Society

Introduction

My grandad was often heard to bemoan the nation’s rather negative views on eating whale meat. It was, to him at least, rather a treat. In his defence, he developed a taste for it during a rather extreme time for himself, the nation, and the world. As it was used as a source of protein to supplement his rather restricted diet during the ration-controlled years of World War II. It would be stretching it to say he looked back on those years fondly, but he would, every now and again, make reference to the national unity built during such times and the rather rich flavour of a good whale stew.

A global conflict may be a rather extreme example, but it helps us to acknowledge that there are influences on us that sit at a higher level than those people and places in our immediate vicinity. Influences, which despite not always being seen, pervade into almost every aspect of our lives. Some, such as the untimely war that impinged so rudely on my grandfather’s diet, are difficult not to notice, whilst others remain around us at all times, but often without obvious sign.

These influences are clearly demonstrated not only in the move to eat whale meat, whilst the world was in conflict, but also in its removal from the menu once everyone had agreed to settle their differences and make up. We have never, as a nation, really celebrated whale meat in the same way we have beef or lamb. Collectively as a population we seem to find it unpalatable, outside of the most extreme of circumstances. We don’t need to discuss it or justify it, we all, as a unit, believe it. There is a collective influence that is indefinable by most of us, which makes us feel the same way.

However, there are also more overt and obvious influences on our eating of it. Try to treat your kids with a little of what my grandfather chowed down on during these troublesome times and you may find both Greenpeace and the law on your doorstop. Selling, buying, or eating whale meat in the UK could land you with a hefty fine, or even some time on enforced rationing in your local correction facility. We may share some unwritten principles on the consumption of such things, but these are ably supported by proposed, passed, and upheld legislation. Neither of which my grandfather, nor most of you reading this, will have had much input into.

Rather than sitting around us, or amongst us, such influences sit above us, out of reach by many but overlooking everything we do. In this chapter, I consider these influences, discussing the social and religious contexts of our food choices, along with some of the more political influences. I start with the issues that removed my grandfather’s favourite foods from the menu once peace had returned to our happy land: the cultural norms that govern us without a need for regulation or rules. Those behaviours and beliefs we share and then strengthen by adopting and encouraging in others.

Cultural norms

My cousin once spent an enjoyable month in Sri Lanka, by their accounts a warm and welcoming country. They are a hardened and happy traveller and much braver than I, but they did still admit that there were a few things that caught them off guard on this trip. They have always suggested that they like to see the ‘real life’ of wherever they visit; the real Sri Lanka, the real China, the real Africa, or wherever they are heading, spurning the tourist traps and resorts of the country for some honest, and some might say less comfortable, experiences.

Such behaviour, they tell me, got them into trouble quite early on in their Sri Lankan trip. In fact, as soon as they were served their first meal. A meal they were taking in a restaurant designed for locals, rather than overseas guests. The problems started out as standard confusion when they realised there was no menu and very little indication of what range of food the establishment served. Any words that were splashed around the rather sparse interior were also, unsurprisingly, not in English. The signs and notices designed for the local clientele rather than the tourists who never visited. Being the hardened traveller that they are, the lack of mutual language did not hold my cousin back and they managed to order some food by waving and pointing at a neighbouring table that was replete with a range of delicious looking dishes.

They were, they reported, flushed with achievement when this resulted in the delivery of similarly sumptuous looking fodder, but were then soon reminded to never celebrate too early. As it was at this point that confusion number two arose. When they went to eat the appealing offerings, they noticed a distinct lack of cutlery, or any form of eating implement, on their table. They tried to communicate this to someone, but once again a lack of shared language made such discussion difficult. The amiable waiting staff eventually bringing them a large spoon, saved for industrial sized service rather than individual consumption, in response to rather exaggerated miming on my cousin’s part.

My cousin decided that they would be making a spectacle of themselves if they were to try to use it, as neither spoon nor the portions it would deliver, would comfortably fit into their average sized mouth. They surveyed the other patrons eating around them and realised that a lack of cutlery had not stopped anyone else enjoying their meal. Hands and fingers doing the job that knives and forks do in the majority of UK homes. Always determined to live by the ‘when in Rome’ adage, whilst in Colombo, they thought it only reasonable to follow suit, moving in to scoop up a handful of curry with a cupped palm and fingers.

This proved harder than it sounds. A sandwich or cookie, for example, has been designed to grip, making it easy to pick up and lift to the mouth. A saucy curry and fluffy rice have not undergone such thoughtful design and prove more challenging to carry, even over the short distance between bowl and entry point. As attested to by the spice stains still obvious in the lap of the clothes my cousin wore during that trip. They persevered, however, and soon found that such an approach was not as challenging as it first seemed. After all, this was not completely new to them.

Few of us relish the use of cutlery early in life. We generally begin to eat with a hand only approach, shovelling whatever food is put in front of us in the general direction of our mouth. It is only due to the continued and consistent badgering from parents that we move from the more natural finger-led eating to a nurtured cutlery-based approach. So it was that my cousin was able to tap into their life experience and develop a technique sufficient enough to deliver around half of what had been on the plate into the chosen organ.

So flushed were they with this success that they had been unaware of the burning sensation that was developing throughout their mouth and lips. Their focus on getting the curry close enough to their face to ingest it, distracting them from the ingredients they were ingesting. Once the attention on delivery had relaxed, what had started out as a rather pleasant tingling sensation was replaced by a sharp burn, that in time proved rather hard to ignore. They waved to the waiting staff once more and tried to communicate that they needed something to cool the fire that was, by that time, reaching any part of their face the curry had met. Parts that were not limited to the mouth and immediate surrounds, due to the rather inaccurate approach they had adopted in feeding. Their panicked mime and desperate hand waving responded to by the hasty delivery of a bowl of what looked to be some form of curdled dairy product.

I imagine it would be as unusual to see someone applying yoghurt to his or her face in a restaurant in Sri Lanka as it would be in the UK, but my cousin insisted that this was the only way to ease the pain. Looking stupid was not high on their concerns at the time, with doing anything they could to alleviate the searing agony of their chilly rich dish, their only focus. After all, they felt they had done their bit to adapt and adhere to Sri Lankan ways, by eating fiery unidentified curries with their hands and considered that they should be allowed a little leeway now that they had more pressing issues to deal with.

After several bowls of curd washed down with a milky yoghurt drink, they excited the local eatery leaving quite an audience, and many well-wishers, behind them. The staff and customers no doubt returning home to tell family and friends of the remarkable thing they had seen, in the same way that my cousin recounts this, along with numerous other stories from their travels to us. Most of which highlight the differences, along with the occasional similarity, between nations and their populations and the variation of culturally defined behaviours and dietary patterns that govern us. Patterns that we rarely question, until something comes along to make us realise that they are there.

This exposure to new food and food rules, my cousin maintains, is one of the experiences of exploring different countries that they particularly enjoy and remains a strong motivation for their continued travelling. For those of a more homely persuasion it is not always necessarily to leave your native soil in order to experience different food cultures, as they can often be found closer to home. The world food aisle in the supermarket, specialist markets, international restaurants or takeaways, are celebrated by many for offering cherry picked national and cultural specialities often acclimated to the palates of their new home.

