I’ve just consumed an apple. I think it was a Braeburn, but it doesn’t really matter because it tasted of nothing – the fact I’d purchased it from a supermarket might have something to do with that. However, despite the lack of enjoyment I’d gotten from it (duly making a note to never buy apples from them again) at very least I’d ticked one of the ‘five-a-day’ boxes and got all those good things like micronutrients and antioxidants from it, right? Right?
The answer for Britons to that question appears to be ‘not as much as you think’. A recent-ish study shows that in some respects, the per-weight nutritional ratings for fruit and vegetables has declined markedly in the last eighty years. In some areas, up to half of it’s micronutrients have vanished from the produce my grandparents chewed through during the Second World War. Not that this is really ‘new’ news; this fall-off in nutritional ‘density’ has been noted in places such as the UK and USA since the first years of this century.
The reasons for this are rather simple to understand; in short, almost all modern varieties of produce are not produced with nutrition in mind. They are normally breeds chosen to grow as quickly as possible, to produce as attractive produce as possible and is normally harvested before they’re truly ripe so their shelf-life is longer. Now, some folks will claim that organic produce is immune to such things, but it’s not really true; for the majority of the damage is done in the genes of the plant being grown and it’s lack of time enjoying soil, water and sun than whether it uses a chemical pesticide or not.
Even more short; they’re crap because agribusiness have not considered nutritional levels as an aspect they needed to worry about. And before you complain about this comment, consider that for much of the time, they don’t even give a toss about actual taste so why the hell would they care about something you’d not even realise was missing? When was the last time you saw a variety of say, pears state they’re ‘superior levels of micronutrients’ than other types?
Which is the issue which led me to write this little post. When it comes down to nutrition, much of what we do is based on trust we have for others. When doing food diaries, I rely on the nutritional values provided – yet how are these generated? Do they test the source each time, or do they rely on pre-measured produce which might have been tested decades ago and so out of date?
Speaking of out of date, much of the problem is down to this. In previous decades, charities and governments alike generally worried about raw calorific deficits than nutritional ones (though with the occasional situation which was proven without a doubt, such as the old ‘milk for school children’ programmes). This is simply explained; the level of nutritional science was low, the most pressing issue was pictures of skeletal children and most importantly they assumed the calorific solution would solve the nutritional one too because it would put the sufferers on a decent diet.
Problem is, a ‘modern diet’ is not a decent one. Anyone who’s not a shill for the processed food industry knows the simple fact; that said industry is geared into getting us to shovel calorie-dense but nutritional-light foodstuffs into our gobs. Doctors and nutritionists alike are encountering more and more examples of what their 1940s predecessors would have considered impossible; people who are obese and malnourished. Even more importantly, many people (35% – 75%, depending on study and definition) fail to get their suggested ‘five a day’ already. Is that idea based on the nutritional ratings of products from decades ago? And if so, does this mean we should actually now be aiming at seven, eight or perhaps even ten a day? That is going to be painful for those who are severely feeling the pinch in their food-bills, and even more importantly begs the question how the fuck can you consume ‘ten a day’.
However, what alarms me is the simple fact that this information is not really known. I only heard of this report in passing, and almost nobody else in the professional media seemed to cover it. No visibility means no public outcry. And that means no industry change – for the current shower of clowns, cretins and con-artists masquerading as ‘the Government’ won’t do a damn thing about this issue either.
I don’t really have much of an idea what to do about this either; normally somebody would suggest ‘try to buy organic / from a farm store / market stall’ etc, but as I’ve explained above the lack of nutritional value is a combination of several factors, all of which are very difficult to avoid. The only one I can think of is that perhaps, just perhaps the more ‘heirloom’ varieties of fresh produce and sticking with seasonable offerings you might be able to get better micronutrient ratings.
That and start taking a multivitamin as routine. Or start an allotment. Though that’s hardly the most practical of suggestions, is it?
As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions – though I do stand by said utterings.
The second half of my own personal ‘Eating While Poor’ challenge; where I try to see just how far a diet can be realistically squashed finance-wise before it stops fulfilling it’s nutritional needs. Why do it for another week? Simply put; I’ve not had enough attempts at different cheap meals to finally come to a conclusion regarding what could be viewed as a bare minimum for one person.
The rules of this challenge, plus the first week’s experiences can be viewed here; with no further ado I’ll continue the challenge…
Eighth Day
Half day. I’ve run out of my fibre bars, so it’s an apple instead. Another serving of cocoa porridge for breakfast, hoping it’ll prove to have enough staying power in the stomach while out to avoid consuming any expensive barred products. Also made a thermos of tea to take with me, along with my last pear.
Plan works, though it was somewhat a close call by the time I’d got home. Perhaps better to have a banana too next time. Another cream cheese sandwich as a late lunch; noting that I’m getting close to finishing the wholemeal loaf I’d bought a week ago and frozen. Daily foraging turns up some reduced salami and potatoes; dinner is an attempt at a ‘one-pot’ meal; beef mince, baked beans and onion affair, cooked on one ring – I’d bought said mince cheap and frozen a while earlier. Result; rather nice, in fact; but much of this was down to the use of condiments. Supper was the salami as a sandwich.
Conclusions: Got between four and six, depending on your classification of tomato ketchup and baked beans as counting. Salami (or any form of preserved meat) is not a viable solution for meals – the salt and saturates are too high. At least not more than very occasionally. At 65p, the ‘main meal’ was not much more expensive than the porridge (though that was down to the bargain meat I used and cannot be relied on). In both costs and nutrition, there’s quite a good future for baked beans – even if you (like me) go with the ‘lower salt’ option.
Energy
2085 cal
Fat
47g
…which is saturates
18g
Carbohydrate
271g
…which is sugars
159g
Fibre
42g
Protein
135g
Salt
6.3g
Items Consumed
£3.08
Items Bought
£0.61
Items Disposed
£0.00
Ninth Day
Day off. Fibre cereal for breakfast, have some grilled mushrooms with egg and beans for lunch, mainly to use up the former. A nice change from the never-ending sandwich. Snacks; a bag of ‘nuts and seeds’ I’d got as an end-of line way back and a softbake which came from I’m not sure where. Picked up some cheese and some Heck Meat-Free Chipolatas going cheap, along with some bread rolls. Guess what I had for dinner; melted cheese rolls, with cucumber. It was tasty, though I knew this cost was going to be high…
Conclusions: Hard cheese is not a viable major component of diet – far too much saturated fat. Normally, I’d microwave the cheese and drain off the excess fat, but this time it didn’t work on the variety chosen (Wensleydale). Mushrooms are decent enough, though lacking in the calories make up for it for their fibre, protein and relative low cost. Two/three portions of fruit and veg, depending on your consideration of baked beans.
Energy
2061 cal
Fat
80g
…which is saturates
36g
Carbohydrate
199g
…which is sugars
77g
Fibre
41g
Protein
102g
Salt
4.4g
Items Consumed
£2.76
Items Bought
£1.25
Items Disposed
£0.00
Tenth Day
Breakfast was several of last night’s chipolatas in the other two rolls with some sauce and onion; spent the morning homeworking, snacking on frankly too many lentil cakes which I’d given up reviewing due to the fact there was nothing to review. Lunch was a few of said cakes, with some cream cheese. Afternoon was work; got through an apple, a couple of clementines and a cup of tea. Lucked out on the evening forage; a load of protein bars and shakes and some bakery croissants. Plus, got given a few pears too. Picked up some jam for said croissants; slightly shocked that the branded ones had now breached the £2 barrier. Also, another cucumber.
Dinner was one of those which shouldn’t have been; milk, jam and croissants. I paid for that by the simple fact it didn’t even really fill; ended up having one of the bars I’d purchased – a ‘LighterLife Bar’ – later on that evening.
Time to do another inventory/clearout of the fridge; disposed of a small grab-bag of old fruits and vegetables, a couple of old over-frozen bread, a jar of marmalade which came from the wrong year and a protein shake which had all generally speaking, been forgotten about.
Conclusions: Unsurprisingly, a load of croissants were not a wise choice; they were over 650 calories, over half my salt allowance and all my saturated even before anything was put with or on them. However, proof (if any was needed) why diets can fuck up; my constant hankering for ‘something a bit tasty‘ led me to paying 25p to scratch that itch. It’s the pies back on the Second Day all over again. Only two portions of fruit/veg today.
Energy
2582 cal
Fat
74g
…which is saturates
36g
Carbohydrate
379g
…which is sugars
133g
Fibre
34g
Protein
96g
Salt
9.3g
Items Consumed
£2.90
Items Bought
£8.40
Items Disposed
£2.75
Eleventh Day
Day off. Cocoa protein porridge for breakfast, clementines and a pear for snacking. Finished off the remaining Cauldron sausages for lunch, decided to combine this with cooking up a decent piece of chicken breast from the freezer for dinner.
Spent a bit of time online; read that baked beans do count as your ‘five-a-day’, but tomato ketchup didn’t. Also read a couple of articles on ‘how to save money off your food bill’ which told me nothing new. Went out to the discounter’s for peanuts and bananas, found at a supermarket on the way home a load of date bars and some milk going cheap. The former went into the cupboard for packed lunches, the latter mainly got frozen into cubes for later tea and coffee consumption; had to throw a little of it away, mind.
As another meal test, I had the earlier chicken, with some couscous and steamed green beans I’d found in the freezer earlier – the former done with just a kettle and the latter in the microwave (along with the chicken). It tasted good; though I do need a bit more practice cooking this method so I get the times lined up.
Conclusions: Peanuts or chicken; not both. Or perhaps the date-ball I ‘tried’. The higher ‘consumption cost’ today was down to the said chicken. The green beans were good and cheap, mind – I knew this before, but not how cheap until I worked it out now.
Energy
2368 cal
Fat
83g
…which is saturates
14g
Carbohydrate
242g
…which is sugars
158g
Fibre
41g
Protein
161g
Salt
5.4g
Items Consumed
£3.34
Items Bought
£2.83
Items Disposed
£0.05
Twelfth Day
Now, I had a nice description of this day and the next done, but the crappy word processor I’m using decided to both crash and fuck up the recovery save, so you’ll have to simply put up with the bare-bones account I’ve reconstructed from my notes.
This day’s lunch comprised me trying out doing a jacket potato in the microwave; it wasn’t completely successful, but enough that it suggests it’s a viable method of cooking for this. I also didn’t appreciate that it was in fact possible to jazz it up somewhat using just a few condiments.
Shopping for this day was some cheap carrots, grapes and kiwi fruits; the latter two hopefully to counteract my constant hankering for sugar. Dinner was egg and baked beans on toast. This proved to be somewhat better nutritionally than I – and I suspect others – would believe.
Conclusions: Once again, baked beans come through with their good fibre rating and decent protein at an affordable cost. The low consumption cost for today is explainable due to two things; the lack of meat and the relative lack of fruit (two portions). Peanuts also helped here.
Energy
2072 cal
Fat
78g
…which is saturates
12g
Carbohydrate
238g
…which is sugars
98g
Fibre
51g
Protein
90g
Salt
4.6g
Items Consumed
£1.84
Items Bought
£1.53
Items Disposed
£0.00
Thirteenth Day
Another bare-bones review. A day at work, so the usual barred affairs, fruit and some peanuts (instead of my normal peanut bar). Was hugely hungry by the time I’d finished; popped in to a supermarket on the way home and picked up some very cheap Polish cheese which I had with some economy pasta I’d mainly bought to see if the gripes about it being disgusting were warranted (they aren’t that bad, in conclusion). However I did end up producing a cheap, but tasteless meal. Oh, and I had way too much of it, calorie wise. Oh, I also picked up some more peanuts and milk; noticing that the latter’s price had gone up by 8.5% since last week. And that the noodles I’d had last week risen by similar. (That’s nothing; today I noted another discounter’s noodles had risen by 14%).
