns.

LRB 5 August 2004 | PDF Download