Occasionally this crossing of cultural boundaries can be forced upon us by accident, at which point they prove to be less well received. And it is these occasions that really highlight the differences between people, groups and nations. You will always get some adventurous members of the population who are willing to dip a toe in and try something new, even if they have limited experience of it. It is only when the whole population are exposed that we get a true sense or how established and important these food cultures are.

A few years ago, the whole of Great Britain were up in arms over the substituted use of horse for beef in a number of processed products. How disturbed this historic nation were of the thought of such a noble creature, one that tended the land, that carried their heroes in battle and that kings built a sport around, ending up in a frozen lasagne. Despite such national disgust, it takes only a short trip over the channel for these horrified accidental horse consumers to reach countries in which the average diner would be more offended at the thought of purchasing frozen pasta dishes made from the cheapest beef cuts, than eating the lean horsemeat roasts, stews and sausages seen as such a treat in the cities, towns and villages in which they live.

We in the UK do not get exposed to such menu choices and rarely need to question our views on eating such things, but a short trip to the continent, or (alleged) unsavoury practices by Romanian abattoirs, and suddenly we realise it is something we feel very strongly about. Conversely, similar to our disgust at the thought of eating the showjumpers and flat racers of our equestrian performance sports, certain visitors to our shores may baulk at our heavy consumption of burgers and lean beefsteak; the cow, to them, being a sacred and hallowed beast. Others still, may laugh at our perceived sensitivity to the healthy dog meat of their home, at a time that we are so accepting of so many other dishes from their lands.

It is clear that differences between cultures in what is eaten, and the way in which it is eaten, can be stark, but why is this the case? It seems the answer is not rooted in some group choice, but more in an established norm that has been passed down through the generations until our adherence to it is rarely questioned. We eat, what we eat, in the way we eat it, because ‘we’ have done so for so long. We may look deep into the past of the places and people from where and whence we came to understand why, but the origin matters little, it is the establishment of the norm in the time since its inception that is important. It is its place in our current culture that keeps it there, or challenges its adaption or removal.

That does not mean that such things cannot be contested. Cultures do change and for every supporter of a people’s heritage there is someone looking to reject the behaviours of old and find new and exciting ways to do things. We are, after all, a series of groups and within our multicultural cities, towns, and societies; it is only natural that there will be some evolution of the way that we do things. Culture carries us so far, but the world doesn’t stand still, which is good news for those of us who prefer our diet tripe and tongue free.

Dr Idiot’s ancestor attester

My gran was always keen to advise us ‘to never use a fork to eat tomato soup’. This was just before she stabbed herself in the hand with a steak knife, after slipping on a particularly well-done piece of rump. She had a point. There are certain tools for certain jobs and in this case, there are certain cutlery for certain foods. Luckily, we benefit from the years of experience of those who went before us when it comes to our food ways, meaning that very few of us find ourselves in any kind of fork/soup mismatch. But perhaps now that we have so many options in and what and how we eat, we could use such disparities to our advantage. Imagine trying to enjoy your standard British roast meal using a pair of elegantly engraved Chinese chopsticks, rather than your traditional chop and shovel cutlery. If you are anything like me, you would end up with very little in your mouth. Choosing the wrong tools could be an advantage when you are trying to restrict the job you are doing. The frustration of trying to lift a portion of cauliflower cheese into your mouth, using a couple of small sticks, may just persuade you to eat a little less of it. So next time you’re in a restaurant, or at home, wave away the knife and fork and ask for whatever eating implement you find hardest to use.

Social norms

I remember my last year in primary school rather fondly. I am sure, on reflection, that the sun was not shining over the small playground and brightly decorated classrooms for the entire year. But that is how I picture it, all these years later. By memory, it was a small happy community of well-meaning and well-behaved children, all desperate to please their parents, teachers, and friends. We all seemed so keen to do well. Behaviour in lessons was exemplary, desks were neatly arranged, and break times were harmonious occasions of group play, interspersed with some competition for attention from the staff member supervising that day’s recess. Even lunches were a virtuous pursuit of fruit and vegetables, with no can of drink or candy snack in view. It was almost a shame to leave.

I recall that the summer holiday that separated our move from primary to secondary school, although fun, was enjoyed with an underlying apprehension as to what lay before us. The joy of vacation slightly tinged by the uncertainty of our move to a new, rather foreboding, establishment. Indeed, when the day came, I was dropped off outside the giant gates, complete with new uniform, new shoes, new satchel, new haircut, and an overriding fear of what lay before me. I hesitated momentarily, peering up at the large dark building, which stood in stark contrast to the colourful welcome of the school I had recently left, before taking my first steps inside.

As I entered the big doors that separated the life in my new school from the outside world, the differences between it and my fondly remembered primary, were immediately obvious. In place of the small number of friendly happy classrooms was a labyrinth of corridors awash with the facial grease and hormones of a seemingly aggressive and arrogant crowd. Gone was the respect for others, the need to please, and the convivial atmosphere of a harmonious society. In its place was a snarling contempt that was thrust into the face of anyone unlucky enough to interact with the more morose members of the school. At lunch, the ordered, seated, communal meals of primary school were replaced by a crowded canteen, hurriedly serving the hundreds of hungry, fussy, mouths, that longed only for fried and sugary foods. The nod towards a healthy option, the browning aged salad leaves, remained unchosen and unchanged for the term.

Unsure how to behave in such circumstances I looked towards those around me. In particular, the older more established members of the school. The large and loud pupils who snubbed the demands and supervision of the staff in an effort to assert their place in the complex social network of the secondary school. We had quickly moved from being leaders of our little community to sitting on the lowest rung of this one and the only defence was to fit in. To not stand out from the crowd. To do as they did. We had to regress to the norm. No more was this the case than in the public and communal lunch. The canteen attracting all school members for hastily served sustenance at the same time every day. Not wanting to attract attention, every lunchtime I would follow the larger children in piling my plastic tray full of chips, crisps and soft drinks, not wanting to face ridicule for choosing the healthy and fresh meals I had enjoyed each day in primary school.

This is how my life continued for a number of years. Recognising my position as a small fish in a medium sized pond and hoping not to be noticed, I did as others did. I blended in and this worked, for a time. One cannot hide forever, especially in the ever-changing environment of the average secondary school. Having navigated its complex social networks through a series of camouflage and concealment, there came a time in which I became the biggest, oldest, and spottiest of the secondary school crowd. A time at which I, and my cohort, could no longer hide and one in which we could set the agenda. Suddenly we were the people the rest of the school followed. But it mattered little. Still we sulkily queued for our lunch, piling our plates with fried or sugary foods. Partly because they were produced in huge quantities with few alternatives and also because we didn’t want to rock the boat. A standard had been set and we did not want to be the ones to break it.