Anything else? Oh, kinda screwed up doing pasta in the microwave. Think it cost as much energy as if I’d done it conventionally. Later reading suggests that I should have boiled the kettle and then have let the pasta ‘stew’ in the pot for some time.
Conclusions: That cheap pasta had more protein in it than I thought; though I still think in this case was a false economy – at least my usual pasta tastes of something, meaning that slathers of sauce are unnecessary. Could a person live like this? Yes. But only if they had to. It’s pretty grim and your resolve would buckle quick. Three to four portions today; depending on your classification of the dates in one of my bars.
Energy
2709 cal
Fat
93g
…which is saturates
22g
Carbohydrate
387g
…which is sugars
148g
Fibre
35g
Protein
90g
Salt
2.9g
Items Consumed
£1.82
Items Bought
£2.46
Items Disposed
£0.05
Fourteenth Day
Thank god this is nearly over; if nothing else, doing all this is a time-burglar extraordinaire. Today was one of those days which you seem to mainly graze; I got the calories in but don’t really remember eating that much (mainly due to the fact much of it came from date-balls, peanuts or the cheap protein shake I’d bought and has proven to be… interesting).
Went for my usual forage; discovered a couple of cheap cooked chicken pies. Said pies became my dinner – I wanted to see if nutritionally they were much better than the scotch pie I’d had before and proved to be terrible. (For the record, they were with some boiled carrots which I did semi-successfully using the ‘kettle method’ outlined the day before).
This I refuse to do. Firstly, this was on a Saturday and I’d vowed this post would be done by Sunday, so the chances of a reply in time were slim. But more importantly; why the hell should I have to chase this up? These pies are a regular product of the supermarket’s ‘deli’. Even if the details were (for whatever reason) not listed on the packet you could have easily have put it on your website. But no. Pray tell me, why is this? Laziness? Or are you hiding just how nutritionally shit your products are? This also happened with the ‘chorizo chicken’ right at the start of this experiment.
*takes a breath*
Anything else? Oh, I picked up a half-kilo of close-dated protein powder at half my usual price, which along with the cheese I bought (for later marrying with potatoes) bumps up my daily spend, though also got some slightly cheaper apples too. On acceptance that this was the end of the experiment, did one last clear-out of the fridge (just like I did a clearout before the experiment). Only casualty was a few mushrooms.
Conclusions: The stats for this day are guestimated (well, more guestimated than usual); I’ve had to approximate the chicken pies. As you can see, I just missed the salt and saturates limit; I shall point out that my consumption that day had been unusually ‘good’ before that – hit the five-a-day today.
Energy
2515 cal
Fat
75g
…which is saturates
21g
Carbohydrate
286g
…which is sugars
132g
Fibre
39g
Protein
95g
Salt
6.2g
Items Consumed
£1.83
Items Bought
£6.19
Items Disposed
£0.15
Final Thoughts
So, once again we have the total consumption cost of;
Condiments
£2.75
Coffee / Tea
£2.19
Milk
£1.83
Barred Products
£1.76
Meat
£1.64
Fruits
£1.57
Cheese
£1.10
Starchy Staples
£1.01
Vegetables
£0.95
Peanuts
£0.83
Fake Meat
£0.76
Protein Powder
£0.64
Baked Beans
£0.60
Egg
£0.60
Sugar
£0.50
Premade Products
£0.45
Cereals
£0.47
Bread
£0.35
Total:
£20.00
Again, this is not strictly accurate, due to the fact that ‘condiments’ is a large grab-bag of low-consumption items but nevertheless, do need occasional replacement (I defend this spend on the basis the boring dishes would have been inedible without them and thus, their removal would be a false economy). However, I also disposed of £3 of food too – almost all being deteriorated old fruit and vegetables. I ‘spent’ in cash terms £23.47, so in total my ‘kitchen reserves’ are 47p ahead. (You may wonder why I’ve done this; it’s to ensure I am not massaging the figures by running down pre-bought reserves which are not counted in the totals).
Much of the ‘loss’ has been from the fruit department; it’s true that I’ve eaten less this week than last and thus, didn’t hit the mandated ‘5 a day’ thing (why is it that?). But not as much as you’d think; I was relatively lucky in my ‘foraging’. The result is predictable; while I’ve managed to squeeze my bill down to £2.86 a day, it’s at the cost of insufficient greenery. I’ve also managed to increase my average daily calorific intake by 90; which points to a very simple issue which I’ve started to highlight statistically – that the cheapest diet of all is generally the nutritionally shit one.
What else did I learn? Well, that meat – and meat replacements – were expensive. In fact, I only had three portions of meat in the second week if you discount what meat was within the pies. What’s more, I wouldn’t have been able to afford them at all if not ‘bargains’. That frankly throws a spanner into many traditional British meal plan; the ‘meat, starchy carb and veg’ combis. More concerning is that it slices off one of the main sources of protein.
But other sources often cost too. Cheese, milk, eggs, nuts; all come in with relatively high costs per kilo. That even with all the cost-savings my protein budget was again about 30%; and partly why I resorted to using protein powder to fortify otherwise protein-poor dishes.
This being one of the key lessons from this experiment; that nutrient density was more important than mere cheapness – which was one of the reasons I never brought anything like crisps. In fact, I lost a kilo during the experiment; now, I could stand to lose a kilo or ten but it ultimately means this diet was unsustainable long-term (even more so if I’d avoided the ‘gorge moments’).
Limitations?
With hindsight, this experiment was not designed as well as I’d intended. The most glaring issue was the simple fact that a lot of the items I bought were reduced-cost and so not representative – I am not one who shall peddle the ‘I could do it, so can you!’ line. That naturally, reduces the value of my whole experiment.
This also damages one of the key ‘food economy’ advice given; to make meal plans and stick to them when buying items. But that does not really work when much of what is for dinner is down to the lucky dip of the bargain bin. Shopping lists are similarly limited in value. My solution to this is simple; to have ‘reverse shopping lists’ i.e. listing what you already have in the kitchen rather than what you don’t. The logic here is simple; that if you know what you’ve got on-hand already, you can instantly start coming up with ways to fit in those bargain eggs, cheese or peaches in. Shopping frequently helped this; it meant that when it came to perishables, I usually didn’t have much on-hand to waste.
Another issue is the fact that despite my diligence, not all my costs have been calculated. I take both a generic multivitamin and an omega-3 supplement; the latter vital as I consume nil fish or seafood. The price; about 70p a week which shall be needed to be found.
Then there’s my water. I use a filter, due to the fact I live in one of the most limescaley parts of the land. No, it really does help me to actually drink the stuff, and to make food/drinks taste nicer – not just a bourgeois affection. But still, that’s another 75p a week.
Lastly, there’s the issue of electrical costs. I did try to keep them down, but I didn’t do it scientifically and so I’m sure I made some mistakes there. Perhaps one day I’ll work it out properly, but that’s not today.
Full Circle
But back to the original question; what is the realistically minimum level of cash a person needs to spend weekly for a nutritionally balanced diet? After my little experiment I shall say as of April 2022 that number is £25 a week. Yes, I know you did it on almost half this but you know what? Bet you couldn’t stick to it for three months. What’s more, your meals are mainly fucking laborious and at least you’re cooking for two so seems more a worth use of time. Also, that was three years ago now. Lastly, I could get it down to £20 if needs be so there’s not so much between us – I provided the extra £5 as a little bit of a margin to cater to personal preferences and the occasional substitution (I’d budget another £5 a week if packed lunches are required).
Though there are similarities between us both; near-vegetarian diets that are generally dull, limited and time-consuming. If having to draw up a shopping list, I’d select a lot of wholemeal bread, full-fat milk, peanuts, rolled oats, baked beans and eggs. Then I’d supplement with chickpeas, tomato puree, mushrooms, onions and a couple of types of fruit and veg. I generally avoided potato, pasta and rice because of their high cooking times; perhaps if I’d owned the suitable items for the microwave I’d used them more.
Which is perhaps the main point; the ownership of the kit to do this stuff. That’s more an ask than you’d think. 10% of British homes don’t have a freezer. 5% don’t have a cooker (like I didn’t for the experiment). Scarily, around 3.5% don’t have a refrigerator. The kitchen might be short of basic kit like sharp knives, ironware and heatproof receptacles. Then there’s a deficiency in ‘knowledge’; a pile of chickpeas or oats doesn’t automatically suggest meals to folks who don’t really know much scratch cookery.
I find it interesting that my £25 a week is so much more than all but one of the figures I gave from my original ‘Eating When Poor‘ post. It testifies to two things; not just the significantly higher than reported inflation in perhaps the last decade (though it’s possible my figure is more accurate than any of my examples). but also the simple fact that when you are this poor, no, the healthy option does cost more. And invariably, almost any ‘saving’ cash-wise comes at a price; either more time, more cooking and/or more fuel cost.
As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Essays series.
So, it’s finally here. After twelve years of varying threats from ministers and similar, British restaurants (including takeaways) as of today shall be legally required to provide the calorific listing for their products sold, to be printed on their menus. Unless it’s booze. Or if the restaurant in question employs less than 250 people (I assume the former is to exclude the ‘wet side’ of the pub trade and the latter to avoid saddling small restaurants with the admin costs).
The goal is a laudable one; another salvo in the war against obesity. However, will this thing actually work?
Concept is as follows. You go to patronise an eatery, skim through the menu. ‘Hmm… that beef dumplings look tasty… holy shit, 950 calories! Hmm, perhaps I’ll go with the chicken noodles at 700…’. And voila; you’re a little less fatter.
The restaurant trade completely hates this idea. With good reason; it reveals *why* their food is delicious and why we can’t replicate it at home – it’s so heavy on the calories, caused by ingredients such as cream, butter, sugar and so on. They no more desire to admit this than a Instagram influencer would desire to admit to all the filters and digital hocus-pocus applied to their photos before releasing them.
Yet it matters little in the long-run. Surveys from the USA (who brought this in a few years back) show that these public calorie counts have had little to no effect on consumer behaviour. I shall hazard that the reasons for this is threefold; a lot of folks don’t know what it means, more don’t care and the ones who do already have their own mitigations in place – I know that things like nuts, cheese and so on are very ‘calorie dense’ and that quite often the thick sauce on the salad can make it flip from ‘good’ to ‘bad’.
That’s a problem; if it did threaten to change consumer habits, it might prod the restaurants into y’know, reducing portion sizes, trying to make the dishes a bit less nutritionally shit and so on. However, all the signs are that generally speaking, they’re not overly concerned. Apart from all the ones who aren’t; which is all the independent concerns or small chains.
What’s more, the level of information is even worse than the crappy nutritional ‘traffic lights’. Even now, I shall not know unless the restaurant offers the information of their own free will how good a dish is in regards to actual nutritional makeup – for example, the level of salt and saturated fats. No, all I have is a calorie number. Calories are not automatically bad either; if we had no calories, we’d all die.
The eating disorder folks have come out against it, saying it will make ones already obsessed with calories even worse, which is a fair point (though on the flip side, it might some feel a bit more confident in eating out because ‘I know how much it is now’). But in this, I argue is the worst of both worlds; enough info to make some more anxious, but not enough to be genuinely useful to others. Pain and no gain.
So… why have the government bothered? I mean, the whole thing is rather toothless, the regulations are full of holes (many, perhaps a majority of them shall be exempt) and it’s going to be down to cash-strapped local councils to enforce – I think paying £50 a pop to do calorie counts is going to be pretty low on their list of priorities (I mean, how shall they decide to test? Consumers saying they think a Big Mac is too heavy or something?). It’s not completely useless – I mean, a few shall be jolted into perhaps a bit of action on realising their usual dish was over 1,200 calories or something – but no way useful enough to justify the aggravation it’ll cause. I don’t think the industry is innocent when it comes down to the acres of flab in the country, but in this I can get why they’re pissed at the government for this.
