Salt, sugar and fat: the nation’s diet
THE daughter of an old friend recently moved house to a different town and immediately expressed the view she had arrived somewhere that approximated to paradise.
Why? The abundance of leafy enclaves and tree-bedecked open spaces? The uniformly smiling, friendly faces of the inhabitants? The next-to-zero crime rate?
Alas, none of the above. Her joy was occasioned by the fact that the streets of the town were lined by no fewer than 22 establishments offering takeaway food – a distinct improvement on her previous situation where she could only call on the services of a mere half-dozen on those occasions when she didn’t feel like cooking of a evening.
The result, she announced, was that in the face of so much variety from Argentinean meat skewers to Korean noodles supplementing the supermarket ready meals she regularly bought there would be little need at all to resort to the time-consuming chore of cooking.
The tragedy of this is that her new town of residence is in the heart of the South West, home to what chef Michael Caines has rightly described as the finest larder in Europe and the cradle of the local food revival which is slowly starting to transform the way we shop for and eat food – though not, evidently, in every case.
The matter of long-term personal health seemed not to be taken into account by my friend’s daughter who is one of millions of consumers who would therefore assume that these fied is not related primarily to cost blindly put their trust in the manutherefore might not have the highest but to ignorance. Because cooking facturers and purveyors of precredentials in terms of quality. healthy food from scratch is not cooked food not to jeopardise their The same goes for the ostensibly expensive. well-being: a trust which is certainly cheap takeaways people like my John the carpenter was round here misplaced given our huge obesity friend’s daughter pay other people to the other week and we were discussrate, particularly among those in the cook for them. ing this very point. He said he lower age brackets. Goaded by the likes of Jamie Olicouldn’t believe how much families
Now the Government is being ver and others in the food sector who were prepared to spend such vast called to account, yet again, for havgenuinely care about the quality of amounts of supposedly scarce ing allowed things to deteriorate to a our food, the Government has been money on ready meals and takeasituation where our record obesity offering healthy eating advice. Only ways when he could buy a decentrate is merely one manifestation of to find itself damned by the Lords’ sized chicken and a basket of vegetaour proud record of eating more profood, poverty, health and environbles for somewhere south of a ten cessed food than any other Europement committee for advocating a pound note and provide nourishing an country. diet which is too expensive for famimeals for himself, his wife and their
And if you are puzzling as to how lies on low incomes – and is merely growing son on Sunday, Monday we arrived at this point there is but driving them towards ‘cheaper’ proand Tuesday – just like his own one answer: the complete absence of cessed foods. mother had. any government-driven food policy – But this ignores the real problem: If you believe food isn’t cheap just and a Ministry of Agriculture, Fisherthat many families just can’t cook. check the cost of ingredients next ies and Food to apply it. Ministers It’s probably 40 years now since most time you go shopping. Look at the have been entirely content, on the schools stopped teaching at least the vegetables, the dry ingredients such contrary, to cede control of the rudiments of cookery and the expenas beans and lentils, even the meat. national diet to the supermarkets sive-to-run domestic science units None of it costs the earth: even a sobecause their fierce rivalry will were ripped out. The legacy of that is called high end pork fillet can be had always keep food prices low and a generation which hasn’t absorbed for little more than three quid and, cheap food keeps the population fundamental cooking skills while properly treated, will feed four peohappy. growing up. ple handsomely and well.
No matter that supermarkets have That means to thousands of famiHow you steer families onto the thus vastly expanded their sales of lies cooking is a closed book; an path of healthier eating, however, is processed food – all packed with activity to be feared simply because an issue that is currently exercising highly profitable but tasty salt, sugar of a lack of knowledge. My butcher ministers. If you tax foods that are and fat; it’s all been affordable, and says he has lost count of the times high in salt, sugar and fat you are that’s what really counts. young couples who, perhaps indirectly attacking the very items
But do people like my friend’s inspired by a TV cookery show, have that non-cooking families rely on, daughter ever stop to think about the determined to start cooking from with the danger that manufacturers costings? If you take the price of a scratch but have appeared in the will simply sacrifice quality even furready meal and deduct the supershop unable to identify anything ther in order to keep them affordamarket’sble.margin,theprofitgainedbyotherthantheburgersandsausages the manufacturer, the transport cost, and have had to be advised not only But the Lords committee is equally the wages of those who made it and on what meat to buy but what to do wide of the mark when calling for the the energy required to do so it with it once they get home. Government to “analyse the higher doesn’t leave an awful lot for the raw I’m utterly convinced that the costs of a healthier diet and include ingredients. And any sensible person problem their lordships have identi- this when calculating benefits”.
Aside from being bureaucratically cumbersome this makes two massive assumptions: firstly that a healthier diet is more expensive (when it isn’t) and secondly that the extra benefit money will actually be spent on food instead of on booze, fags or tattoos.
A lot of sanctimonious guff has accompanied the report’s publication, notably from Lord Krebs, known as the all-purpose peer for the way he has flitted from post to post and discipline to discipline. Originally an ornithologist his name will be familiar to farmers as the architect of the randomised badger culling trials.
But from 2000 to 2005 he was, equally, the first chairman of the Food Standards Agency (FSA) set up by the Blair government. To his credit he cut the outrageous claims of the organic food movement down to size, saying that people buying it were “not getting value for money, in my opinion and in the opinion of the Food Standards Agency, if they think they’re buying food with extra nutritional quality or extra safety. We don’t have the evidence to support those claims”.
On the other hand, given that the country’s health was already being undermined by the takeaway and ready meal culture it’s a pity the FSA didn’t kick up more of a fuss and start berating the Government rather more vigorously then.
But obviously it doesn’t do for academics occupying handsomelyremunerated posts with government agencies to start biting the hand that feeds them; they tend not to get any more work.