FATNESS AND FOOD

[Stanley]

FATNESS AND FOOD

30 May 2004

I doubt if anyone has escaped the latest burst of media hype on the subject of obesity. There is good reason for comment but as usual the ‘experts’ have come out of the woodwork and we are being subjected to a barrage of advice, statistics and plain hokum. The end result is smoke and confusion which suits some people very well. Yes, you may have already guessed, Stanley has some definite views on the subject.
There is no doubt that there is a problem. When it gets to the stage where an old man like me is healthier than probably 50% of the young people walking round there is something sadly wrong. It doesn’t take too much investigation to point the finger of blame squarely at two things, lack of exercise and bad diet. Even the ‘experts’ agree on this, their proposed solutions to the problem depend largely on who is funding them.
I was brought up under strict food rationing during the war and it is generally recognised that on the whole we had a far healthier diet under rationing than we do now under plenty. The reason for this is partly that the quantity of food we ate was kept low by shortages but a far more important reason is that all the food we ate was basic ingredients cooked at home. The food technology industries were in their infancy in those days and didn’t extend much beyond chip and pie shops, margarine making, brown sauce and proprietary drinks like Ovaltine and Horlicks.
The increasing pressures of modern life have forced more women out to work and so cooking skills have been lost, they are not being passed on to the children, particularly the lads, even boiling an egg is a mystery. This means that people are more reliant on ready-prepared and take-away food. The main fact to note about these foods is that they are made to be profitable in a highly competitive market so the cost of ingredients has to be kept down. This means poorer quality basic ingredients and substitution of alternatives if they are easier to use or cheaper.
I saw a statistic the other day which illustrates the problem in ready prepared salads. The value of the sales of salad ingredients has risen by 90% but over the same period the amount of salad only rose 20%. How can this be? Simple, more salad is being sold in bags, ready-prepared, at vastly inflated prices. Even worse, this is sourced and packed abroad in a special gas which extends shelf life so not only are you being charged more, the vitamin content has deteriorated because it is not fresh. Not economical and not healthy.
When your mother made pastry or cakes and biscuits she used flour, sugar, butter, dried fruit, salt and water. Have you looked at the list of ingredients on shop-bought confectionery lately? You’ll see glucose syrup, hydrogenated oils and strange things like emulsifiers, conditioning agents and anonymous ‘E’ numbers. Most of these are used to lower the cost and extend the shelf life of the goods. Hydrogenated oils particularly are known to be bad for us. There is plenty of evidence that they release free radicals into the blood stream which in turn encourages the build-up of bad cholesterol and narrowed arteries. This is clearly understood and yet thousands of tons are consumed every year via ‘food technology’.
Look at the fat content of many ready-prepared meals, you’ll find it is around 25%. Look at the label on Pot Noodles and be prepared for a surprise, they are just as high. This is not high quality fat like the dripping from beef or good dry-cured bacon, it is the cheapest fat that can be bought. Ever heard of MRM? This is ‘Mechanically Recovered Meat’. It is made by processing the bones and sinews from a slaughter house to recover every shred of meat from them. It's a disgusting mush that looks nothing like meat but is very useful for bulking out cheap sausages and hamburgers. I could go on, look up my article ‘Waste Not Want Not’ in Stanley’s View for more on how out of date and inferior ingredients are recycled into our diet. The terrible thing about all this is that this is what we are rearing our kids on. How do you think that the cost of institutional meals is kept down?
The other big problem we have is that not only are we eating the wrong sort of food, we aren’t doing enough exercise to burn it off. When I was a young man I ate like a horse and my weight never altered, it was always 168lbs. The reason was that I was working like a horse as well. Remember, what I was eating was home cooked grub made from simple ingredients. This regime put a foundation under my constitution that I am benefiting from today, at 68 years old I have perfect blood chemistry and pressure and am on no medication for anything. All right, there will be other factors like good genes but my point is that if I had been leading a sedentary life and eating the wrong grub I wouldn’t have been as healthy as I am.
So what’s the answer? The bad news is that I don’t think there is one. We are trapped in a life style where the young have never been educated how to identify good food. Even if they have the knowledge their lives are such that they don’t feel they have the time to cook so they will continue to spend twice as much on food that is half as healthy and in addition pay to go to a gym for ‘exercise’.
I shall go on in my own old-fashioned way. I shall buy plain ingredients, bake my own bread, eat good meat, eggs and fish and walk at least three miles a day. I shan’t live forever but the shocking fact is that I will outlive many of the young people I see walking round drinking their cans of soft drinks and cheap alcohol and snacking on the hoof.
Nothing else will change because there is too much investment in, and profit to be made, out of manufacturing and selling unhealthy food. The fruit growers are struggling to survive while the market in ‘fruit flavours’ rockets. Good butchers shops close while the shelves in the supermarkets are filled with water injected poultry and sausage and beef that has had no time to mature, it has to be bright red to sell it.
Give all this a bit of thought. Make 5 gallons of home made soup and freeze it in portions, cheaper than tins, better for you and just as easy. Do the same with stews and other dishes. Your pocket will be heavier, your health better and you’ll be lighter when you jump on the scales. This is the only way, no point waiting for a government initiative or a miracle pill. Your kids will be healthier too.

30 May 2004