My theory is simple – it’s simply a bit of ‘nutrition theatre’. It’s not supposed to actually do anything – with the exception to allow the callous libertarian end of the Right to shake their fists at the obese for ‘lack of willpower’. The calorie counts, like the nutritional traffic lights are simply there to deny the cover of ignorance as a defence for the acres of excess flab – not really help you lose it.
What’s more, it’s a classic political wheeze; an action which is done to be seen ‘doing something about the problem’ while knowing full well it’s total effect on the problem shall be near zero. Something the industry has pointed out; that their contribution to our total calorific intake is pretty small.
Okay, it’s not completely useless a policy. But not far off it.
As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions.
I do try to review and refresh old blog content to keep it relevant; and this week it was the turn of ‘Eating While Poor’. While expanding said content and commenting on one of the (new) examples, a mini-litany of complaints towards it built up; one of the main ones being that nobody was taking into account cooking costs – of particular interest right now with news that people are turning away free root vegetables and potatoes simply because they can’t afford the long cooking times for them.
So, I hit up Google and the like – and don’t find anything. Admittedly, I didn’t search very hard. But it’s quite possible such a thing doesn’t exist. And what does a marginally-competent blogger interested in things like fitness, diet and poverty do when encountering such a gap?
Yep. Welcome to my own, personal ‘Poverty Diet’ challenge.
Da Rules
The following have been written with the various weaknesses in the other challenges/plans in mind. While I accept I can’t do this perfectly, I can at least make a decent attempt to produce a semi-reliable result. Therefore…
#1: While I will be keeping a tally of what I spend, the headline number will be the price of what I consume. This – hopefully – shall help to give more reliable figures, allowing me to eat a more realistic diet without cheating the numbers (by say, stocking up on stuff before the challenge or anything).
#2: The price of foodstuffs disposed of shall also be calculated. I don’t think there’s much actual waste going on, but I’m curious to just how much.
#3: Various ‘low use’ items condiments, herbs, spices etc won’t be calculated on consumption, but I’ll factor in replacement spending for new items on the assumption in the long run this evens out.
#4: ‘Bargains’ are factored in at their lower price if they are available to the general public. Otherwise, they’re charged at the rate shown at the Aldi website.
#5: I shall focus on the cheapest items with acceptable quality. Sometimes, the cheapest stuff is so poor it’s actually a false economy to purchase, as well as increasing the feelings of truly ‘in the shit’. This is a ‘poverty diet’, not a ‘right on the edge’ one.
#6: As part of the challenge is whether it’s possible to eat a healthy diet when poor, I shall also be keeping a tally of the nutritionals. Yep, a food diary too.
#7: As I am ‘very poor’, this means I’m very conscious of keeping costs low. This means that I will be acutely aware of how expensive it is to cook foodstuffs and thus avoid items which require long periods of heat etc.
#8: Lastly, on the learning that quite a few folks lack kitchen appliances, I am going to limit myself even further. In this challenge, I do not have an oven. Instead, I have a two-ring hotplate which I borrowed from a bemused relative (‘but it’s kind of shit?’) for this challenge. I also have a microwave, so it’s not that bad.
So, here we go…
First Day
The first thought – while making the morning coffee – is that I don’t actually know how much loads of stuff costs. Like the price of the coffee I’m about to drink. While drinking that with a fibre bar, I do the maths; it’s 11.5p a cup. Didn’t realise that. Did a cup of tea too, for comparison; 3.6p. This is made easier by the fact I’ve already measured out the ingredients for both in the past for my food diary waay back.
Home working in the morning – another coffee and an apple happens. Realise I’ve got to go out to the Post Office; decide to pop into a discounter’s next door afterwards – see if they’ve got anything good. Realise that I don’t really know what I need to get. Shit. Being this poor seems to need more planning than my usual methods. Did spy a wholemeal loaf and some sandwich thins on ‘final markdown’ and get these, putting them in the freezer on getting home.
Afternoon I’m out at work. Normally, I’d buy something while out, but conscious of the prices of stuff, I have an early lunch at home first. Manage to find some slightly staled up pitta breads, a bit of cucumber and cream cheese. Toasted and with some herbs on it, rather nice. Though run out of onion granules, shit.
On way home from work, go via town and some shopping – now I’ve got a better idea of what I’ve already got on-hand. I need to find some barred items for ‘on site’ workdays; locate from a pound store some decent enough plain flapjacks and my beloved Mr Toms to see me through a bit. A visit to a beauty shop leads me to find a 4-pack of short-dated protein bars. Per unit will be 50p, so okay enough. Plus, shall allow a review to be done while I’m on the challenge.
I’ve already been to four shops by this point and I’m more tired than I’d normally be. The answer is simple; I’m having to look at everything; trying to find the best deal, if there’s any offers and so on. The supermarket which I got the onion granules from showed me an issue; even after the reduction for quick sale done, the items were still more expensive than the discounter from earlier.
By this point I’m hungry as hell. That early lunch was simply too long ago, I’ve come to realise too I didn’t have a proper breakfast either and remembering I have walked around 8km by this point. Have to eat a protein bar to tide me over as I set off for home.
Go via another supermarket; remembering that it was about the time for their discounting. I was right; find 100g of cooked beef for 55p. Ah, beef pittas (without cooking) it is, then. Get a lettuce and some mustard to finish it off. And a couple of bananas. And some cheap apple juice.
Have a large cup of cocoa coffee while I finish up at home, along with a banana. Like doing the food diary (showing my calorie deficit was rather serious) and the budget (ouch! This challenge isn’t going to last long if that spend is that high).
Some time after dinner, still feel hungry. Have a couple of pieces of toast to tide me over. Crap, use the last of the jam which I can’t afford to replace.
Conclusions: If I’m allowed to count the apple juice as another portion, I got my five-a-day. By my estimation, I’m about 140 calories under for my activity level. Everything else was within reasonable limits, though.
Energy
2060 cal
Fat
38g
…which is saturates
14g
Carbohydrate
315g
…which is sugars
118g
Fibre
45g
Protein
95g
Salt
5.75g
Items Consumed
£3.53
Items Bought
£9.03
Items Disposed
£0.00
Second Day
Day off. Use this as opportunity to make a sausage sandwich for breakfast. Plus, remember yesterday. Decide to cook two lots, so I can have the other half for lunch (and save on cooking costs). Good news; I had a load of Cauldrons in the freezer, that I’d picked up cheap a couple of weeks back. With a fried onion, the other half of the lettuce from yesterday and the cheap frozen bread. Pleasant enough; though by late afternoon felt the energy shortfall, so had a peanut bar to tide until dinner.
Made the trek over to the other discounter’s; justified in this case otherwise I’d be going for a run. Plus, I’d run out of tea bags. Got a jar of peanut butter for toast in the future, as well as more bananas, fibre bars, cream cheese and a cucumber (to replicate yesterday’s lunch at some point). Then I swung past my usual supermarket on the way home.
I know I shouldn’t have. I knew the result in advance. But I needed to show you. For they’d done a mass reduction on their ‘hot food counter’, and I bought a pair of scotch pies. Two for 16p. I could see grease-stains on the damn bag. And I still got them. Even when a bloat-man had to manoeuvre his colossal gut so he could reach pie (clearly, what he needs more of right now). They also had some ‘chorizo chicken’, which I ended up consuming that night as a snack.
Well, I had said pies with a little tin of peas (pies re-heated in microwave, like the peas); it was pleasant enough, but hell, I could taste the pastry, grease and salt. Not much meat either, really. Not surprised, now I’m reading that it’s only 11% beef. That chicken… well, I’m not sure how bad that was, really because I found no nutritional listings for it. So I’ve guestimated (conclusion; okay, not not great).
Conclusions: If onion counts, I got my five-a-day. But those pies fucked everything up. They are to blame for the serious ‘bust’ on both the saturates (69% of total) and salt (38% of total). Lesson here being; basically, don’t have them. Even one by themselves is very nutritionally iffy. Got the ‘daily price’ down by 20%, though. All it cost was my arteries, apparently.
Energy
2284 cal
Fat
70g
…which is saturates
23g
Carbohydrate
291g
…which is sugars
75g
Fibre
35g
Protein
106g
Salt
11g
Items Consumed
£2.70
Items Bought
£5.27
Items Disposed
£0.00
Third Day
Half-day; morning work from home, afternoon free. Did the now familiar fruit/coffee/fibre bar combo until lunch, which was a beef/cream cheese sandwich thins with cucumber. Pleasant enough. Afternoon of ‘pottering’; getting a few of those annoying little jobs done. That was the problem. Kept on snacking, after I’d made a peanut butter on toast around 3PM. Mainly on said peanut butter. Sign that I think my body is craving energy. Or just greed. Which is how I emotionally took it on seeing half the jar gone. Well, that was a shit idea…
As a penance (of sorts) I decided to have a light(er) dinner; did myself my own instant noodles; a ready-to-wok pack, with a little bit of protein powder, herbs/spices and a couple of salt-free stock cubes. The protein powder was a bit of a problem; in the end decided to treat it like coffee and have a ‘per use’ price using the cheapest soya brand I can stand. After consuming, learned said noodles was not as calorific than expected. But more expensive. Well, we live and learn.
Pudding was half a bottle of peaches in juice that I found at the back of my cupboard – I’d forgotten all about it, on the basis I’d not bought it. Was about six months out of date, but I reasoned that I was poor now and thus, must try them before disposing. They appeared fine, so had half of them.
Conclusions: Four fruit/veg today. That amount of peanut butter seriously screwed up things – price and calories. But problem is; without it, I’d have been in a clear calorific deficit. Also, fibre levels not that great. Plus, I am still spending too much. Plus side; salt intake pretty good.
Energy
2260 cal
Fat
93g
…which is saturates
20g
Carbohydrate
234g
…which is sugars
119g
Fibre
31g
Protein
102g
Salt
2.6g
Items Consumed
£3.45
Items Bought
£0.00
Items Disposed
£0.00
Fourth Day
Oversleep. Not seriously, but enough that I have to hurry out the door for work. Coffee and the other half of those peaches for breakfast, chuck in a flapjack, fibre bar and a couple of bits of fruit in my bag while leaving. Have a cup of tea while there, which is at least free.
Do a bit of a detour on the way home; pop into a discounters for milk and apples. Decide to get some pears too, hoping to avoid the ‘peanut butter’ issue again. Successfully resist urge to buy biscuits. Come out three quid lighter. Tried a the cheap-type of pear I bought on way back; pleasant enough.
Remember that it was about time for my local supermarket to (hopefully) do their reduction thing, so went in there too. Not much, but did get some mushrooms cheap. Remembered to swipe a couple of paper bags on way out to store them in so they last longer.
Egg sandwich thins for an early dinner, making up for the semi-absence of breakfast; I’m kinda getting bored of variants of sandwiches as meals. Spend a couple of hours getting to know my dumbbells better, post-workout snack being a packet of curried chickpeas I’d found in the cupboard (if nothing else, I’m clearing the backlog…) which at least felt a bit substantial for once.
Conclusions: Four fruit/veg today. Sugars way up, due to pear and flapjack. But at least they’re mainly natural, spread across the day and being used. I honestly don’t see much that a nutritionist could bitch at, though protein could do with being a touch higher. But I’m seeing a trend here; even when I vary my foods, I can’t really get the total price down.
