The ‘lockdown look’ includes chubbier cheeks
EARLIER ON in this ongoing international emergency, it was reported that UK supermarkets had seen huge increases in sales, prompting many sages to ask ‘where is all this extra food going?’
Now, nearly two months into lockdown, the answer to that question is self-evident, given that our collective waistlines have expanded at an unprecedented rate.
Since the sudden suspension of football, rugby, cricket, even darts, Britain has a new national sport - the three-yard fridge dash.
Except that in many cases, there isn’t much dashing involved - usually plodding and a slight tip back of a chair from the semi-permanent office desk at kitchen tables across the land.
While grub has always been at the heart of everything that many of us do, our enforced stay indoors has turned this passion into a full-blown obsession, especially in our house where I have finished bingewatching Normal People - the best thing I have viewed in years - meaning I have little else to do.
Our mass dash to the supermarkets was initially motivated by fear of the unknown and whether or not we would be allowed out of our homes at all if the pandemic reached the levels that some very clever people had predicted that it might.
But even though we now have a much clearer idea of what all this means to our daily lives, supermarkets still have queues outside, albeit to help preserve social distancing inside.
You would’ve thought, given the amount of dried pasta, rice and frozen stuffed crust pizzas that some people crammed into trolleys during mid-March raids on Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda, that they wouldn’t need to shop again until July, but boredom got the better of most of us and we have scoffed our way through personal food mountains in extra quick time.
And that is before you put little people into the equation; my four-year-old is currently attempting to break his own world record for stuffing the most number of biscuits in his mouth in one go. He isn’t fussy about what type they are either that is what being stuck at home is doing to millions,and inevitable side effects are beginning to show.
How many of you checked in to the now mandatory video call recently, and thought ‘woah’ the moment you clap eyes on somebody you haven’t seen for a couple of weeks? Extra chins and chubbier cheeks have become as essential to that classic ‘lockdown look’ as bags under eyes, not to mention bad haircuts.
Maybe this was at the back of Prime Minister Boris
Johnson’s mind last Sunday when he announced that there would now be no limit to the amount of exercise we can do? After all, a morbidly obese workforce will do nothing to aid the recovery that will be needed to come back from the economic fallout from this crisis.
Of course, there are positives to be had from this urge to eat ourselves out of house and home, namely that more of us are adding skills to our culinary repertoire. Before this, only bearded men in dungarees would’ve even attempted making banana bread and sourdough - now we are all at it.
It is highly possible that one of the biggest challenges when all this finishes is that we won’t be able to fill our faces whenever the urge takes us.