I take little blame for this. We were not unusual, in this regard at least. Although some would like to claim otherwise, we are all influenced by the people around us. We look at those closest to us and from them define the ordinary, the typical, or the norm. Even those trying to be different, must respond to the usual to be distinct from it. In doing so they generally meet likeminded individuals with whom they can sit around and discuss how unique they all are. Such a strong desire to be a part of whatever group we are exposed to, may ultimately blind us to the behaviours and beliefs that others, outside the collective, may question. After all, we are all drawn at some point to look at other social groups and question their norms. Different dress sense, music taste, or behaviours, always seem puzzling to those outside of that cluster.

This is no less the case than when we look at those who have gone before us. Many of us gaze upon the obsessions, interests, and behaviours of our parents’ generation, particularly when they were our age, and question certain things about it. Behaviours, beliefs, or norms that they feel defined them as a unit, we now eye with amusement, confusion or disgust. Leaving us to feel rather superior to those who have gone before. We have moved on; things have progressed under our watch.

Be warned though, whilst turning a judgmental eye to gaze upon our predecessors, we would do well to remember that tastes and tolerances change over time and that future generations will at some point have cause to consider us with the same critical regard. So, we should wonder what it is about us, as a cohort, which those who follow may look back on with some bewilderment, or perhaps even shame. Despite being so impressed with it ourselves, they will unquestionably laugh at our basic level of technology. They will hopefully be surprised by the diseases that troubled us, for which they have found an easy cure and they will undoubtedly develop new tastes and attractions when it comes to food. Just as our food norms and choices differ so starkly from those of previous generations, we must expect them to change for future ones.

There are some who believe that they have already identified the standout element of our food behaviour that is ripe for modification, with many open in their disdain for it. For there is a building argument that eating our fellow animal is the current norm that will be viewed so shamefully in a more enlightened future. We know that we can survive without meat, they argue, and with it placing a burden on the health of both us and our planet, we have fewer reasons to keep consuming it, other than that we like it. Surely in time, they suggest, the motivation for eating meat will lessen to such a degree that it disappears from our menus.

My concern, however, apart from enjoying a good steak from time to time, is that any move to discourage or ban meat eating, may simply take it underground. People will always find ways to overcome prohibition, with the prohibited or disapproved becoming increasingly desirable. I can see a future in which new speakeasies, full of plastic furniture and overpriced burgers, are raided by lean vegan police officers. A world in which grill houses and all you can eat buffets pose as publicly acceptable brothels, or smoking dens, in order to hide the elicit carnivorous behaviour within.

In addition, such is the investment in this norm, it is difficult for those who follow it to consider its demise a possibility without becoming offended. This is us; we cry, this is how we are meant to behave. Not only do we despair at a future without fried chicken, bemoaning yet another life enhancing pleasure being taken from us, but we are insulted at the suggestion that we, as a group, have acted inappropriately. Thankfully most of us won’t be around to see a time in which our descendants are shamed by our actions, so all we’ll have to endure for now, whilst chowing down on a meaty treat, is the recriminations of our more animal-loving offspring, niblings, or neighbours.

Dr Idiot says

Having oneself described as abnormal is not typically a cause for celebration. And there are particular times and instances, say in the receiving of medical test results, that one would hope to avoid the term ‘irregular’ and its synonyms altogether. However, when it comes to what we are eating, abnormal may now be a positive aim. After all, healthy dietary practice does not seem to be the norm. It is a minority of people who are achieving their hallowed five a day and those of you that reside in the so called ‘healthy weight’ category are fewer in number than those of us that find ourselves outside of it. This means that when well-meaning health professionals, or advisors, thrust guidance and recommendations in our direction, we can dismiss them with the apathetic riposte that our dietary behaviours are nothing unusual. Normally accompanying such claims with a shrug. We are not doing anything out of the ordinary, so we have no real reason to change. In providing such a response we are not only harming ourselves but also those around us, as we add to the weight of support in encouraging others to do as we do. We are normalising the unfavourable lifestyle behaviours to such an extent that those who follow more healthy activities are now seen as unusual. They are the oddities. So be abnormal, I say, for now is the time to rock the boat before it sinks under the increasing burden of a population supported in the fact that they are simply doing what everyone else does.

Globalisation

My cousin tells tales of an island they ended up visiting, on a backpacking tour around New Zealand. The destination in question sat a five-hour boat ride from the mainland and was, they report, a beautiful place, albeit noticeable by its remoteness. With employment not being plentiful, the friendly people of the island seemed to while away time, in their picturesque home, through a combination of fishing, carpentry and cannabis growing/smoking. Activities that took advantage of the local environment.

My cousin tells us, that having enjoyed the surprisingly calm and enjoyable ferry trip to the island in question, they had been greeted at the port by their bare foot friend and walked the short distance to the home they were welcomed into for the duration of their stay. On entry into the picturesque wooden house, the mother of the family appeared from the kitchen with a large bowl of scallop chowder, handing it over to my cousin with the memorable line ‘Do you want some of these? We’ve had so many scallops this year we’re sick to the back teeth with them.’

My cousin, who had once eaten scallops in a high-end restaurant in the UK, compared the crowded bowl before them to the memory of the two bejewelled bivalves that had sat, with burnt bacon, upon some brassica puree, as an expensive starter in the UK and instantly decided they had arrived in paradise. So it was that the next few days on the island were a culinary treat as my cousin, led by their kind hosts, fished for supper, dived for lunch and foraged beaches and woodlands for anything worth eating. Such delicacies, out of their price range at home, could be found in abundance and collected without cost on the island. It had been a treat and, they report, the most enjoyable part of their tour. Sadly, as we are far too often reminded, all good things do, at some point, come to an end. And so it was the case here.

They remember, they tell me, the moment things changed. They had spent a delightful evening on the beach, walking some particularly heavy dogs, and had then slept well, as they always did, in the calm and quiet environment of their temporary home. They awoke to the bird song that broke the silence on each morning and descended expectantly for breakfast, only to be greeted by a table laden with boxes of ready made cereals, white sliced bread, jams and spreads. It was, they recount, a throwback to home, with the flavours and brands matching the ones they would find at their own table on any morning of the week. They stared disappointingly at the offerings that had replaced the home baked loaves, freshly laid eggs, and shed-smoked fish they had enjoyed on previous mornings, only to be told, rather excitedly, that the food boat had come in the previous night and the family order had been delivered. Being the amiable guest, my cousin tried to force down a bowl of sugary cereal with as much enthusiasm as their hosts but ultimately they couldn’t ignore the feeling that their time in paradise was over. They left the following morning, before breakfast.

They spent many more months on the road following this and returned, as they always did after such trips, with tales of exotic lands and unusual food. Food that they now report can be found in a number of restaurants and shops a short walk from their current UK abode. A simple wander around the country’s supermarkets brings many of us into contact with the types of produce my cousin would excitedly report on, having returned from their latest adventure. It can seem daring to pack a bag and travel the thousands of miles that separate us from other continents and countries, but millions of miles are now travelled to stock every aisle of every shop. The world is now being brought to us, rather than us having to go out and discover it.