Energy
1983 cal
Fat
59g
…which is saturates
15g
Carbohydrate
301g
…which is sugars
162g
Fibre
47g
Protein
60g
Salt
3.3g
Items Consumed
£2.92
Items Bought
£3.45
Items Disposed
£0.00
Fifth Day
Half-day again, this time in reverse. Have an All-Bran knockoff for breakfast with a spoon of sugar for a change. Vaguely surprised to realise on computation that it’s a bit cheaper per-serving than I thought. Normal round of coffee / apple / fibre bar / tea, until lunch which is a cream cheese sandwich; the repetitiveness of some of this is starting to get to me. Now time to get down to work; slogged away for a bit, another coffee and the final banana (water too, but I don’t count that) during. Then went out for a bit to finish what needed to be; came back and had a peanut butter sandwich and a chocolate coffee.
Afterwards went on what is now becoming my routine; the walk to the nearest supermarket to see what early-evening bargains they have. I’m not going to pretend everyone can do this; mine is a little less than a half-hour round trip and the weather so far has been decent. Plus, less need to do ‘artificial’ cardio, eh? I’m rewarded; find a half-kilo of baby tomatoes. Remember to swipe another paper bag for storage in the fridge.
Later that evening, decide to actually do some proper cooking. Ideally, something not a sandwich. Think this decision was decided when I suddenly got a strong hankering after chips. Decide to do the other half of those frozen Cauldron sausages with mushrooms and onion in a kind of stir-fry, so to only use one ring. Threw in a bit of tomato ketchup and some of the tomatoes bought earlier. It was quite delicious, more so because it had more than three ingredients.
But once again, the lack of starchy carbs is telling on me; end up snacking on yet another peanut bar before bed.
Conclusions: Six/seven portions today, depending whether you count tomato ketchup as a vegetable. Salt close to recommended maximum; those meat-replacement sausages took up a third by themselves. Saturates aren’t too shabby, though. Or fibre. And the ‘can’t reduce spend’ trend continues…
Energy
1949 cal
Fat
63g
…which is saturates
14g
Carbohydrate
238g
…which is sugars
143g
Fibre
51g
Protein
90g
Salt
5.7g
Items Consumed
£2.98
Items Bought
£0.44
Items Disposed
£0.00
Sixth Day
Day off. A bit of a lie-in, then gear up with the usual routine. Get drawn into stuff enough I forget breakfast and only realise at lunch. Well, it happens. Said breakfast/lunch is some porridge, done in the microwave with a bit of spices, brown sugar and a bit of protein powder to bulk it out. While eating it, calculated it to cost 38p.
Spend half the afternoon doing a little digging online on ideas on how to try to cut cost without nutrition; come across stuff like the ‘Stigler diet‘ and a blog post trying to replicate it for the modern day. Okay, I suck at higher mathematics but I can at least do counting; let’s see if I can do this more scientifically yet come up with edible meals…
First question; what should I be consuming? As in, nutritionally? After consulting a few sources, I come up with;
Energy:
2300 cal
Fat:
52-90g
Saturated Fat
<20g
Carbohydrate:
259-374g
Proteins
58-202g
Fibre:
25g>
Salt
<6g
Okay. So far, I’ve done fine for all of these, with the exception of the saturates and salt on Day 2. The average calorific consumption is 2107; normally this would be a concern but my calculations show that between changing my milk and cream cheese to full-fat editions, the increased calories from which should be enough.
Spend a half-hour or so mucking about items to see if I can get the price down further without screwing up the macros (while consuming an apple; a cheaper kind now as the shop had them on a special). Answer; not really, at least not without dropping the pretence of them being, well meals (one plan had me eating 8 slices of bread a day. Minus any accompaniment). Single biggest offender on this list is in fact fruit and vegetables; yes but that only works because I’m not measuring the vitamins, minerals and so on. The next suggestion is less alarming, though rather boring; eat lots more porridge.
The time for my usual foraging arrives; thank God, I found a load of cheap clementines. And some reduced cooked sausages. And a French stick. Well, despite the hope it’s sandwiches again for dinner. And judging from the size of the stick, tomorrow too.
Clearing out the fridge points out a couple of casualties; some mushrooms and a couple of lemons I’d forgotten about. And I was doing so well until now…
Conclusions: I can’t have white bread again; it’s the wholemeal stuff which is keeping the fibre rating high enough. As already worked out, porridge helped me sneak under two quid, the cheap cooked sausages doing much of the rest.
Energy
2136 cal
Fat
53g
…which is saturates
10g
Carbohydrate
297g
…which is sugars
104g
Fibre
19g
Protein
76g
Salt
5.8g
Items Consumed
£1.98
Items Bought
£1.16
Items Disposed
£0.46
Seventh Day
Working from home day. Have some of that leftover French stick for breakfast with some cream cheese and cucumber; well, I can’t waste it and is likely to taste worse later on. At least the condiments applied made it taste of something. Had the last portion of the stick as a snack later on with a bit of margarine; nothing more than a bit of ballast to help me keep on going. The hankerings for carbohydrate and sugars is becoming more pronounced as this experiment goes on; a sign that yesterday’s calculations are correct regarding the calorific deficit.
My late lunch is another protein porridge; this time with a bit more protein and a bit of cocoa powder to bulk it up a bit. Tasty enough; and powers me though my workout session after the work of the day is done. After a snack of a pear and the last third of the apple juice, then get ready to head out for my daily ‘forage’. Discovered; a pack of cheap apples and some fake meat strips I’ve had before. Their very low cost wasn’t the only factor which swayed me; it was also the fact it could be eaten cold (and thus save cooking costs).
Dinner is another ‘proper’ cooking session; a stir-fry, with a pepper I had from a week or so ago. And other bits, obviously. And some chilli sauce I bought cheap ages ago. It was certainly nice to have an actual meal for a change, though I’m now spending half my time hungry. Pudding is one of the new-found apples, nice enough. As become a bit of a tradition now; late-night snack of a couple of spoons of peanut butter.
Conclusions: Perhaps for the first time, my macros are sufficient on all fronts; got my five-a-day, came in under the saturates and salt limit and so on. Perhaps a bit over on the calorie front; either the pre-made chilli sauce or the apple juice should have been removed (but as I was in deficit much the previous days, perhaps not so much an issue). Much of the fibre is down to the fake beef, which nicely counteracts the lack of fibre from the second half of the French stick.
Energy
2491 cal
Fat
52g
…which is saturates
13g
Carbohydrate
368g
…which is sugars
174g
Fibre
38g
Protein
101g
Salt
5.5g
Items Consumed
£2.77
Items Bought
£0.66
Items Disposed
£0.00
Final Thoughts
So, my week’s spend, in the style of the original ‘Eating While Poor’ post, was the following;
Fruits
£3.79
Condiments
£1.95
Vegetables
£1.91
Coffee / Tea
£1.90
Milk
£1.40
Barred Products
£1.40
Meat
£1.32
Fake Meats
£1.30
Fibre Bars
£0.90
Cream Cheese
£0.88
Noodles
£0.80
Bread
£0.78
Peanut Butter
£0.77
Protein Powder
£0.64
Fruit Juice
£0.60
Sugar
£0.44
Chickpeas
£0.40
Egg
£0.30
Cereals
£0.23
Premade Products
£0.16
Total:
£21.87
This is £1.54 more than my weekly ‘products consumed’ listing; part of this is down to rounding but mainly due to the non-calculation of most condiments and so on. Throw in the 44p I threw away, it would appear that my house lost £1.97 of ‘stored food’ when taking the consumption/disposal and purchase numbers together.
I can explain the relative high coffee costs; I have standards and won’t drink instant. Kerrie had her Coca-Cola, well I’ve got my nice ground arabica. The main cost; the 26% spent on fruit, veg and fungi. Forms of protein took another 30%; I think you’ll agree on the whole I’ve got a lot of bang for my buck here. What’s more, there’s precious little actual waste; either from what is eaten or what is thrown away.
Which is an important aspect for doing this challenge; normally, we’re interested in cutting calories, choosing the less fattening foodstuffs. Not here. In fact, you need to find the most nutrient-dense foods, weighing up their worth not just on price per kilo/whatever, but also how many macros they can provide. Once again, the ‘Stigler diet’ in action. Could it be that if you’re extremely poor you should have butter?
Like I was fully expecting, this diet proved to be gruelling – physical and mental. I had to go out shopping every day and what’s more, planning future meals were difficult because I was quite confined not just by my limited cooking capabilities but what was on offer. The mental stresses was more surprising; the constant trying to find the ‘best bargain’, trying to work out which item is the best value and so on was tiring. However, at very least many of my meals were somewhat tasty, due to my ‘excessive’ spend on condiments and so on. Though I’m rather tired of bread products. Yet even then, I still got quite a lot of cravings, as I’ve explained.
Like many a post, this one has a humble beginning; a jar of peanut butter. A Meridian jar, to be accurate. In that due to the grocery fairy discounting it to the level it could fit my pocket, I actually got to try the thing. For I’d heard that it was ‘really good for you’ and so on. Plus, normal curiosity to the dietary lives of people richer than thou.
I’ll admit, I ended up not that impressed. It tasted weird (conclusion; I don’t like the red skin of peanuts), it separated in the jar and was unable to adhere to the piece of toast that it was on. The conclusion to the ‘why’ part was not that difficult: an absence of palm oil in the peanut butter.
Now, I’ve seen and heard this item / ingredient / whatever mentioned before; a fair few of the products I’ve tested over the last couple of years has mentioned them, or their absence. What’s more, I’ve seen some frankly contradictory information about how good / bad it is for you, as well as the planet in general.
What Is Palm Oil?
‘Palm oil’ is what is it says on the tin; the oil from the oil palm tree. It’s a perennial plant originating in tropical West Africa, but now grown across the globe in suitable areas. The oil itself is from either the fruit or seed of the tree. And said oil could be said to be almost magical.
The plant grows relatively easily, the level of oil produced per hectare leaves other oils such as olive and sunflower in the dust and it’s really versatile in uses. So versatile, in fact it can be used in place for almost all other oils and fats. It’s this which caught the attention of the Victorians – starting out using palm in industrial soap-making.
However, palm oil really got it’s boost in the 1980s when ‘low fat’ became the nutritional fad of the decade in the Anglosphere – a movement allied with public health folks going after saturated fat consumption. Couple this with the start of mainstream vegetarianism, the increasing awareness of religious prohibitions on the consumption of pork / beef products (the main sources for solid fats such as lard) and the then burgeoning obesity epidemic led to a strong backlash towards products such as lard, butter and cream.
Problem is – as American Dad put it – is that it’s all that fat which makes stuff taste nice. Junk foods, convenience products and takeaways; they all rely on scratching that itch that we probably shouldn’t. What’s more, fat makes foods ‘calorie dense’ and therefore, made things like cheese and peanuts appear ‘fattening’ to consumers more and more worried about their waistlines.
The Best Alternative?..
The first choice for the industrial food companies was a familiar one; vegetable oils. Soyabean, sunflower, olive and so on. Problem was, they were all only partial substitutes for the classic shortenings – some imparted an odd taste, or were really oily, too expensive and so on. Even worse, in the 1990s the whole problem about ‘trans fats’ came into the public consciousness, which hit some of the most common of oils, such as corn in the USA.
The next choice was one two decades in the making; the affordable, tasty fat flavouring with zero calorific content or trans-fats called ‘Olsetra’. Unfortunately, not only did it retard the human body’s ability to absorb other nutrients, but also had a tendency to cause ‘anal leakage’, often involving oil-stained underwear. Okay, the risks were exaggerated and effects not much worse than any serious maltitol (or similar) ‘overload’ but it caught the public consciousness right at the point the ‘natural is good’ woo started to hit the mainstream and Olsetra was clearly a product of the people in white coats in labs.
