food, glorious food
Would you choose the fish taco starter over the roasted butternut squash, or chicken liver pate instead of cauliflower soup, if you knew the different calorific content of the particular choices? Seventeen-and-a-half stone Boris Johnson certainly seems to believe so as calorie-labelling on the menus of restaurants and takeaways is the cornerstone of his all-new twelve week attack-strategy on the nation’s weight problem. However, not everyone appears to agree with bouncy BJ, and nutritional specialist, Professor Tim Spector, is happy to take-up knife & fork in countering this simplistic belief.
With Britain now claiming the title of second fattest country in Europe (sixth in the industrialised world), behind minnow Malta, and with two-thirds of adults being either overweight at best or morbidly obese at worst, there’s no denying that something’s going awry. More shockingly, one in five children are thus before they even turn eleven. Obesity causes 900,000 hospital admissions every year alone and costs the NHS in excess of £6bn.
Spector’s problem is that the calorie-counting argument simply doesn’t add up. Universally, calorie estimates are always less accurate than we would wish, and less than we are told, with studies highlighting that in practice, by the time the food is prepared, cooked, portioned and delivered to your table, they can be out by as much as 200%. B*gger. This is then further compounded by the fact that the numbers, irrespective of their accuracy, do not reflect the manner in which we obtain nutrients from food. Following his study of genetic epidemiology in twins, he concluded that humans, even those sharing large amounts of DNA, vary massively in how much energy they extract from a given food, and hence from a different meal. One twin was able to metabolise much more quickly than the other and differing processes and cooking hugely impacted how they digested food and nutrients. It transpires that, yes, for once, we are all indeed individuals.
In his recent publication, Spoon Fed, he clinically argues that the food we eat is a combination of the three key components – proteins, carbs and fats – and we need to understand how the three combine in our chosen foods and how we all personally process and metabolise these. Apparently, fish is not always a healthy option, and coffee and salt can be better for us than we’ve ever considered, while vitamin pills and commercially-produced yoghurts definitely aren’t. In moderation and, more as a treat than an obligation, meat’s okay but don’t think for one second that Gregg’s ‘vegetarian sausage roll’ is better for you than the Real McCoy. It isn’t. He strongly advises avoiding anything labelled as ‘diet’ and saves his most vitriolic wrath for any substance containing ‘artificial additives and sweeteners’. Oh, and perhaps eat smaller portions.
It’ll come as no surprise that the bad-boy-in-the-corner is the food industry itself and many of our unquestioned assumptions suit the industry just fine and dandy. When we worried about fat they sold us low-fat, but high in sugar. When we worried about sugar they pushed low-sugar, but high in sweeteners. The new government policy paper speaks simplicity of restricting foods high in fat, salt and sugar but chooses to ignore those that are ultra-processed and laced with all manner of sweeteners and additives.
Now, here’s the rub, we all know it. This is not rocket science and represents the eating equivalent of holocaust denial, or arguing that smoking doesn’t kill you. It does. We just need to accept it, and get on with changing both ourselves, our friends and our families. Governments can aid the process by establishing a clear, honest, direct legal framework: yes, ban all junk-food advertising irrespective of the time of day, massively extend the ‘sugar tax’ on pop and fizzy drinks, fine the BOGOF purveyors, restrict the influence of the powerful food lobby, tax the likes of Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats equitably, subsidise truly healthy foods to enable poorer families to eat better more easily and cheaply, reward farmers for growing the good stuff, forcibly limit the proliferation of fast-food joints and keep them as far-away from schools as possible. And whilst they’re at school, let’s feed our kids well and teach ‘em how to cook. Jamie had the right idea all those years ago.
Education, personal acceptance and adherence to what we know we should be doing are vital to any long-term and meaningful change in our attitudes and habits wrt what we stuff in our cake ‘ole. Sadly, on its jack-jones and in isolation, Johnson’s calorific quick-fix is doomed to be flushed down the pan even more quickly than last night’s doner kebab.
