Sometimes I wonder if everyone involved in improving the nation's diet should just give up and go home.

I say this not with sarcasm, but in sorrow.

One of the privileges of being a food writer is the insight I get to the many positive steps being taken in Scots cooking at all levels; in investment in artisan products such as cheese, charcuterie and rapeseed oil to name a few; and, crucially, in food education. The promotion of world-class Scots produce both internationally and at home has, as I have so often argued, had a transformative effect on Scottish culinary confidence. All this is having a knock-on uplifting effect on our eating habits.

Aye, right, as they say in these parts.

Over the last few weeks I have sensed something of a backlash - much of it coming from social media. It began with a tweet posted by a colleague about how much he was going to enjoy a roll and crisps on his way home.

When I expressed my haughty indignation, he was quick to point out he was only referencing the runaway success of a Belfast pop-up called Simply Crispy, an idea which had started as a joke in the initial hope of breaking even within four weeks; its popularity means it's now staying open until at least March.

Basically, it sells potato crisps in 35 flavours sandwiched into large crusty rolls known as the Belfast bap (I didn't wait to find out if they butter the rolls, too).

Soup is also served, topped with Monster Munch croutons. A sarcastic website review only helped direct customers to it; now it's looking like the idea may be franchised. Only a matter of time, surely, until a branch of Simply Crispy comes to Glasgow.

Which is the very last thing it needs, crammed as it is already with burger bars and places that sell something called a currizza (a hybrid of pizza and curry, launched in 2013 and now selling at the rate of 10,000 a week).

Hot on the heels of my esteemed colleague's insight into his crispy dietary aspirations came the admission from a Glasgow food blogger with thousands of followers that her favourite meal was fish fingers, potato ("tattiie") twizzlers and spaghetti hoops. I'm not sure if she was being deliberately provocative, as we were fine-dining at the time, so I'm not going to apologise for outing her.

In the very same conversation came the news - probably old news to everyone but myself - that on certain menus a Glasgow Salad means chips. (Potatoes contain Vitamin C, geddit?).

Cue unsuppressed glee among my charming fellow diners who, I suspect, were delighted at having the opportunity of bursting my bubble and seeing the incredulous look on my ashen face.

I plucked up the strength to pretend I was laughing along with them, and in order to curry favour quoted a tweet about the young man overheard being interviewed on BBC Radio Scotland after being trapped in his car overnight in a lay-by off a snowbound A9. Asked how he'd felt about being told he'd have to wait at least another four hours for the road to be cleared, he'd replied brightly that he would just take a walk over to Pitlochry to get a sausage roll.

This went down like a lead balloon: didn't I know that the sausage rolls in Pitlochry are award-winning and handmade by an artisan butcher? Not ironic enough!

Clearly, I'd completely misread the mood.

My cynical views on the outrage expressed by Cadbury's Creme Eggs fans upon discovering the brand's new owners had changed the recipe for the chocolate shells from Dairy Milk to "standard cocoa mix chocolate" died on my lips.

I'd intended to posit the theory that the whole thing was a fake, aimed at forcing consumers' minds off Christmas and onto Easter, but reckoned this too was infra-dig.

My extraordinary food journey continued courtesy of another Scotland-based food blogger. In gory detail he described a Jock Monsieur, a take-away mishmash produced by his local chippy and served in a pizza box. This consists of doner kebab meat on a naan bread base, finished with Glasgow Salad, deep-fried chicken tikka, pakora and onion rings, and surrounded by little tubs of fatty dips. The finishing touch was the Crappy Salad: shreds of limp leaves so typical of too many take-aways.

Mentally chewing this over, and trying not to gag, the penny slowly began to drop. So when I noticed a tweet from another colleague that he was having a cheeseburger supper for Burns' Night, I finally got it.

Irony is the highest form of wit. Shock leads to catharsis, the final purging of bad thoughts and emotional associations. My urge to vomit has ceased and I've come to see the light. Now it's so obvious I don't know how I could not have seen it before.

Clearly, we've become so sophisticated about our diet that we're able to laugh at our old selves, safe in the knowledge that we've moved on to better things, right?

Or am I just being naive?

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