Yes it's true, a disaster has been happening live on the nation's Twitter feed, the hot topic of last month being yet another food shortage: this time the removal of the hummus pot from the shelves of a number of supermarket behemoths.

Statisticians claim some 40 per cent of households in the UK have this bland dip stagnating in their fridges, indeed Great Britain is deemed to be the hummus capital of the world. I live in Norwich's Golden Triangle: here we have a hummus tap alongside the Prosecco showerhead and the white truffle oil fountain.

Let's be clear about the situation though - there’s no shortage of chickpeas, olive oil, lemon or garlic and there are plenty of food processors to be found on the shelf. There just seems to be a shortage of willingness to plug them in, throw the bits in a bowl and make the stuff. What are we to do with all our surplus corn chips, carrot sticks and sourdough? Oh, the humanity. This crisis comes hot on the heels of a shortage of avocados (now outselling oranges), courgettes, broccoli and even lettuce. (Fear not on the lettuce front, there was plenty of raddichio, lollo biondo, and rocket, it was the common old iceberg that was in short supply. Phew. For a moment I thought it really was serious). The talk is the next culinary disaster will be the poor olive harvest, meaning our Lazy Susan dip platters will once again be filled with peanuts, Quavers and HP sauce.

Food really is just the same as clothes and music, ingredients and dishes come and go in and out of fashion, today’s must-have ingredient replaced by another tomorrow. Take for example vegetarian options in a restaurant: the cheese and tomato omelette begat vegetable lasagne, begat mushroom risotto, begat goat's cheese and beetroot, begat the salt-baked celeriac.

For many of us, our diet is driven by what’s hot and what’s not. I live in fear of opening the pages of the paper to read about a short supply of Fab ice lollies, Curly Wurlys or Branston Pickle. I'm really not sure life would be worth living.