Do I want a belly like Homer Simpson’s or a chest like Jessica Rabbit’s?
Since starting my weekly restaurant column for the Telegraph’s Saturday magazine, I’ve put on weight. So recently I decided that, when not dining out, I would eat more healthily. Unfortunately, I’ve found that eating healthily is an absolute minefield. Because seemingly every kind of healthy food comes with a catch.
Take, for example, seeds. Pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, chia seeds. All of these are bursting with nutritional goodness, and can therefore help with slimming. The trouble is, they can also cause bloating. Which means that while I’m losing weight, I look as if I’ve gained it.
There’s a similar problem with broccoli, kale, cabbage and sprouts. Supposedly, cruciferous vegetables such as these lower the production of oestrogen in men and therefore help us to reduce our moobs. The downside is that, like seeds, cruciferous vegetables also cause bloating. Which means I’ve got a choice between having a flat chest but a belly like Homer Simpson’s, or a flat belly but a chest like Jessica Rabbit’s.
Then there’s coffee. Coffee can help burn fat, but it can also cause sleeplessness. And sleeplessness can cause weight gain. Which means that by drinking coffee I’m getting thinner by day and fatter by night.
Another conundrum is dark chocolate. We’re always reading claims that dark chocolate is good for us in all kinds of unexpected ways, from lowering blood pressure to reducing stress. Only this week there was a study suggesting that, because it contains a compound called flavonoids, dark chocolate can boost your brain power. But on the other hand, of course, dark chocolate also contains sugar. So basically I can be either fat and clever or thin and stupid.
The biggest source of confusion, though, is red wine. If every news story about red wine is to be believed, it can be bad for your heart, good for your heart, increase your risk of cancer, reduce your risk of cancer, increase your risk of dementia and reduce your risk of dementia. Within the space of three months in 2008, there were two separate studies analysing the effect of red wine on the memory. One concluded that it makes your memory better, the other that it makes it worse.
Frankly, the more I read about the simultaneous benefits and dangers of healthy eating, the more I think I might as well abandon the whole thing and just eat whatever the hell I like. Keeping up with all these studies is too much like hard work. Five years from now, we’ll probably find out that spinach gives you cancer and Big Macs make you immortal.
Labour has dropped a parliamentary candidate, Mandy Richards, after finding that she’d promoted conspiracy theories online. In a way, though, it would have been fitting if they’d kept her. Someone like her would make the perfect voice for our paranoid times. Conspiracy theories are everywhere now. Left-wingers believing Newsnight tried to make Corbyn look like a traitor by Photoshopping a Russian hat on his head. Lord Adonis claimed that Brexit is “largely the creation of the BBC”. And as for the conspiracy theories about the poisoning of the Skripals, and the chemical attacks in Syria, there are too many to list on this entire page, let alone in this paragraph.
It goes without saying that it’s the fault of the internet. If you were a conspiracy theorist in the old days, you had little outlet for your delusions. About the most you could do was write a letter in green ink to a newspaper, whose editor would file it carefully in the nearest bin. Thanks to the web, however, your furious fantasies can attract a loyal following of millions.
And why do those millions believe you? Because conspiracy theories are comforting. They make us feel clever (we know something that the sheeplike masses don’t). And they tell us that any criticism of our favourite politician, ideology or cause is biased. You see, it isn’t that we’re wrong; it’s that everyone who disagrees with us is either corrupt or brainwashed.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the internet was invented by a shadowy elite to undermine the faith of the sane in freedom of speech. It’s a conspiracy, I tell you.
Know who I feel sorry for? The Lib Dems. Listen to the Tories, endlessly trumpeting their determination to end plastic waste. They want to ban cotton buds and drinking straws, and set up a deposit return scheme for plastic bottles. By the time of the next election, there won’t be a scrap of plastic left in your house. Barbie dolls will be made of papier-mâché and owning Tupperware will be punishable by death.
The poor old Lib Dems must feel both triumphant and deflated. Five years ago, in the Coalition government, they suggested charging for plastic bags. The Tories, however, were against it, and apparently relented only in exchange for a promise of support on benefits cuts. But then the plastic bag charge turned out to be both effective and popular – upon which the Tories seized the credit, and set about turning themselves into the noble warriors against plastic waste we see today. Meanwhile, the Lib Dems languish in a puddle of self-pity, forlorn and forgotten, wondering where it all went wrong.
I’ll tell you what the Coalition was like. It was like two anglerfish, mating. The female anglerfish is big and ugly and scary, while the male anglerfish is tiny and needy and weak. And when they’re mating, something bizarre and terrifying happens. The weedy male eagerly attaches himself to the big, scary female… and then, very slowly, she absorbs him. Little by little, his whole body vanishes inside her forever, until there’s none of him left. Other, that is, for his tiny testicles, which remain dangling from her back, like some kind of mad, hideous trophy.
And that, essentially, is what happened with the Coalition. Except that the anglerfish mating is prettier.