We may gaze upon the international options available to us in our local supermarket and wonder how our nation ever coped without such reach, but we should concede that there is nothing new in globalisation. Most of our favourite foods have an alien and interesting past. Tea, the warm tasteless drink that unites our nation, did not originate in the cold and wet of England. Potatoes and tomatoes were at one-point exclusive to South America, despite now conquering the world, often in combination. Even fish and chips were brought to us by early immigrants, although some would suggest it was our ancestors who united them. The food world is now so small that the only reason people remain surprised that chicken tikka masala is annually voted Britain’s favourite dish, is because it is actually British. A fusion of imported flavours moulded for homely tastes. Born of the aromas and tastes synonymous with the global trade, it is eaten only where expats can be found. At some point it will be too traditional and ordinary to be seen as special and it will be left to join the roast meals, pies, and stews in the museum of old-fashioned local cuisine.

This shrinking of the food world may be celebrated for the greater access and wider choice it brings to many, but we must question who is advantaged by such accessibility. After all, it is not the yield of the allotment growers that ends up on our shelves, but that of the major producers. The artisan bread makers or the local fruit growers do not export to remote antipodean islands, with such outcrops left to the large producers, whose goods have been bought by the major procurement companies and sold to the global market brands.

Even in those countries in which they manage to grow local produce, its desirability in foreign fields can take it away. Export profits out pricing the local markets, leading to huge swathes of farmable land claimed with the aim of stocking the shelves and supermarkets of a distant population. Even in those countries in which families and homes can supply themselves, the crops, so common to the gardens of locals, are sold in order to raise funds to buy the cans of drink or fast food new to the country. The very same food that those with money in the UK platter up as an exotic offering, in a desperate bid to impress their dinner party guests, can be rejected as food of the poor in the lands in which it is cultivated.

Globalisation is sold and celebrated as a good thing by many, and it certainly is advantageous for those who can afford to benefit from it. But increasing the costs of produce beyond a point of local affordability, out competing the resident supplier, or encouraging investment in cash crops at the expense of local produce, does not help those budgeting for their dinner. Globalisation allows those with the resources to buy the world, at the same time as out pricing many natives from affording the local. And of course, when it comes to food, those who with the greatest resources are the industry itself.

Dr Idiot thinks outside the box

I have never agreed with the phrase that it is a small world. Size being relative, I have always wondered to which world we are comparing ours when discussing its proportions. Some may suggest that the world we currently live in is easier to navigate now than in its past. And that is hard to deny when you can fly direct between London and Perth, video chat your relatives in New Zealand and buy pizza in every country. But my point still holds. It is the only world we know. It is neither small nor large, but rather it is incomparable. This makes for a less catchy saying and, I may suggest, is part of the problem. Globalisation is a goal because there is no greater target for industry. No further can they expand their business than within the confines of the world on which we live …. for now.

Industry will admit they are always on the lookout for new opportunities and whilst the rest of us would be shocked by the discovery of unknown planets holding life outside of our atmosphere, companies, I imagine, would quickly eye an opportunity and start jumping over each other to conquer the new markets found a mere hyper drive away. Such expansive motivations may concern some of us, but we can actually use them to our advantage. Rather than wasting vast amounts of money on treating the ill health of their populations, national governments should invest in space exploration with the explicit aim of discovering another world with which to distract industry from this one. Make universalisation the goal, over globalisation, and we can leave the food industry to buzz around the newly discovered worlds like bees around a honey pot, whilst we enjoy our locally grown picnic in peace.

Food industry

The village I was brought up in, was a picture postcard copy of what a British village should be. Old stone cottages flanked a short-cobbled road that despite its brevity carried a church, a village hall, parish meadows complete with maypole, and a pub. All the things you would hope to find in a traditional country hamlet, with life in the village revolving around these attractions. The last being the busiest and to many people the most important.

You can distract yourself whilst reading this by pondering on the culture Britain has built around the socially acceptable drug that is alcohol. But we are not the only country to do so and the pub in our village provided so much more than a few pints of local ale. It was a focal point for all, young and old. On each of our many visits to it we would be thrust into a gathering of friendly neighbours and welcomed by the community regularly found congregating within its most treasured resource.

Whilst weekdays in there passed with the quiet satisfaction of a post work pint - commuters stopping on their return to home, or the local workforce socialising after a day’s agricultural labour - weekends were all about families. It seemed as if the whole village descended on the pub for their evening meals over the welcome break from work. All enjoying the hardy, unfussy food served at reasonable prices. Before it became the norm for pubs to sell themselves as gastro, the village establishment was sourcing locally grown food and serving a range of British favourites, by default. Not because of some commercial trend or stance, but simply because the landlord and landlady didn’t know any better and didn’t have to. Food suppliers, many of whom were regulars to the establishment, surrounded them. They only needed to open the front doors of the pub for a wealth of local produce to be made available to them.

Menus were regularly changed, dependent on what was available within the parish boundaries. Meat would be proffered through whatever farmer had offered stock, with vegetables changed to suit season and harvest. Roasts, a British pride, were always available, pies, potatoes, and Ploughman lunches, with local cheese and pickle, ordered by those who knew the pub, without so much as a cursory glance at the chalkboard menu. With most meals chosen through a discussion between those serving and those drinking at the bar. It was a local pub for local people and that is how it remained for the first few years of our life in the village.

At that time, before the advent of social media, establishments without a focused marketing budget could exist largely untroubled by new custom. Relying on the loyal regulars to keep them in business. On occasions, however, gems could be discovered and word would spread. Resulting in a widening of the catchment area and an increasing trade. This would be welcomed by some but lamented by others. In the matter of our family’s favourite pub, that word carried far enough to attract people residing some distance from the village. Eventually reaching those for whom the attraction of a country inn was worth the 40-minute drive from the nearest city.

With this improving reputation and increasing custom, seats became harder to secure. Locals were yet to be introduced to the practice of reserving tables. As they always expected one to be free on arrival. Or they were happy to wait at the bar until people left, or friends made space for them. Custom from further afield, had grown up in city restaurants, which demanded advanced bookings. And they brought their no reservation, no table, mentally when they ventured out to our village. Their weekend jaunts leaving us country folk frustrated, as the community social hub slowly became inaccessible on all but the quietest weekday evenings. It was a time that brought much consternation to our happy hamlet. Although on reflection, it was a burden we would have been happy to bear, had we known the horrors that lay before us.

Running a village pub, at the time, was a tiring and financially unrewarding business. It was a way of life, rather than a route to riches. With this sudden increase in custom, the landlord and landlady, also being owners, eyed an opportunity. Offloading what had consistently proved to be an economic burden, at a surprising profit, to one of the major breweries. The chain, well known for offering large portions for low prices, worked around a business model that was dependent on serving as many people as possible, in as many pubs as it could manage. Realising that such an approach would not work in the small, rutted corners of our village inn, the first thing the brewery did was build two red brick extensions on the sides of the old stone tavern. A building that had housed it customers comfortably, for several centuries.

With this easy remedy the brewery could now welcome more than twice as a many people. All of whom, they were hoping, would consume the food and drink on offer. Ignoring local produce, in favour of major providers, who could supply all pubs in the chain using the bargaining power of a large corporation. This had the effect of changing our local into a standard run of the mill establishment, in which we could always find a table. The extensive floor space seldom filling, with, we were soon to discover, good reason.

