When I was a kid, I had a designated “junk food drawer”. I remember a particular kind of joy in choosing what I felt like eating: chips, chocolate, biscuits. I would saunter into the kitchen, choose my poison and kick back on the couch.

These were simpler times.

Perhaps you are raising an eyebrow. Such parenting might seem laissez-faire, irresponsible even. But this small act shaped my relationship to my body and its needs. Hunger was to be listened to, not feared or repressed. “When you are hungry, eat,” my mum would chime.

I recognise the privilege of growing up in a home where food was abundant and the fact that I could usually stop when I had enough (a capacity I have since, ironically, lost). Yet, as an adolescent, I was struck by how often food became a site of negotiation and tension in other families. For many, food represents a source of profound struggle, bound up with shame, discipline and judgment.

Of course I didn’t get away scot-free. If food wasn’t a struggle for me as a child, other desires were – the desire for rest, pleasure, recognition.

This is a strange moment in the history of desire. Digital platforms and their algorithms increasingly anticipate our desires, sometimes even before we register them ourselves. Do you need an app that tells you to drink water before you feel thirsty? Maybe you do!

What’s more, we live in a culture adept at stimulating desire while simultaneously encouraging us to distrust it.........

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