Caught between the bathroom and the heart ward, companies cast about for a solution – and found one in palm oil (in fact, for some companies, it was the only other option). Trans-fat free, much lower in the saturates than traditional products, affordable, very versatile in the kitchen (and beyond), counts as a natural product and is suitable for vegans. And in no short order, it began to be used everywhere. In fact, it’s estimated that palm oil is only listed as an ingredient 10% of the time – often doing the old trick of hiding under different names, buried deep within the small print.
…Or Just Less Worse?
Which is perhaps the best way to describe the situation regarding palm oil nutritionally. The vast majority of the studies are definitely in the ‘inconclusive’ category; for example one points out it’s still rather high in saturated fat, but while another says this isn’t actually much of a concern as long as it’s in a nutritionally balanced diet (which naturally raises questions on what that actually is) and so on. Proof – if any was needed – that nutritional science is in it’s infancy, mainly defined by all the stuff we don’t know (which makes it critical for us to be more conscientious in keeping said information current).
That in this case, I’m going to treat palm oil with a touch of caution; to regard it as a ‘less bad’ alternative to things like butter, lard and so on – at least until there’s been some definitive evidence to assure me that I’ve got nothing to worry about on this front. If nothing else, it’s assisted the industrial food companies remove trans fats (generally) from our diets, which is a good thing. But total calorific intake and saturates in general are still of concern.
And Controversial?
The bit which makes many folks bulk at palm oil is the environmental impact. As pointed out at the start, palm oil is a tropical plant and thus is almost wholly grown in the humid, sunny and poorer parts of the globe. Which means that palm is one of the cash crops which is in hard competition for soil, water and space with other things, like forests.
The argument goes as follows. Consuming palm oil increases the demand, which increases the pressure on such wild places to be turned into palm plantations to increase supply. Which generally speaking, is a bad deal for both the planet’s ‘carbon sinks’ and the myriad of animals that dwell within them.
Now, there’s a move for ‘sustainable palm sources’ which are slowly becoming more common, but some argue that said system is either flawed, misses the point and/or is simply a PR ruse. They do have a point – some of these schemes have been a load of crud in the past – but in their blithe handwavy ‘just use something else’ conveniently dodges the question of what can be used instead of palm.
For part of the dominance of palm is down to previous, ‘successful’ campaigns. The crusades against animal fats led to more palm in cosmetics and soaps, vegan pastries needed a replacement for meat-based suets and the drive for more biofuels in vehicles led to petrol blends often with, yes palm oil. As I pointed out a few months back with my Flexitarian post – most vegan / green lifestyles do contain elements of logical contradictions, pitfalls and uncomfortable truths; in this case, wild animals in (say) Indonesia are being indirectly killed for palm so you don’t have to use animal products in the UK. And as for poor working conditions… well, that’s everywhere, not just on the palm plantations. Or even just in ‘poor counties’, as I explained about British agriculture earlier this year.
* * *
Once again, an introduction-explanatory blog post which does not really seem to reach a conclusion. For this is one of those topics where reaching a firm conclusion I feel is impossible; there is deficient data on the nutritional side, and while seeing the obvious negatives for the environmental I’m aware that a) the alternatives are limited and b) the picture is a complex one.
As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions – though I did do my homework on this. Part of my Essays series.
In their ability to prove my point that Extinction Rebellion are extremists, a vegan offshoot called ‘Animal Rebellion’ seemingly tried to stop deliveries of foodstuffs to McDonalds by blocking their distribution depots, starting back last Saturday. Cue the attacks by the usual suspects; the timid ‘never rock the boat’ types, the angry ‘it’s my right to eat lots of bacon!’ brigade and the tut-tutting of those who while don’t object to the change, they don’t want it to inconvenience them (which basically defeats the purpose of the protest).
Why McDonalds got this ire is somewhat obvious; they’ve tried of late to green-up their reputations, including starting a ‘McPlant’ range this year. Plus, it’s McD’s – the symbol of much of what is wrong with our modern world. Animal Rebellion, after all are lineal descendants (at least in spirit) of the protagonists in the ‘McLibel’ trial of the 1990s.
Anyway, Animal’s Rebellion’s demand – full vegan McDonalds by 2025 – is not going to be met and even the most hardcore activist knows this. Instead, they’re doing this to draw attention to the situation; the problem of the ecological damage caused by mass meat production. This I cannot, will not deny – it’s true and to argue otherwise is either a shill, an idiot or someone cultivating wilful ignorance so they don’t have to do anything.
However, I do reject Animal Rebellion’s position that a planet of vegans is the solution.
The Argument Against?
Or ‘why I am not vegan’. My objections can be generally broken down into three categories; roughly ‘health’, ‘ethical’ and ‘pragmatic’. (For clarification, I use ‘vegan’ to signify merely ‘folks who follow a vegan diet’ and not the more vocal ones who treat it as an all-encompassing ideology / lifestyle.)
#1: Health. There is health issues with a vegan diet. Look, that’s why you have to introduce artificial supplements otherwise you’ll end up with severe malnutrition. I find the argument that you’d be ‘healthier’ to not consume the things which stop malnutrition frankly, somewhere between ‘odd’ and ‘utterly batshit’ on my ‘WTF?’ scale.
But are vegans ‘healthier’? On the whole, and in the West, I’d hazard a guess ‘yes’. But does correlation mean causation? I suspect that other factors are more in-play here than anything else. Plus, the ‘modern, Western’ diet is so fucked up that ‘going vegan’ would be a move in the right direction on health grounds. At least usually.
#2: Ethical. Unless you’re the most blinkered, ‘anything for the animals’ one-cause vegan, said diet will end up in a snarl of contradictions, pitfalls and uncomfortable truths. The above supplements won’t please those pushing the ‘only natural is good’ crap, there’s a debate about whether organic crops are vegan (chances are, no), there’s serious questions regarding the mass importation of vegan-fad foods from poor nations and on a non-food front for a moment, a debate whether the vegan-friendly clothing materials are in fact worse than the animal products it’s replacing in regards to ecological footprints and so on.
As to any vegan reading this and feeling the blood rising within, I’ll point this out; what I am saying is true. It would be a level of rank hypocrisy to deny this but then demand ‘carnivores’ accept say abattoirs. It’s simply not that easy; neither the problem or the solution – and wishing it so doesn’t make it real. In fact, makes the proponents look either stupid or disingenuous.
#3: Pragmatism. Basically put, ‘going vegan’ won’t work for me right now. Complain all you wish about ‘animal industries are being subsidised’ and all that, but unfortunately when cash is tight and I’m looking to prepare nutritionally balanced meals, sometimes the offending product(s) are the only real option. In fact, if I’d been vegan during the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting personal wallet-stress, I would be severely malnourished by now.
Vegan diets are also generally limiting in other ways. Often, restaurants will only provide one option, which means you’re buggered if you don’t like it. The suitable pre-packaged salads and so on seem to end up throwing in sweetcorn as a matter of course, which I can’t stand. As I’m coming to appreciate with the reviews I’m doing of meat substitutes, some of them can be nutritionally iffy. You become basically unable to dine at other’s homes, unless they’re also vegan. And lastly but not least; most vegan food-to-go; from sandwiches to snack pots either suck on taste and/or health grounds.
Stopped Clock…
No, I am not vegetarian either; though a vegetarian diet has much less objections on the three above points, perhaps enough to allow me to do it successfully. I refuse to ‘take this step’ because vegans are right on the argument that the demand for dairy and egg causes animals to be born and raised. To take their bodies’ products but deny their flesh is logically incompatible. That in fact, it could be argued that vegetarianism is only viable on the basis there’s some ‘carnists’ about to eat the dead things you refuse to.
Another Way?
It’s one which I had started to practice long before knowing it was ‘a thing’, with a name, proponents and alleged inventors. I’d mainly selected it on health grounds, following the suggestions any half-decent diet advice given to ‘an Anglo’; less meat and cheese (esp. red meats and ultra-processed), less refined carbohydrates and sugars while slashing back on the sodium. Instead, more vegetables, fibrous objects and nuts, ideally with a minimum of processing and/or additives. To be honest, the fact it also cut down on carbon emissions was a strictly secondary consideration and ‘animal rights’ trailing a very distant third.
Then I began to actually teach myself about nutrition, did a food diary and all that jazz. Fell a little on the ‘fitness protein wagon’, which meant I began to consume more sources which weren’t meat-based. Much of the above basically forced me to improve my cooking skills; for to cook without meat does require some changes. Went more with the ‘less quantity, more quality’ mantra in regards to flesh, introducing alternatives here and there.
I’d become flexitarian without knowing it, like (as of 2019) some 14% of the UK population. Which is double the amount of vegans and vegetarians combined.
Natural Diet?
There’s reason to suspect that if the human body is ‘naturally inclined’ to any general diet, it is the flexitarian one; primarily fruit and vegetables, with limited animal products and starchy carbohydrate (Kinda like the hallowed ‘Mediterranean Diet’, save the fish). What’s more, it’s flexible (hint’s in the name) – allowing it to adapt to your current situation, dietary needs and personal preferences – easily fitting around allergies, religious requirements or the simple fact you’re in a location where every option for dinner is meat-based.
It’s also relatively easy to keep; allowing you to swap out meat where it’s easy, keeping it when it’s difficult. Affordable too – nailing the two major complaints about a ‘true vegan’ diet; that some of their stand-ins are both cripplingly expensive and frankly awful. There’s less nutritional worries also; most Westerners eat too much meat as it is, so say halving your intake won’t really put you at risk of deficiencies (usually).
Lastly, it’s very flexibility means the definition of ‘low meat’ is yours. One person may see it as one meat dish a week, while others may see it as only once a day, or less amounts of it each day. There’s no way in hell that I – reared in a world of ‘real men eat meat’ and ‘a proper meal has meat in it’ – would have gone vegetarian (let alone vegan) without crumbling within days.
But that’s the one point that is missed; mainly by vegans and vegetarians themselves. That it’s not the dietary equivalent of ‘questioning’ or ‘experimenting’. Nor is it some kind of ‘halfway house’ or refuge for ‘the weak-willed’ / ‘greedy’, like so many think bisexuality is. Okay, it’s possible you may end up vegan or vegetarian via this, but that’s simply normal development.
* * *
In a way, I see veganism in the same position as solar power or hydrogen-fuelled vehicles; something which while laudable in aim is unfortunately still too undeveloped a technology to come and ‘save the world’ – at least for now. With the advances in both nutritional knowledge and ability to produce synthetic alternatives which pass all the tests, perhaps a ‘world of vegans’ that Animal Rebellion desire may come true in my lifetime.
But we do not live in a world of perhaps. The problems facing us as a species are simply too complex for glib ‘veganism will solve it all’ handwave answers and hope technology will somehow come and make it all fine. In fact, such lazy thought can be counter-productive, encouraging the agribusiness of the world and millions of consumers to merely switch to unsustainable vegan industrial farming built on exploitation.
Something I suspect the more thoughtful Animal Rebellion folk will hardly consider ‘better’. That is, unless they don’t give a toss about anything save the lives of farmed animals.
As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Essays series. For a more detailed introduction to a ‘Flexitarian Diet’ see this Healthline article.
It started with a letter. White and NHS Blue, with strict instructions on the back to return to sender if undeliverable. With suspicion I opened it, unsure what it was – the only thing I could think of was they’ve found a problem for an old issue I’d had checked a year before at my local polyclinic (turned out to be nothing).
Clearly it wasn’t; it was an invitation to book a coronavirus vaccination appointment instead.
At first, I didn’t believe it. I am young, healthy, work in an field not defined as ‘at risk’ (at least, not seemingly at risk than others) and don’t think of myself as ‘with a medical condition’ or anything. Except the letter said I was ‘clinically vulnerable’. That was slightly worrying; it was the first I’d heard of this ‘vulnerability’, and I worked in public through the whole pandemic to date.