On entering, on completion of the renovations, my dad instinctively made his way to the bar. A bar he never really had to concentrate on too closely. The previous bar staff pouring a pint of his usual as he entered. But things were different now. Instead of the local ales and ciders, which had once been served, a row of handles displayed the new offerings of international lagers, cheap wine and Irish stout sourced for every pub in the brewery’s portfolio.

This confused my dad, who was not used to having to make a choice and was struggling to find his usual tipple on display. After an extend period of dismay, he relented and asked the barman for a recommendation. The surprisingly youthful employee, in brewery emblemed polo shirt, shrugged and pointed to the ‘house’ beer, on which the establishment made the greatest profit. My father, not known for adventure, resigned himself to a pint and forced down a few sips through the clenched lips and tense mouth of a man who is unsure of what he is consuming.

It soon became apparent that this streamlining of options had not stopped with the drinks and similar horrors were to be found with the food on offer. No longer were meals to be chosen through a quick discussion at the bar, with farmer or landlady informing all of what had been delivered to the back door, only hours earlier. And instead, a vast array of large, laminated menus littered the tables, supporting pages advertising that brewery’s standard fare. All displayed in oversized ‘fun’ letters and described through names carefully chosen by an overpaid marketing team.

As a family, we were not used to struggling through an extensive food choice. We normally ate what had been recommended to us, by those we knew. The pressure to choose was so alien that by the time a young, somewhat disinterested, waiter had wandered over to take our order, we were all in a state of panic. The lack of familiar or endorsed options sending most of us into a head spin.

My Mum, who was used to discussing what farms had delivered that day, or who had had pigs slaughtered recently, pointed to a rather extravagant cartoon with the words ‘Sangers and Smash’ splashed across it. With finger still in place she cautiously asked whether rather than having the reported five sausages, she might be able to swap a sausage or two for some cabbage or other greens. This form of negotiation being a regular practice in the pub pre takeover. The rather bemused waiter suggested that this was not possible. He explained in a surprisingly matter of fact way, that the food came delivered in vacuum packed sealed pouches for each meal. The ‘chefs’, he continued, simply opened the bags and cooked what was in them. If they were to add something, they would have to open another pouch and then charge us for the two meals.

This confession rested over the table for what seemed like an eternity, whilst we all gazed at our menus with a renewed sense of concern. The waiter tapped impatiently on his pad and asked if my Mum still wanted the meal. She did not reply. But my dad, who was busy choking on a European-brewed Australian beer, slowly stood up and suggested to the family that we all went home for toast. Which exactly is what we did.

I would like to say we crisped a homemade loaf, the product of locally grown wheat, over an open fire and then topped it with lashings of farm churned butter. But the reality is that we got through a loaf of Chorley Wood manufactured pre-sliced white, toasted in a cheap four slot, and smothered it in supermarket own brand spreads. All of which had been chosen with price in mind. In effect replacing one mass produced pre-packaged option for another. For this seems to be the world we find ourselves in.

In reality, we can’t survive without the food industry, they fulfill a role necessary to feed the so many billion on our planet. The hope is that we learn to live in harmony, such that some are not disadvantaged by their influence and that when we come to food it is the product and people, rather than the profits that are put first. Sadly, such things, although sounding good in a barely considered book section or a Fair trade manifesto, are not so welcome in an annual report. And the mere fact that there is money to be made in them thar crop covered hills, means that we will struggle to see affordable healthy food as the basic human right, some people say it should be.

Dr Idiot says

It may be not be pushing the boundaries of our scientific understanding to agree that we all need food to live. Without it, we wither and die. It is a necessity as much as the air we breathe and the water we drink. Of those three, air is generally considered a free resource, although there may be some cost associated to living in areas where it is cleanest. Water, I will concede, suffers an unequal access and there are many people for whom it is a scarce and elusive. But those of us who live in countries in which we are lucky enough to have it piped into homes, should be grateful for this. And every time we gaze on a bottle of water resting in the soft drinks fridge of our local shop, we should be concerned that it could be taken the way of food. For which the wonders of capitalism, celebrated with such gusto in the West, have changed it from a basic need for all, into a money-making venture. Our nourishment moving from self-sufficient goal to profit maximising product and with this development our perception of it also changing. Where once we were driven to produce enough for family, friends, or communities, now we view food as every other commodity. We want to get our money’s worth. We are encouraged to either maximise our intake for the price that we are paying or are persuaded to overpay for select harvests. Attracted by the speciality produce, that does little for our bank balance, but a huge amount for our ego.

With this move from necessity to commodity, growing, cropping, farming, once the most important parts of food production, have all become an increasingly smaller link in the food chain. Greater emphasis being placed on buying, packing, transporting, selling, shipping, marketing and all the other factors that go into selling goods of any sort. Over time these processes took an increasing profit share, with each step becoming a specialism. Food was grown further from the people eating it, transported longer distances and advertised to more people. And with this commercialisation, investment became increasingly important. Those with the greatest assets did the best. Leading to fewer companies controlling an increasingly larger slice of the food business, with each of them becoming more powerful for it.

Lobbying, advocating, financing gave them political and cultural influence, not to mention economic clout. People speculated on food, on its worth, on its share, its future, or options. Food, something we all need, that we should be entitled to, was priced and traded just like every other commodity. And this meant that some could afford it and some couldn’t. They couldn’t afford the food, the land it was grown on, or the transport to get it to them. Food production stopped being an individual or community pursuit and became an industrial activity focusing on maximising profit margins or maximising sales. Leading it to become a two-tier system. Those who can afford the luxurious carefully developed products or those who seek the most cost-effective purchase. And as most of us sit within the second category, this may have affected us more than we think.

Food production

To many, the life of the hunter-gatherer seems rather romantic. Bidding a morning farewell to dependents as one sets out to catch the day’s food. To return in the evening with your family’s bounty, after a splendid time in the country, enjoying the scenery, sun, and limited company. However, alongside those days of success, in which you return to a rousing welcome, there must be a number in which you come back to the fold with little or no food. Carrying only a nagging feeling that you may never eat again. In addition, spending a day on the hunt seems rather tricky when trying to hold down a fulltime job and provide a stable family life for your nearest and dearest. Such pursuits are best left to old money, who see no need either to eat what they shoot, or to work a standard nine to five.

Fortunately for those of us around today, we, as a species, came up with a solution to the ever-increasing problem of popping out to slay prey and forage for herbs in between monthly financial updates and Zoom meetings. Rather than go and find game, we reasoned, not always sure that they would make themselves available or at a suitable abundance to fulfill our needs, why not keep the crops and the cattle close to us. Thereby enabling us to get our meat and two veg, without trekking marathons in the wilderness for the pleasure of doing so.

As so often happens with such developments, it soon proved not to be enough, due to our species’ obsession with continued and consistent copulation. An increasing population, demanding an ever-greater mass of harvest and heifers. Hence, it was no longer the food that followed the people, but the people who came to the food. Groups emigrating to the holdings and settlements built where sustenance could be found on a large enough scale to feed them all. Once more, however, such development did not take account of the filthy minds and wandering gametes of humankind. Where once we were happy to live in small friendly communities, an inability to keep our minds off the job resulted in such a population expansion that in time masses of people needed to be fed and maintained. An unachievable goal for a collection of smallholders.

