Which came first, the chicken or the egg? It’s the foodie dilemma to rival all others, isn’t it? Well, not necessarily. Just as significant could be what hunter-gatherers discovered first, beer or bread? Was it bubbles in a forgotten bowl of porridge creating the earliest bread roll, or was early man kicking back with a cold one 
on a Friday night?

Because the answer is well and truly “up for grabs” according to Eat: The Story of Food (The Rise of Bread) (Nat Geo, 7pm, 14 December), which took us on a whirlwind tour of human civilisation from the earliest farming of grain to the contemporary pizza-eating, beer-guzzling society we all know and love.

Who knew the pyramids would never have graced Ancient Egypt were it not for the simple loaf? Or that a bit of bread discrimination - the lighter, the posher apparently - gave birth to the term “upper crust”? Or that glucose was sugar…? Ah, hold on, that I learned in school.

And therein lay the problem with this insight into grain’s historical rise. With all the nonsensical cuts to Homer Simpson snacking, or chefs describing their penchant for brioche - or “bri-osh” in phonetics - I was left feeling more than a little patronised.

The truly interesting bits and pieces I never knew ended up getting lost in the things I really didn’t need to know, mainly from “pizza pundit” Tony.

The premise has huge potential, but here it felt like a shot at making history contemporary and clever, which ended up condescending and a little cringeworthy.