The next part was that I thought it was a mistake – I mean, surely it’s a mistake! It’s only March. The roll-out can’t be that far ahead; I knew people who were older and/or sicker who’d not got it yet. This wouldn’t be the first time something had gone wrong; around five years ago the NHS summoned me to a Lupus clinic under the impression I was a person four decades older and living in a different part of the country. The letter was rather obviously a computer-generated jobbie and everyone knows how they can fuck up…
My first instinct was to call my GP. Well, my surgery; I think my GP retired some time ago (which shows how often I need their services). But I knew they were pretty backlogged at the best of times and they were also operating as a vaccination centre. Plus, I couldn’t remember their number. So, on a hunch I decided to go online to read the definition of ‘clinically vulnerable’, which I found on NHS Direct.
After a couple of minutes of searching, found said list. Went through it, still a touch nonplussed. Then I worked it out; I was ‘clinically vulnerable’ as of two weeks before, when an old childhood condition on my medical file was shunted into ‘Group 6’, and thus was eligible.
To be honest, this news actually pissed me off a bit. I’d spent the last three months attacking all ‘vaccine hesitancy’ which came near me with the gusto of an angry dog, with the assumption by the time my turn had come around nearly all their question-marks regarding it would have been sorted out. Yet due to a quirk of the system, I got to go early to help answer those question-marks instead.
* * *
A small part of me was tempted to simply ‘forget’ I had been sent the letter. After all, nobody else actually knew about it. But I had to set an example, or at least not be a fucking hypocrite. Plus, I didn’t want to actually get sick with coronavirus either (or sick again, as I suspect I caught it right at the start of the pandemic, in fact before it was a pandemic). In short; for reasons good or bad, I had to put my arm where my mouth was.
Then there’s the issue that I was perhaps ‘taking it from someone more deserving’. On the surface, this makes a bit of sense; after all, it would be better if our teachers, police officers or even delivery drivers didn’t get sick from doing their job, while me being ill wouldn’t really affect much at all (at least not in the wider world). Yet there was no way I could ensure it would go to them; it would simply go to someone – who may or may not be ‘deserving’.
It was at this point my own self-interest kicked in; reasoning that I’d had almost fuck all assistance during this pandemic and I was thousands of quid in the red due to it. I may be using a technicality to jump the queue, but you know what – fuck it. Due to some quirk of fate, I’d actually been given a good ‘Chance?’ card for once and wasn’t going to put the thing pack in the pile for another to have instead.
Plus, I’d had swine flu back in 2009, I really didn’t like it and coronavirus could be worse. And dying of coronavirus would prove a cramp in my long-term plans.
So, I fired up the computer, went to the page the letter told me. Entered my NHS number, name and date of birth – and it was accepted. Damn. Next, I was asked where I wanted to get vaccinated. It was at this point I came to appreciate there is in fact two vaccination systems – ‘local’ and ‘national’; because places like my own GP’s was not an option. That seemingly was the ‘local’ track, where your doctor called you in to get jabbed, while the ‘national’ system was done via mass letters and this online booking system.
On realising this, I was a little worried; didn’t want to have to make the trek to some remote locale. Luckily, there was a vaccination centre in my own town; buried somewhere in the warren of the large industrial / office park. Next, the time/date. This I wasn’t expecting – that I could choose a convenient one for me, rather than the ‘this is convenient for us’. I went with 6PM, on the Sunday two weeks hence. I theorised that if I was to have any side-effects, might as well have Monday (my usual day off). I also booked my second dose at the same time; twelve weeks later.
And it was done. I was given my appointment code, confirmation email sent. The online booking system ran very well indeed; clear, simple to use. But the important question was; would the rest of the system be as smooth?
* * *
I’d decided to walk to the vaccination centre; it was, at best 40 minutes away. A bit of distance, but nothing major. Two birds with one stone; the walk would be in lieu of my run. While it didn’t tell me to do so on the letter or on the site, I’d had a light meal perhaps an hour before, remembering vaguely somewhere that vaccinations shouldn’t be done on an empty stomach. Nothing too spicy either; not fair to be reeking of say garlic while close to the one doing the jabbing.
I’ll admit; I was nervous. This mood was improved by the weather immediately making a turn for the worse, causing the start of light drizzle. Okay, I had a decent coat and shoes, but if it pissed it down I’d be rather drowned-looking by the time I’d got to the centre. However, luckily it merely continued to threaten, rather than deliver rain.
One of my main worries had been a difficulty in finding the place, something unfounded as by the major junction signs had been put up providing directions. Simply followed the arrows, ending up near a very nondescript office complex surrounded by the ‘discreet’ security fencing. And a couple of people in high-vis manning the turn-off road.
The looks they gave me was clear; I was the only one who’d not arrived by car (at least, not on their shift). Asked me for my phone code; my reply being that I didn’t have one, merely showed by invitation letter (to which I’d put my appointment number on). Just a formality; waved me through and told me to follow the signs.
Down the side-road, through a multi-story car park, coming up to the side entry to the building. Here, the security became tighter; couple of security guards, the woman with the clipboard requesting my name and date of birth. I gave it, and I was waved through.
Through a warren or corridors; in hindsight, this was deliberately so for any surge in patients could be queued up in the mandatory socially distanced manner. However, this being a Sunday evening it was a slightly surreal look of the ‘patients’ going through the warren, outnumbered by the ‘staff’ by at least 5 to 1. Got asked for my details perhaps three more times when inside; I think it’s to make sure nobody was trying to masquerade as somebody else (though admittedly, a well-schooled masquerader could pass this, as they never ask for any form of ID). Then finally, after having passed the third set of guards and the fourth hand sanitiser station, I finally reached the ‘jabbing room’.
Just a very everyday room, this one reminding me of those blah conference rooms you can rent in cheap hotels for wedding receptions. One half serving as a makeshift waiting room with distanced chairs, four vaccination stations on the other half. No screens or anything; you could sit there and watch it happening to other people. I mean, okay it’s not like it’s a rectal examination or something, but I’d expected a screen, or perhaps it being around the corner.
I’d brought a book (suspecting I would be waiting some time) but to be honest, was too anxious to read. So sat in the chair I’d been placed in, people watching. I was the youngest, by far – everyone else was either in their 50s or 60s. I felt a bit of a fraud, that I was getting this jab under false pretenses; which increased when the man behind me mentioned his COPD. But too late to get out of it now.
The vaccinators were working in teams of two; one with the laptop, the other the needle. Mine was a moonlighting hospice nurse; for we forget, many vaccinators are volunteers. I produced my letter (again), if they were at all surprised at my presence (not being suitably old/ill) they didn’t show it. Once they found me in ‘the system’, quickly ran through the standard safety questions, then they told me that I’d be getting the Oxford / AstraZeneca one. This being literally days before the whole ‘blood clot’ palaver broke.
Then I got jabbed. An anti-climatic event. They used a slimmer gauge of needle than the vaccinations I’d had a teen, I’ll say this much. Then they gave me the ‘drug leaflet’ and a little card with the batch number written on it. Normally, they’d make you wait for around fifteen minutes for any adverse reaction, but as I didn’t drive there they simply let me go home immediately.
* * *
The side-effects kicked in the next morning. No arm soreness or rash; simply fatigue and a bit of a headache – both of these listed under ‘Very Common’ in the leaflet. Did as bidden; took some paracetamol and logged onto the reporting site to, well report it (as this rollout is effectively an extended ‘field trial’).
By that evening I felt a bit better; by Tuesday morning I was ‘good enough’ to go back to normality. Wednesday saw no symptoms at all, save a tiny bit of soreness in the ‘jabbed’ muscle, though to be fair I only discovered this while performing some flys with weights (so is kinda self-inflicted). And by Friday this was gone too. I know a few others who had worse side-effects, but as I pointed out to them later on; I’m a lot fitter than they are.
In the month since then; nothing. I’ve still kept on doing the standard things like washing hands, distancing, mask and so on, because being vaccinated does not stop you from getting it, or from giving it to others – just from you from getting sick. (though there have been reports that it reduces your chance of catching it and giving it to others, which is good).
* * *
I know there’s been a lot of folks my age and under being rather sceptical about getting vaccinated, which is fair enough – we shouldn’t simply blindly accept everything we’re told. Particularly if it’s the likes of Johnson telling you, a man I wouldn’t trust on announcing the day of the week without external evidence. But in this case, he is being truthful.
In the grand scheme of things, the risks of being vaccinated (side effects etc) is much lower than the risks of getting coronavirus and it turning out bad for you. Yes, we don’t know ‘all the effects’ yet, but that can be said about anything remotely new. ‘Long Covid’ is a thing, and something you really don’t want. This disease may primarily be an ‘old person’ thing, but not completely.
Then there is the simple fact that it is now impossible to eradicate coronavirus from the world, or even from the UK. Therefore, the unvaccinated will always be at risk. It’s a simple enough question; do you want to get sick? Oddly enough, the vaccine will probably make it easier for you to catch it because all the vaccinated people will be out and about, giving each other coronavirus without realising it. And soon enough, you. Which will get easier as the restrictions are withdrawn.
The point is simple. Get the vaccine, make the chances of you getting sick with coronavirus become almost nil. The chances of getting an AZ bloodclot is around 300,000 to 1, which is in fact half as ‘risky’ than being killed by a bolt of lightning.
Other people are talking a load of crap. It won’t make you impotent, or autistic, or dead. And Bill Gates doesn’t need to implant a tracking chip in you because Steve Jobs convinced you to pay for your tracker device years ago andZuckerberg gets you to diligently self-spy.
As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Covid Pandemic and Essays series.
While all elected politicians do this to some extent, Johnson may be one of the most prolific British giver of what I’ll term ‘drunk promises’ to date; in the ‘heat of the moment’ they’re thrown out, only to be quickly buried and pretended they never were uttered. Case in point; the slurred ‘I love the NHS’ while sick with Covid last year, now sober ticks off the insultingly low 1% rise for said staff (with the implied byline that they should be grateful for that much; okay, it’s a red rag to a bull here, but why should they be grateful to have a paypacket which declines in real value? At a time they’re massively understaffed?).
Anyway, one of the ‘drunk promises’ Johnson is apparently planning to slither out of is the series of restrictions on advertising of ‘junk food’, such as a ban on pre-watershed TV advertising (a ‘totally radical idea’ from people who still think kids watch TV like, well I did in the ’90s) as part of his anti-obesity drive related to said Covid. Call me a cynic, but I suspect the fact it’s being destined for the axe (for this government rules by leak; float the balloon a few days early, and unless it’s utterly destroyed, do it) is primarily from the astute lobbying from said food manufacturers and distributors, who are perhaps one of the most potent of lobby groups in the current age.
Yet I’m not actually that annoyed at that, oddly enough. And I feel I need to explain why; after all, I am one who is interested in politics, sociology, economics, fitness and the interplay between them all.
Sinister Quotation Marks?
Ah, the humble quote mark, rendering the honest into ‘honest’, and immediately flipping it’s meaning. But why use it for junk food, you ask? The answer is simple; the term is in fact undefined, relatively meaningless and a pejorative.
What is junk food? That’s the first problem, there is no set definition. It suffers from a ‘I know it when I see it’ syndrome, which is not that bad when applied to Real LifeTM (if the person has a half-decent understanding of nutrition) but frankly sucks when designing say, government policy.
The issue in a nutshell is that any system designed to target ‘junk food’ ends up creating both ‘false positives’ (‘good’ labelled ‘bad’), and ‘false negatives’ (vice-versa). That is, the things which are assumed to be ‘junk’ and not. Cheese, beef, pork and many nuts are generally assumed to be ‘good’ (or at least ‘neutral’) but often can be dragged into the junk bracket by (usually) it’s fat content, yet ‘zero calorie’ soft drinks manage to dodge that bullet – a situation exacerbated by the crappy nutritional ‘traffic lights’ used in the UK. Yet no sane nutritionist would advise you consume less apples and more Coke Zero.