In response to the increased demand, hunting and gathering was industrialised. With quantity, rather than breadth, the goal. Farms and farmers specialised on one product. Focusing on the mass production of one crop or fare, be it wheat, dairy, eggs, or meat, amongst others. The attention moved from growing a whole diet for a limited number of people, to growing one part of a diet for a whole population. Our food production became driven by the economies of scale, with technological and food development taking the expertise away from the people, such that these life skills were exhibited by the few rather than the many.

We might now see this as a good thing. If our very survival depended on us all being able to milk cows, mill flour, or butcher game, we might be eyeing a relatively short lifespan. Thankfully, by the time the food reaches us, there is very little left to do with it. Ninety-nine percent of the work has been done already. For example, despite the complexity in growing wheat, preparing flour, baking bread, raising livestock, milking cows and churning butter; along with whatever happens to create yeast extract; being able to buy the necessary products already prepared, means that the final creation of Marmite on toast is a rather simple affair.

Many will suggest that our lives are better for it, but it should be remembered that such an approach is not without its perils. I once read a statistic that more than 700 people a year die as a result of being electrocuted by toasters. Normally due to sticking something metal inside, with the aim of releasing stuck toast. To some this is a senseless loss of life. To others these people died bravely and although we would be wise to unplug the toaster first, we should continue to do everything in our power to save this most delicious of food.

Indeed, I still recall with some trauma the sad day in which my breakfast was ruined by the untimely fusing of my old, and now unreliable, two-slot toaster. There is nothing more depressing to me than forcing down untoasted bread at the start of the day, or just before bed, and the demise of my most utilised kitchen gadget meant I had to look speedily for a replacement. Under the fear of missing out on my afternoon dose of buttery grilled white sliced.

Resigned, through a lack of disposable income, to the purchase of another cheaply made model I preceded to the supermarket to find a bargain amongst their electrical supply aisles. Which seemed to stock products of impossibly low prices - my father has views on such things, the sharing of which normally ends with some grieving for the loss of the UK’s production industry. On this occasion I did not let such bigger pictures trouble me, as I scoured the kitchen appliances aisle.

I have never been one to believe in love at first sight, having thought I have experienced it many times, only to find, at a later stage, that it was a fraud of desperate desire and too much drink. But it is no exaggeration to say that when I saw the four-slot, multi setting toaster, reduced for final sale, hidden behind a range of budget microwaves, my heart skipped a beat and I knew I had to have it. I contained the excitement long enough to pick up some thickly sliced toasting bread, to pay for both at the till and to drive the twenty minutes home so that I could feed my new love.

People coming out of long-term relationships have often told me that though they initially feel a strong sense of loss following the breakup, on starting a new relationship they often come to realise what the old affair had always been lacking. I found myself in a similar situation here, in so far as what was lacking in my previous toaster-me relationship was an extra two slots. When co-habiting with a four-slot toaster you really are doing it a disservice unless you have every slot filled. There would be little point doubling the slot capacity, to insist on only using half the available toasting options. It would be regressive in the face of technological advancement and would be cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s increasingly rotund face. Hence, with this one hasty purchase my toast consumption doubled. Whereas before the purchase I would consume toast in multiplies of two, I would now do so in multiples of four. If four pieces did not quite hit spot, I would have eight, never allowing myself to use the toaster at less than full capacity.

With such increases in food production, I also became more creative in the toppings I would enjoy on every toast occasion. When my consumption had been a paltry two pieces of toast, butter seemed to suffice for both, or at the very most one with one butter and one with butter and Marmite. Now that I had more to play with, I felt the need to mix it up a little. Leading me to try variations that I proudly referred to as a quartet of toast. With a taster menu consisting of four slices, one with butter only, one cream cheese with yeast extract, one yeast extract only and the final chocolate spread. This seems on reflection a magical time of bread consumption, but it was also a point at which my need for a new wardrobe first arose.

My struggles can be found to mirror that of the population. As technology and farming developed to allow such bulk production, we couldn’t help but do the same with our consumption. It has never been easier to get food and to get it in a form that is ready to eat. We don’t have to labour, or plan, or think too far in advance if we don’t want to. We can just eat and eat plentifully. Increased food production survives only if it is matched by increased consumption and we as a population have fulfilled our side of the bargain. However, if we were to reclaim a little of the manufacturing process and become more actively involved in the production of what we eat, we may just find we benefit from it.

Dr Idiot gets physical

There once was a time that feeding ourselves was a more energetic process. It was the perfect combination of diet and exercise. Hunting, sowing, reaping, producing, preparing, and cooking food was, at the time, a lot more strenuous than our current habit of pushing a trolley around a supermarket and microwaving ready meals. But with some imagination we can regain some exertion in our diet. I am not going to recommend chasing down live bacon, but wherever we get our food from, grown or bought, there are ways we can incorporate activity into the process.

Many have extolled the virtues of keeping allotments and Tai Chi. Although they have normally separated them out when doing so. Being an expert in neither, I have combined the two in a series of exercises that keeps one centred, fit and well fed.

1) Sow the seeds: Holding an open pack of seeds in each hand, adopt a wide supportive stance. Thinking of every point along your arms and upper torso as part of a whip, explode with the force of all your energy, thrashing your hands outwards, thereby distributing the seeds around the garden.

2) Water the plants: Holding a watering can between your hands stand with your feet on the floor, parallel, shoulder-width apart. Move your weight onto one leg and hold, pouring the water onto your crops; take three deep breaths and then move your weight onto the other leg and pour in the other direction.

3) Reap the crops: After resting for a period of weeks you get to pick what you have grown. To pick high hanging fruit and berries, with both feet on the floor put your weight through one leg, shift back and forth moving your weight through each leg and with arms spread out wide pick your produce with slow and deliberate movements. For low grown vegetables, move from a standing position into a deep lunge as gracefully as possible, with your hands below you, gently pull up whatever vegetables you have to enjoy.

Fear not, if you are one of those people not lucky enough to access a patch of land on which to grow our own food. I have a few simple tips that make the simple act of shopping a more athletic affair, taking advantage of the very food production and distribution processes that led us into this predicament.

1) Trolley run: Don’t push your trolley around the supermarket. Leave it in one place and return with each item after finding it on the shelf. Turn it into a family game by racing for individual items, the first to return to the trolley with an item wins.

2) Town centre hike: Rather than go to supermarkets, go to specialist stores in town centres or villages. Buying meat from a butcher and vegetables from a greengrocer may take a little longer but the walk will do you good. Carrying all your food in a backpack with make it an even greater challenge.

3) Bulk hulk: Buy your food from a wholesale supplier. The weight of bulk bought food makes it ideal for strength training. Feel the burn of shoulder pressing a crate of baked bean tins, bicep curling 12 kilograms of orange juice or squatting a beef carcass.

