William Stilwell, editor of Waitrose magazine which glorifies much of the elements of food snobbery has turned apostate as he praises Delia.....

In the Daily Mail today, he has turned on the last decade of elitism....

"For a start, you had to be ethical as well as have good taste buds. Could you be sure that your Arabica coffee bean was freshly roasted, let alone whether it had come from a Nicaraguan crop that was grown in certified organic conditions and was fairly traded - thus ensuring a decent wage for the labourers?

And what of the food miles your 70 per cent cocoa Cru Apurimac chocolate had travelled from its origins beside a river in Peru? Could your sweet tooth and gourmet sensibilities really be justified, given the carbon emissions that resulted from its transportation?

Yet was sourcing local food really any better? Even as we strove to support farmers' markets all was not as it seemed. For, word is, locally produced food can have a heavier carbon footprint than that of imported goods.

Think of the energy used to heat an Isle of White greenhouse to ripen tomatoes, or the fuel used by a small van to take a few veg to a nearby town, when a supermarket HGV would transport food from afar far more efficiently?

Oh, the anxieties have been endless.

But now, relief is at hand. If Delia says it's OK to cheat, then we can cast aside some of these ludicrous obsessions and get back to the simple business of cooking half-decent food for our friends and families.

For at the heart of being a good cook is the passion to give pleasure to one's guests - a truism that has been lost amid all the fuss and nonsense we've been dishing up lately.

Glorious fighting words.....

The Queen has spoken: the most important thing is to feed the poor and hungry so forget about the orgiastic organicheads, the foodmile fanatics, animal activists, crusaders and the elitests like "I'm ethical, you're not" Michael Pollan who promotes plants.

Delia Smith aka the legenday British cookbook writer and TV personality who has made it into the Oxford English Dictionary - "Do a Delia" - is speaking out as she launches her new cookbook, How to Cheat At Food.

Like the late Julia Child, Delia has down to earth priorities...

The queen of TV cookery said that access to cheap chicken is crucial for poor families and pensioners.

"I certainly don't like the way battery chickens are reared but, on the other hand, I'm aware we still have a lot of poverty, particularly among children and I feel that's a disgrace," she told Radio 4 yesterday.

"We have got to make sure everybody gets enough nutritious food to eat in the first place."

"I will stick to cooking," said Delia.

"I'll stick to teaching people to cook. I can't get into the politics of food."

She said that the taste of food mattered more than whether its ingredients were organic or environmentally friendly.

"If I go into a shop and I want to buy some beautiful fresh beetroot I will go for whatever looks best," she added.

"If it is organic I will buy it; if it isn't I will buy that."

She added that she is sceptical about the concept of "food miles" - the yardstick used by environmentalists to measure how much damage is caused by long-distance transport.

"I love fresh shelled peas in the winter from Kenya," she said.

"I'm sorry about the planet but I'm conscious there are people in Kenya getting employment and money to bring up their children."