This whole fuzziness is noted by one of the editors of the book Panic Nation, who pointed out that “to label a food as ‘junk’ is just another way of saying, ‘I disapprove of it’.”. ‘Fast food’ is often conflated with ‘junk’ too; but while a lot of the former is also the latter, the two groups are not identical – and fast food itself is a pejorative term.
Unstated Conclusions?
The above leads to a depressingly predictable situation; once you’ve divided ‘good’ from ‘bad’, you then make the rather short jump to stating that these ‘bad’ consumables are to blame for obesity, diabetes, hypertension and so on – a situation any overweight person as encountered at least once (‘you should eat less cake’ and so on), often frequently. Sometimes even from people who should know better, like medical personnel.
This is a fallacy which is strong within current Western society, even amongst many overweight people themselves. That’s part of the reason for this post; this tendency worries me – and not for the whole ‘health at all sizes’ fat apologia, or even the reasonable issue that fat-shaming itself doesn’t work in getting people to lose weight. Just the simple reason that it is wrong, and it is counter-productive.
I know this, because I fell into this very fallacy myself.
The problem with this is the simple fact that a calorie is a calorie. Your body does not overly care that it came from a slice of ‘bad’ cake or a bowl of ‘good’ fruit; if it does not require that calorie right now it will save it as body fat. Which is why I didn’t lose much weight in the first year (in fact, not sure if I lost any); for my portion sizes were all wrong, with far too much calorie dense foods like cheese, nuts, pulses and soft fruits.
This is where the diet comes under strain. If you are following the advice of the ‘stop eating cake’ crowd but are not shifting the weight, not only does this dishearten but also means you’ll continue being harassed by said crowd, who will suspect you buy whole gateaux for secret feastings when out of sight. And this can create a very unhealthy, adversarial relationship with food. And this is an ‘enemy’ which you can’t avoid, either.
Three years later, I still have issues. I’ve only lost between 6-8 kg in weight from my peak (not sure exactly what it was, as I didn’t have any scales at the start), and I’m aware that my portion sizes (of generally ‘good’ or at least ‘neutral’ foods) are simply too large for a weight-loss diet, which is needed because my BMI and other indicators show that I do need to shed another 6kg or so to get out of the ‘overweight’ section for good.
(However, to not be too hard on myself here, the fat/muscle ratios continued to shift, exemplified by the fact I lost a few centimetres around the waist but not weight. I also managed to give up smoking and get through this pandemic without gaining any weight too, which is not to be sniffed at. But better can be achieved!)
Blame & Stereotype
When you look at the situation from this angle, you realise that the whole situation is skew-whiff. That the ‘junk food advert ban’, or even things like ‘fat taxes’ are based on the premise that the ballooning British waistline is primarily caused by overindulgent parents showering their bloated children with sugary treats, ignorant men stuffing themselves with two-gallon cartons of fast food and piggy women sitting on sofas with family tubs of ice-cream. That ‘incessant snacking’ is the primary issue, then ‘too much fast food’.
Yet… have you ever met such people, in the flesh? Sure, I’ve seen child-sized lard-tubs with their hands on packet of crisps, chocolate bars and sugary drinks, but I’ve also seen thin children with them too. That in my experience, for every person demolishing entire packets of chocolate shortbread daily there’s five or more overweight people consuming what appears (to the ‘stop eating cake’ brigade, at least) to be a relatively sane and ‘normal’ diet.
The truth – I suspect – is that these junk-food gorgers don’t really exist. Or more correctly, only exist in small amounts, the 500-pound manatees who are cut out of buildings to see Dr Nowzaradan via flatbed truck (gratuitous images of them getting drive-thru en route shown, naturally) for the freak shows masquerading as television documentaries.
These portray the extreme end of things, not the normal reality of the majority; but people are falling for the ‘script’ shot for them to sneer at – and then assume all overweight people are lazy, lack self-control, needy, whiny and stupid. And in a classic case of cognitive dissonance, a lot of overweight people themselves believe this… in those who are not them.
The Majority Problem
Is simple enough – most Britons simply consume too many calories for our energy needs, and perhaps for the majority of us, it is via not junk or even fast food, but the ‘starchy carbohydrate’ which forms the backbone of most diets – the potatoes, the breads, pasta, rice and so on. That we do not look on them as inherently ‘bad’, for they are neither larded with saturated fat or pumped full of sugar.
These are the staples, particularly in poorer British homes; they are cheap, they are filling and they usually have long shelf-lives. ‘A load of stodge’ can be a fairly accurate descriptor of many of the cheaper foodstuffs made – I have in my mind a ‘frozen chicken pie’ where the filling was two tiny cubes of meat, five peas and lots of gravy. Or my ‘year of pain’ when I lived on £7.50 a week.
In this case, converting from the processed, polished whiteness to the ‘naturalness’ of the higher-fibre, ‘wholegrain’ options is of limited utility; switching from white to wholewheat fusilli (for example) offers a doubling of fibre (to 10%) and a reduction of calorific intake (per 100g) by around 15%. Yet only four handfuls of the stuff still tots up to be 7% of the energy requirements for an ‘average’ person – and we may be tempted to have more of it than normally because it’s ‘got good fibre’ and is ‘low GI’!
I have seen many a health advice telling us to switch to wholegrains, for good reasons. But I’ve seen not enough stressing that if weight reduction is desired, chances are these will need to be trimmed. That bit of extra fibre does not make those calories vanish.
Not Scot Free…
Now, I am not saying that snacky crap, takeaways and premade meal ‘solutions’ are blameless from the issue of obesity – in fact, they are a major contributor to it – merely arguing the case that it is wrong to vilify them as the sole cause of it. That in many cases, they are the ‘low hanging fruit’ which can be targeted first if weight loss is desired. But that they can have a part of a good, wholesome diet as long as they are merely occasional.
But we must go beyond the monochrome ‘bad’ and ‘good’ labels for foodstuffs. To realise that it’s as possible to get fat on ‘good’ as much it is to lose weight on ‘bad’. To get away from the dated assumptions, biased stereotypes or just plain bollocks which is leading us to have a kind of ‘nutritional myopia’ where we’re getting hung-up on a bar of chocolate but ignoring everything else.
And to realise the truth of the matter; when it comes down to it, the ‘bad’ foodstuff is the one which is delivering the nutrients you do not need.
As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Essays series.
When I close my eyes, think ‘PE lessons’ and let my mind freewheel, the first memory is always ‘changing rooms’. I suspect it’s this way for a lot of people; for while your school PE lessons usually involved different sports and/or teachers, the seemingly mandatory fitness rituals started and ended here.
The sweaty fug, the echoey walls, the slightly sticky floors with the overlay of mud and dirt, haphazardly swept. Worn wooden benches, not enough space – reminders that your school is double the size it was originally designed to be. The smell of feet and cheap deodorant, sight of parts of youthful body. Teenagers talking, banging of boots, the background dripping of that shower-head which is forever leaking, the yell of Jones the teacher, chasing out the laggards with all apparent pleasure of playing the martinet. Glances at a few of your compatriots; the kid having to wear the crap out of the lost property box, that one you vaguely find attractive, the one you’re jealous of and that ‘oddity’ – the one really tall / short / fat / hairy / whatever.
From the distance of twenty-odd years, the ‘problem’ that the changing-rooms posed doesn’t seem that bad. But then I remember the lengths I went to; making sure I wore ‘right’ underwear, doing my best to get the peg in that spot which offered a bit of privacy, developing a manner of changing which led to the minimum of shown flesh and so on – I wouldn’t have done these things unless if the young me had felt it necessary to do so. Which leads to the questioning on whether the ‘mature perspective’ is nothing more than personal revisionism, where we edit our memories to provide a narrative which isn’t so depressing or painful.
One memory – or more correctly, series of memories – is firmly rooted in my mind, however. That I hated PE and all it’s works. The fact that this loathing still echoes over two decades showing me just how much I despised it at the time.
A Collage Of Failure
From balancing on a beam to catching a ball, via running a race to skipping; I sucked, bad. As a young kid, I wasn’t particularly unfit, but my physical body wasn’t really conducive to athletic performance; left-handed (this is more a cramp than you’d think), poor eyesight, crooked toes, weak ankles and a poorly-healed injury. In a way, it was the worst of both worlds; defective enough to make sporting accomplishment a non-starter, but not actually in a diagnosed manner which would stop Mr Jones and all his ilk from shouting at me for being crap, lazy or whatever. Or simply get me off ‘games’, period. (What a load of propaganda, that is. Making it sound like fun of some form).
I’m not mentioning this for any sympathy bollocks, but to make a point; that if I’d been a poor performer in a ‘real subject’ like maths, any remotely competent teacher would have looked to the reasons for the continued failure (or should have), instead of simply blaming the kid. Having old Mrs Smith bellowing at me to ‘do the reading, try harder!’ like any problem can be surmounted by sheer willpower alone is both stupid and counter-productive – yet we seemingly consider this acceptable behaviour from a PE teacher.
Teaching Fails
In fact, there’s a quite a lot of the tradecraft of the PE teacher which is objectionable in some form. The first glaring one being the general absence of motivational skill. Teaching is both a science and an art form, and much of it is to get kids who don’t overly want to learn to do so. This is an attribute which is seemingly lost on the average PE teacher, who’s attended the ‘Drill Sergeant School of Persuasion’ and is pissed off when smart-arse students learn how to do the bare minimum but they’re not allowed to belt anyone.
Then there’s the lack of teaching skill. That is, when they actually tried to teach you anything – all I got was the rudiments of perhaps a half-dozen competitive sports and a few ‘field events’ thrown in at the end of summer term as a kind of pièce de résistance. That’s about it. Oh, and ‘cross-country’; the ultimate ‘filler activity’, doing laps of a muddy field, normally while Jones is standing there with a cup of tea and a clip-board.
Looking back at this now, I can honestly say that my PE teachers didn’t impart a single item of information which proved useful in my adult life regarding health or fitness. Not even how to warm up properly. They can’t even take the credit for teaching me how to swim.
What’s more, their teaching was pointless. The ‘athletic types’ already knew how to play, say football so making them repeat rudiments was generally futile. The ones who did need the lessons were the kids to ‘didn’t care’ and thus, wouldn’t use it. The only good point about this was that the constant re-learning the same thing ate large gobs of time, which put off the day of reckoning. (And this wasn’t a ‘good’ point for the sporty kids who’d have loved to simply spent the whole lesson actually playing a ‘proper match’.).
Playing The Game?
Losing a game; well, it happens. Constantly losing games is bad. Constantly losing games because you’re crap is even worse. Having said crapness rubbed in your face on a weekly basis was the point I started to bunk off. Nobody finds constant defeat fun, and when you worship at the altar of the ‘competitive ethos’, you wonder why those who cannot compete simply withdraw from even attempting it.
This isn’t ‘snowflakery’ or some bollocks about wanting to ‘coddle kids from failure’, just simple common sense. Yes, I’m crap at [sport name] and what’s more, your half-dozen barely-taught ‘lessons’ are not going to impart enough either physical ability or technical skill to make me much better. Yet, you still expected me to run out there all bright-eyed and with a grin on my face? My memory is a touch hazy from the passage of time, but I’m sure I wasn’t either doped up with happy pills or a masochist.
Apparently, all this shit is ‘character forming’, at least at the public schools (yes, them!) much of the modern PE syllabus was copied from. Yet it doesn’t hold up at loser look because the very preachers of said lessons – the teacher – was usually rather suspicious types.