Laws

I have an early childhood memory, of being driven away from a pub in my grandparents’ car, with my grandfather bemoaning the ridiculous decision by the UK government to introduce breath testing and a legal limit for blood alcohol when behind the wheel. If my recollection serves me correctly, he was questioning quite loudly why they would do such a thing under the conviction that drink driving had never hurt anyone. My grandmother, as was her way, considered his outburst for a while and then paused, before quietly reminding him that it had killed John, a close friend of the couple. This did little to calm my grandfather, who was well into one of his characteristic rants, he being a man of strong conviction and voice. It was obvious to all in the car that John’s life was inconsequential when judged against my grandfather’s civic right to do as he pleased.

Strangely, although separated by a few years this memory seems to run into another, in which my grandfather, now older but still imposing, is bouncing around in the driver’s seat, with me sat beside him in the front. On this occasion his ire is saved for yet more driving legislation, the introduction of compulsory seatbelt use. His argument being that strapping oneself in would actually lead to more deaths, as the simple act of putting on a seatbelt would turn us all into racing drivers. He was not a man, I had learned throughout my childhood, who liked to be told what to do.

Ironically, for someone so opposed to those laws designed to make his life safer, he openly and loudly upheld the informal rules of social etiquette. Anyone in his vicinity who was drawn to cuss or spit, would receive a dressing down from someone who ‘did not fight in the war simply to allow rude young urchins to turn his country into a nightclub’. He was, as it became apparent, a man who applied the laws that suited his own beliefs rather than those that were bestowed upon him. He is not alone in this.

The laws of our lands have been designed and implemented to protect us as a population. On the whole, they have not been passed by two government houses and signed by a chosen leader simply to stop us having fun. Although it is true that some laws, in some lands, seem a relic of a less informed past, one would like to think that new laws, passed today, are largely introduced to make our lives better and safer. Still, there is a strange habit amongst all sectors of the global population to accept legislation introduced to protect us from others and reject that seemingly brought in to protect us from ourselves. Arguing that our health and happiness only impinges on us and that such laws are an infringement of our social liberty. Strangely, once these laws have been passed and are well embedded into our legal and social environment, we often question how we ever survived without them.

There once was a time that one night in the least crowded of bars would leave us coughing like a consumption sufferer and our clothes smelling like Guy Faulks on November the 6th. But still some argued that banning the smoking of these rather antisocial products was one step too far, impinging on the human right to kill ourselves slowly if we so choose. Much as it was when people such as my grandfather argued that it was an individual right to throw oneself through the front windscreen of cars if one so wanted. It was a choice for us to make, not the government. Now any insufficient seatbelt use encourages a fit of screaming from the closest caring parent, whilst the gentle opening of a cigarette packet, within six feet of an enclosed space, results in a round of forceful tutting, or some noisy glances in the direction of the nearest no smoking sign.

Such acceptance of these laws has been helped by the fact that we, as a population, have generally now recognised reckless seatbelt use and smoking to be evil enough to warrant government intervention. We are not so welcoming of their interference in areas in which we think we have a right to choose. For example, any suggestion that they might pass legislation to try and exert some control over the food we eat and you would struggle to find a more appalled nation. This, we mostly argue, is one-step too far. We think we know what is good and bad for us so we can decide whether we put it in our body or not. We do not need laws to control it. Such an argument may be missing the point slightly. There is some truth that smoking is the worst legal thing a person can do to themselves, outside of certain Tik Tok challenges, but then diet is the factor that is hitting us as a community and species the hardest. Cultural and legislative disapproval has thankfully decreased smoking to a minority pursuit. Conversely, we all have to eat, so we are all vulnerable to occasionally venturing out of the recommended healthy options. Laws introduced to discourage this are being used, supporters would suggest, to ensure we don’t stay there too long.

No one is proposing a legal age or BMI limit on the purchasing of certain calorie rich foods, nor a ban on fast food in enclosed spaces, but rather, more control over how the food is produced and sold. This is not to protect us from ourselves, but to save ourselves from what has been shaped around us. The food environment having not been designed and developed by the population but often by those who have a vested interest in the fare people buy. Just as we wouldn’t want tobacco companies, windscreen manufacturers and coffin sellers to decide our smoking, road safety and seatbelt use, we must resist the pressure from those making money from our dietary purchases to guide us as to what we eat. It is up to the law makers to take a stand against them and who knows, perhaps in time, we will come to welcome such legislation in much the same way we accept those that control motorcycle helmets and homicide.

Reader’s writes

Dear Dr Idiot,

Every Christmas I make fudge for my family and friends. It is always welcome by those receiving the gift, who have often said that I should start my own fudge making business. After a few years of compliments, I was finally persuaded to give it a go and set one up. Unfortunately, the local council came around and shut me down because they said my sink wasn’t big enough. When will the government stop favouring major corporations over the small business holder? No wonder this country has lost it sense of entrepreneurship.

Yours disgustedly

Fanny Fudge Fan

Dr Idiot replies:

Dear Fanny Fudge Fan,

Thank you for your letter. I agree with some of what you say. Although I may have to disagree with you slightly as well. In particular, I don’t know how big your sink is. However, if you are going to start distributing your homemade treats to the general population, it is good that someone is there to make sure you do so safely. I would wager that any holiday starting with an announcement by the plane’s captain that take off would happen sooner than expected, as the authorities had allowed them to forego the usual safety checks in light of them being a smaller operator, would end with the majority of passengers running for the exit before the craft had taxied to the runway. The much greater number of people suffering food poisoning and ultimately dying from it, in comparison to those experiencing a similar fate in plane crashes, may come down to exposure. But that makes food safety checks even more important.

Where I do agree with you, is that whilst the major corporations, as you refer to them, would have to adhere to similar safety standards as the rest of us if they wanted to sell and distribute food. It might be nice if we could encourage them to consider those who work on the farms and in the factories, the countries in which the food is grown, and the makeup of the final products, alongside the cleanliness of their production lines. After all, I imagine you place no toilet break restrictions on yourself when creating your delights and nor, I suspect, have you bought up huge swathes of foreign lands to grow the ingredients. There is much to be said for considering all the ways that food and its production affects us if we are to maximise its benefits and minimise its costs.

Yours sincerely

Dr Idiot

Tax

My cousin, the hardy traveller, tells me how they were caught out on a recent trip to America, by the pricing system employed in the Land of Liberty. Being a frequent and frugal voyager, they choose very carefully where they visit and what they do, on each and every trip they take themselves on. Food is a common consideration, even amongst the more distant members of my family and much of my cousin’s holidays, just as with their normal days, are spent considering what to eat and where. Along with the necessary tours of local attractions and landmarks, a range of restaurants are perused in order to select the best eating establishment for that day’s lunch, dinner, or late breakfast.

On their first night in the States, my cousin, having gone through their normal selection process of reviewing the establishments and considering which combination of options, serving size and price would best suit them, made a considered selection of where to have dinner. Having made a choice, they entered the establishment and were shown to a table for one, by the window. They scrutinized the menu carefully, before ordering what they could afford on their traveller’s budget. The meal, they relate, was pleasurable. Tasteful and bountiful, with the ambiance and atmosphere only adding to the experience. Having finished one course accompanied by a glass of tap water, they cheerfully attracted the attention of the waiting staff and in their best American tongue asked for the ‘check’. It was here that the evening took a disappointing turn, what with the prices on the bill not matching those on the menu.

