Britain is in the throes of an eating disorder
It’s time to tackle Britain’s eating disorder
It is, of course, perfectly possible to consume 10 portions of fruit and vegetables a day if you are, say, an elk or a sheep or a cleaneating guru who makes their living posting pictures on Instagram of chocolate mousse made from avocado. But what are the rest of us to do?
If, as researchers at Imperial College London announced this week, we need to up our fruit and veg game from five to 10 portions per day, how will we find time to do anything other than graze on pre-washed packs of supermarket bistro salad?: “I would absolutely love to come out for dinner to the Michelinstarred restaurant of which you speak, but I am afraid I have to spend the evening eating blueberries and legumes so that I don’t die.”
In Japan, everyone must eat 17 portions of fruit and veg a day. Seventeen! But then this is the country that gave us raw fish and char-grilled river eel, so let’s not worry too much about their dietary habits. However, I’m concerned about the effects this 10-a-day directive will have on Britons already desperately struggling to fill their cake holes with cruciferous vegetables and fruit (that hasn’t been put through a juicer which extracts all the good stuff leaving mostly sugar). Indeed, there was a time during my twenties when anything plant-based that I consumed had to have been liquefied – I figured drinking a couple of smoothies a day would keep me alive: smoothies just sound so good for you, right? And if one glass equals one of my five a day, then five glasses must … you get the picture.
Shamefully, it was only after my daughter was born that I watched the documentary, That Sugar Film, and realised my error (if you haven’t seen Damon Gameau’s extraordinary film, I recommend it – just make sure you’re not drinking a Coke at the time). An apple is a perfect creation until you remove its fibre, then it becomes a poison.
The five-a-day campaign, dreamt up by a government keen to inform us, has actually turned us into a nation of blithering idiots who swallow whole every bit of food labelling that promises to help us live well. No matter that the fat removed from your yoghurt has been almost entirely replaced by sugar – the warm glow you get from eating something from a carton covered in pictures of luscious strawberries is surely enough to keep the extra pounds off (if only from your bank account). Common sense has been trumped by slogans and cute packaging, the irony being that the less fancy wrapping your food is contained in, the better it usually is for you.
On Thursday, when the scientists at Imperial announced their findings, Sky News also had a story about the scandal of holiday hunger, whereby children are left to starve when they don’t have access to free school meals. Research by YouGov found that a third of UK parents on lower incomes will skip a meal during holidays to make sure their children don’t go hungry: a parliamentary group has just been set up to get to the bottom of this Dickensian state of affairs. “It’s just a moral outrage,” said Lindsay Graham, a food-poverty campaigner. “There has, to date, been no Westminster government support for families and children on this issue, no national programme, no helpline, no benefit, no policy or funding.”
Make no mistake: the UK has an eating disorder. As a country we obsess about wellness, while largely ignoring the fact that many children will struggle even to eat two portions of fruit and vegetables a day.
We bang on about the obesity crisis and tear our eyes away from another elephant in the room: the increasing number of children living in poverty; the working people who were last year described by the Institute for Fiscal Studies as being “the new poor” (two thirds of children living under the poverty line have at least one parent with a job).
We have supermarkets offering us endless Bogof deals, selling us more food than we can actually get round to eating, while just around the corner the food banks are begging for tinned tuna and dried beans. Stuff getting your recommended daily allowance of vitamins and minerals!
Five a day or 10 a day or 15 a day, is this really any way to live?
‘The less fancy the wrapping on your food, the better it usually is for you’