Of Questionable Character
The clear favouritism towards the athletic, for starters. Okay, I get (now) that you like sports and therefore will like others who also like sports and are good at it, but you’re supposed to be the teacher, not a rando fan who’s only got eyes for ‘people of the match’ or whatever.
Often this ‘blind eye’ is extended to include ignoring bullying; PE lessons being one of the best times to cause a bit of physical pain and then have it minimised or dismissed as ‘competitive spirit’ or ‘an accident’. Some of these are genuinely overlooked; after all, two eyes can’t watch all things at all times and if in a sporting event the context can be much more confusing. But I’ve also had teachers stare me down and announce my ‘story’ was in fact, a hallucination. In public, so everyone else knew I was a grass. Nice one, Jones.
Then there’s the pernickety obsession with rules. I’ll tell you this now; if my PE teachers had diverted the energy they expended on chasing up kids who didn’t shower or those wearing non-regulation kit and put it into actually teaching us, we’d have all been better off. What’s the lesson here, Jones? It’s more important to look the part than actually exercise? That athletic performance is directly linked to the colour of your socks? (think I’ve found the cause in designer gym-wear…). Or that it deeply wrong to want to wear a tracksuit instead of that horridly thin vest and shorts while doing cross-country in January?
Speaking of showering, did PE teachers ever actually think these things through? That having a communal showers with zero privacy (not even stall dividers), non-adjustable temperature (scalding hot or tepidly cold) and a smell of a urinal cake was bad enough for self-conscious teens in a country with little tradition of public nudity – but the kicker was that we students never had enough time to shower.
If I go full-pelt and cut all optionals, I can ‘turn-around’ in fifteen minutes after a workout session. Time allotted in lesson for this? Ten. Let’s also factor in that of the schools I was at, there was never a shower-head = student ratio better than one to four (often more). Therefore, the unlucky sods at the back could end up waiting the best part of thirty minutes (at least) for a shower to free up. That by this time, you’re already late for the next lesson (and the next PE class is already in the changing room) – or you’re eating into your own time. Like missing your bus home. Or your lunch-spot. Or just the pointless time-neurosis schools love to instil in their charges.
As you’ve kinda guessed; nobody had ‘proper’ showers. The teachers would check, but as this was done by looking at hair, this was easy to fake by simply wetting it a bit. I think I had one single shower in five years of compulsory PE – I do remember that my prop towel which lived in my locker got more use from hair-drying from rain-storms than it’s intended purpose.
Superficiality…
With the benefit of hindsight and a little bit of knowledge, I realise now just how shallow the PE ‘concepts’ were – that like it considered constant failure to be ‘character building’, it seemed to think that a half-hour of whipped, lacklustre physical activity twice a week to be the sufficient to stave off the ballooning obesity epidemic (which American studies have shown to be of minimal to no effect on the fighting the flab in kids). A situation which not only breeds stagnation and disinterest in the subject, but is so obviously stupid and devoid of logic that even the victims pupils point it out.
The obsession with ‘metrics’ – measurable results and so on – is also dangerously shallow. How fast, how long, how far etc. Is there even a point for the measuring? Normally, neither the teacher or pupil gives a crap about it – so why does it persist?
…and Harmfulness?
In fact, I would go as far to say that it is directly harmful for the pursuit of physical health. That it makes all too many people loathe ‘PE’ and all it’s works – not just at school, but for their whole adult lives. This ‘programming’ of hating fitness, fit people and anything that remotely resembled a PE teacher was a serious mental cramp which I had to get over before I started making real progress in This Thing Of Ours.
Even worse, Jones and their ilk failed to even impart any knowledge regarding health and fitness, the sort where even if I did not follow when 15, may refer back to when 35. No, Mr Jones – you left me completely ignorant of the subject. Your subject. Which was called ‘physical education’. You not only failed as a teacher and a coach, but also even as a cheerleader for the subject. In fact, my views of fitness would have been more positive if you’ve not existed at all.
And I know I’m not alone in this feeling.
Advocatus Diaboli?
Now, many of the above problems are out of the control of even the best PE teacher in the country. In times of budgetary squeeze, the curse of the ‘syllabus lock-in’ is even worse than usual; leading to schools offering the same old sports and activities because they cannot afford to buy new equipment, adapt facilities or offer ‘off-site lessons’. The classist result is obvious; the poor kids in the ‘sink estate’ schools miss experiencing the more ‘expensive’ or ‘specialist’ activities such as swimming, climbing, cycling or hiking – instead, ending up with the same four / five group sports again.
Even if an enterprising school is able to find the cash, it then runs slap-bang into the issues of Whitehall diktats; one which labours under the delusion that the above crappiness works. Then there’s the issue of efficiency; kudos is gained by winning on exam league tables, and PE achievement barely gets a look in on that. As a headteacher, I have all the incentive in the world to not only not invest extra into PE but to in fact, cut it back to the legally mandated minimum and focus my energies on ‘where it matters’.
Between these two, they become unsolvable headaches; PE doesn’t have enough time in the week do achieve much normally, will find it’s time cut further ‘when required’ (such as exam preparation) and there’s not enough staff to try to teach in ability groups, provide anything approximating ‘individual attention’ or merely give the students anything like a real choice of activity.
No wonder that we invariably end up with the lowest common denominator, one size fits none, statutory minimum, bargain-basement lessons – represented by the half-hearted jogging around the perimeter of muddy fields in the cold drizzle, while Jones shouts ‘encouragement’ under his umbrella warmly-dressed.
The Logical Conclusion?
Which may ultimately explain why Jones, his mentor Sudgen and all the others of his ilk continue to ply their ‘craft’ – because they do – even into the current age in schools throughout the UK and (I suspect) beyond. They survive cause few care about this state of affairs and even less can do anything about it.
This general lack of caring has allowed the incompetent, the burnt-out and the sociopathic teachers to remain (tainting the reputation of the subject), while their defects would have caused their dismissal years ago in any ‘important’ subject. In fact, the only thing we really care about from Jones is the assurance he’s not a paedophile. You’d think most parents would care more about their kid’s physical condition, but there you go.
Upwards, this ends up being replicated within government itself. The subject is not a ‘vote winner’, so it doesn’t get much priority on the ever-tightening budgetary constraints, unlike say, exam results. At best we can usually expect a tokenistic, symbolic ‘strategy’; – a spending announcement (which usually turns out to be peanuts or no ‘new’ money at all), a week’s PR campaign (a speech or two, and the obligatory shot of the Minister at a sports academy or something), a ‘pack’ which will usually combine the anodyne, the current fads and the party’s predilections, then quietly buried when the news cycle moves on to something else.
The biggest issue is perhaps the fact of governmental ‘compartmentalisation’ and buck-passing; Education doesn’t want to spend cash on an issue which ultimately benefits the health of adults, Health reasons it’s not their job to spend cash on schools, Youth Services explains their relatively minuscule budgets are already ‘too tight’ to fund these things and the myopic cost-benefit analysis from the Treasury makes extra cash a non-starter.
Zombie PE?
The combination of all the above factors leaves physical education in a kind of undead state; too ‘liked’ to be killed off, not liked enough to be given the resources it desperately needs to do anything properly. The ‘liking’ of it is not even true; more the principle of PE is liked, rather than the reality. To paraphrase Sir Humphrey; spending on school PE is symbolic of the government’s desire to increase fitness and tackle obesity amongst the youth – it’s not really expected to actually achieve much.
And the vast majority of PE teachers know this. Chances are, they’re taken for granted, skills disrespected, assumed that as they ‘don’t teach a proper subject’ they’re free to do the thankless tasks and more than anything else, their goodwill is exploited. And whenever you end up in situations like this, the most skilled people are the ones who leave for greener pastures – for fee-paying schools, health clubs, sports academies, gyms or out of the sector entirely.
The Moral Of This Story…
Is that Jones and his ilk survive because not because they’re any good – but because they’re the only ones who’ll stick it out, which means they’re tolerated. The toleration comes because not enough people care about it enough to really change the situation. And that as in anything in this world, the rule ‘you get what you pay for’ is pretty accurate.
Jones is the symptom, not the cause. To improve PE, you would need to not just remove the Jones of the world, but to construct a system where you employ people better than him.
As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Essays series.
Another day, another provocative title. But there is method in my madness – and unless I’ve completely grasped the wrong end of the stick, it’s an issue that the general media and the Big Public seem to be unaware of – possibly to our peril.
Naturally, I’m not talking about some loony conspiracy theory, perhaps tied into the ‘useless eaters’ concept or something. I’m not talking about the possibility that we may end up with a some new mutant variant which is resistant and makes a big comeback like a horror film sequel – though that is a risk. I’m not even considering the chance that ‘vaccine relief’ might cause a third wave and we end up re-opening our societies until the vast majority have been vaccinated.
No, I am talking about what I think is a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of the vaccines we’re being offered. One which is so simple you’ll hit yourself when you realise it.
Coronavirus vaccines were designed and made to stop you dying from coronavirus. They were not designed to stop you from getting coronavirus. A subtle but important difference.
This disease is a bit of an oddity to us, for it’s one where it seems between a third to half of all sufferers are either asymptomatic (not showing any symptoms) or presenting symptoms so mild it’s mistaken as something else. This is a problem which the latest UK Government adverts have done to highlight – you may feel perfectly well, but all the while you could be spreading coronavirus everywhere. Thus the mantra – ‘everyone should act like they have the disease’.
Now put the last two paragraphs together and let us walk to the conclusion. Our vaccination programmes may be doing nothing more than creating hordes of symptomless ‘coronavirus carriers’.
Don’t get me wrong, this is good in the respect that it’s saving lives – which is why the most vulnerable are being vaccinated first. But the issue is that if we are creating said carriers, once we start to re-open society the disease may explode back on the scene, as said carriers all start meeting people again.
The risk here is that coronavirus becomes endemic within our countries; that is always present, continuously claiming a few people (refuseniks, the unjabbable and the unlucky) as it flows around the population. Worse, the numbers of carriers hugely increases the chances of ‘new variants’; the individual chance of a mutation may be (say) only 1 in 25,000 – but if it’s got say 25 million petri dishes, well that’s a lot of rolls of the dice, no? Lastly, there’s the risk of massive flare-ups if carriers make contact with populations which have not been ‘made resistant’ – an historical example being the diseases which the Europeans brought to the New World and helped fell the Aztec and Inca empires.
As I type this, the medical folks are trying to answer the above question. Preliminary evidence from Moderna shows that it perhaps their product reduces the ‘vaccinated carrier’ transmission rates by two-thirds, for example. Other makers are naturally doing their best to work out their own figures. But like before, transmission rates of a third is still a lot if the original number is huge – and still poses a risk to life, albeit a much lesser one.
It’s this reason why I feel that things such as restrictions and so on will have to continue longer than ‘common sense’ alone would suggest. The vaccines need to be studied, to see if any actually stop infection than simply avoiding ill-health. A huge ‘Phase II’ vaccination programme may be required to start within a few months to finally break the virus’ back for good. Or we may have to ‘learn to live with the virus’ for good; with perhaps things like regular mass vaccinations to keep an endemic and rampant disease from sickening others who cannot or will not be protected elsewhere.
The problem is that so few people are talking about this. Too many think ‘vaccine equals end’. This means that it will be incredibly hard politically to not continue with the needed measures if it turns out the vaccine is not the end.
I have quite a lot of faith in people being able to tolerate discomfort and even abject privation when needed. But they need to know the facts, and know what the ‘end game’ looks like. And once again, I feel the British Government and their cronies in the media are not telling us this; though in this case, it’s allowing people to continue to be misled by their ignorance. And that’s dangerous.
As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Covid Pandemic series.
Tales From The Minority 