Getting straight to the point can impoverish everything from a healthy diet to a career in the food industry
Obliquity. Even if you can’t be sure what it means, obliquity is one of those great words, like akimbo, or marzipan.
My dictionary tells me it means “not going straight to the point”. The economist and financial writer John Kay, who wrote a cover story for The Financial Times back in 2004 which first introduced me to what is now a fashionable business idea, writes simply that: “If you want to go in one direction, the best route may involve going in the other.”
Mr Kay has since developed his idea into a book, but his core idea is simple: “the most profitable companies are not the most profit-orientated”.
I have been thinking about Mr Kay’s wise words ever since the debate in The Irish Times recently about the merit and value of an arts degree in the modern world.
Getting an arts degree would seem to be a classic example of proceeding with your life in an oblique fashion – you will likely understand more about the world by reading James Joyce than by doing PPE (you will certainly be a more interesting person to have a drink with).
And reading Jemmy Joyce can take you off on meandering paths that PPE could never countenance.
Spicing up the CV
But if you really want to understand the working of obliquity in a society, the best place to look is in the world of food. The food world is jammers with “obliquiters”: Eileen Dunne of Dunne Crescenzi used to work for the United Nations. The great Galway chef Enda McEvoy grabbed a degree in English and Sociology before he rerouted into the kitchen.
Donal Doherty, of Harry’s Restaurant in Donegal, is an accountant. The great baker Thibault Peigne used to be a quantity surveyor, a trade he shared with Tom Dalton of the Dungarvan Brewery. Aoibheann McNamara of Ard Bia is an arts administrator, and Michelle Darmody of Dublin’s uber-cool Cake Café studied Arts, while Kevin Sheridan of Sheridan’s Cheesemongers went to art school.
Their obliquity explains why they run great food enterprises: they are not simply profit-orientated, as business people are taught to be. Their obliquity – in studying, in working, in meandering their way to the world of food – has brought an extra richness to their work in food, and thereby to our lives, as the people who enjoy what they do so well.
But obliquity has an even more important part to play in our daily lives, and in our health. Quite simply, cooking well and eating well is the oblique way to ensure your good health. That grass-fed beef may have been chosen for its deliciousness, but the omegas and the CLAs it gives you are the oblique benefit.
Simple recipe for a healthy life
You may love those stinky farmhouse cheeses for the outré olfactory pleasures they give, but it’s the good bacteria they instill in your gut that is the oblique winning ticket in the deal.
That fresh piece of gurnard you just lifted from the pan will be simply gorgeous, but when you think about all the good stuff it does for the wiring in your brain, that’s the oblique kiss of delight. The piece of seaweed in your bowl of noodles is tasty, and it’s also an explosion of vital minerals.
So, by all means make sure you go to the gym and put in the miles on your bike. But, in addition to those direct routes to health, make sure you stay healthy the oblique way – by cooking and eating the best food you can, by profiting from the healthfulness of natural ingredients.
And the next time you are shopping or eating out, try to find out if the person cooking or serving has meandered obliquely to what they are doing. If they have, chances are you will eat a whole lot better.
John McKenna is author of The Irish Food Guide – guides.ie