My cousin had taken into account a standard service charge when first eying the menu but sitting alongside this was an unexpected sales tax addition. And one that did not impress them. This, they felt, was the restaurant changing the contract after the deal had been made. By ordering they had agreed to pay the price on the menu, not the one that arrived with the bill. It would prove frustrating, to say the least, if some twenty years after moving into your home, the person you bought it from appeared at your door asking for another fifty thousand. The restaurant had appeared to do similar, albeit on a smaller scale and over a shorter time period.

This last-minute price hike proved not to be the sole reserve of eating establishments and became common throughout my cousin’s travels in the otherwise welcoming country. Every product they tried to buy, be it clothes, food, toiletries, or any number of essential travel items, suddenly increased in price once they reached the till. There may be, my cousin argued, some out there with an unhealthy ability at maths, such that they would be able to sum the cost of everything in their basket and add a percentage in their head before they paid for it. The rest of us are forced to find out what the final bill is once a commitment has been made. It is too late, after all products have been scanned and summed and a line of impatient shoppers wait behind us, to decide today’s purchases have become too expensive and that we would like to return some things to the shelves. Such behaviour, my cousin reports, can lead to some irritation on the part of the normally friendly and welcoming population and the tax became a constant frustration throughout their stay.

I recognise that a story on someone not enjoying paying taxes is hardly the height of originality. It is rare that you find someone who welcomes them. With most tax related discussions conjuring little more than a shiver down the spine and a rueful shaking of the head in even the most law abiding of taxpayers. Although most of us would argue for more police on the streets, free education, and an accessible and well-functioning health service, we would really rather pay less tax for such privileges. In fact, many of us would dampen down our social conscience and pay no tax whatsoever. If given half a chance.

Such a contradictory position can be useful, as it means that tax is not just a liberal tool to fund essential state services. It can also be seen as a deterrent, encouraging people in certain areas of their life to adapt behaviour under the drive of avoiding additional charge. We can shout at smokers till we’re blue in the face about the dangers such a habit brings, but most will just blow dismissive rings in our face, as a response. Increase the price of their habit and they suddenly discover that they can survive with less of it. It matters little to them what we think of their practice, but as soon as it requires them to part with more of their money to indulge it, they find some motivation to resist.

The hidden ‘American taxes’ are not designed for such an issue. If you want to utilise them to encourage people to buy less of a product, you have to make it obvious. You have to change the price that people see. No point waiting for them to buy the product, be it cigarettes, soda, or alcohol, and then retrospectively charge them for it. After all, they are already accepting potential future health costs, so why won’t they take the undeclared impending financial costs as well. You need to make them pay at the shelf, where the decision is made, if you want to make them think twice about buying it.

Any suggestion to introduce such a measure to our food normally results in a number of people throwing their hands up as they scream about the impingement on their rite to buy what they want. Ignoring the fact that our food is already taxed, just in a rather odd and less rational way. So those of you readying your placards for the anti-food-tax march, would do well to understand that taxes on food are nothing new and any discussion around them normally results in the impromptu eating of pasties by a range of UK politicians.

So rather than saying a blanket no to food taxes, shouldn’t we be discussing how they are applied. After all, such taxes are often used to fund health services for treating some of the impacts that can arise from a long-term mismanagement of our diet. Maybe instead of opposing food taxes, we should focus on re-appropriating them for today’s needs, rather than for those around at the time of the tax’s origin. If we are going to apply taxes, and such things are recognised a certainty, perhaps we should use them to encourage people to eat less of the foods that can do them harm but eat more of the ones that can do them good. Saving our hard parted tax dollars in the long run.

Dr Idiot’s Idiets ideas

The self-taxing diet

How many of you, whilst face down in a large cake, or mouth full of chocolate éclair, have spluttered ‘I’m going to pay for this later’? That later being far enough away that it doesn’t actually stop you doing the thing you’re going to have to pay for. The gap between consumption and cost allowing you to feel that you can benefit now and offset the losses till later. The distal nature of the consequences overridden by the proximal nature of the contentment.

It is this gap between pleasure and pain that supports us in indulging our fancies. For example, if more than half of all smokers died on their first cigarette, rather than due to their habit some time down the track. I am sure the practice, rather than the people, would have fizzled out a long time ago. However, the message that if you do this you might get sick from it some way off in future, is not one to strike fear into the claggy hearts of the tobacco addicted few. And food is the same. You don’t gobble down saturated fat in the morning and have a coronary in the afternoon. The time lag between the two being long enough, such that we can enjoy spoiling ourselves in the present and don’t feel that we have to worry about the consequences until we experience a tightening of the chest some years later.

Compare that to a new strain of virus spreading amongst the population and our nonchalance to ill health alters. The immediacy of the threat encouraging us to act. With most of us adhering to guidance on hand washing but ignoring it when stock piling toilet paper.

The trick, therefore, if you want to steer yourself away from certain foods, is to pay now for eating them rather than later. I am not allowed to suggest a round of birching after every deep-fried chocolate bar, so rather I would advise imposing an unhealthy tax on yourself. In which you tip the waiting staff, cook, or shop assistant for every unhealthy item you purchase and leave them unrewarded for their service for every nutritious snack procured.

Alternatively, for those of you who worry that tipping is simply customers alleviating restaurants of the responsibility to pay their staff a reasonable wage. And who don’t want to support this dereliction of duty any longer. Why not donate to a charity instead. I suggest picking one linked to the condition you are most likely to develop from the treat you have just spoiled yourself with.

Pandemics

I may have already mentioned that I was a sickly child. Beset by recurrent and regular infection. Such was the frequency of a morning high temperature, leading to another week off school, that my Mum started referring to me as the ‘Champion of Tonsillitis’. A moniker of which I was strangely proud and still the only detail in the ‘Awards and Recognition’ section of my CV. To most children I imagine that a building fever, along with a sore throat and the associated aches and pains, would lead to a rising dread within them. Fearful of a yet more days of sickness and discomfort. For me it brought a little excitement, anticipating the time I could spend on the sofa, watching TV and eating ice cream. Still now the opening credits of Tom and Jerry, along with the taste of any frozen vanilla dessert, will bring out the cold sweats, as my body responds to what it reads as a sure sign of infection.

Obviously, we recognise that food and illness are inextricably linked. If we eat healthily, we are more likely to be healthy, and vice versa. But such an association normally focuses on the types of disease that are not passed from one person to another and that take time to develop. Those that are inextricably linked to nutrition.

We should also recognise that food and infectious disease are uncomfortable bed partners. And I am not just talking about the types we pick up from unhygienic kitchens and practices. After all, we know there is a link between diet and immunity. The right food helping to arm our bodies in their fight against foreign invaders. But more worrying is that the food we produce and distribute may be encouraging the development and spread of such pathogens in the first place.

It seems to me that most books written before 2020 will be light on the subject of pandemics, save for the odd prescient sci fiction, or cautionary, tome. Whilst everything written after the challenging year/s will dedicate some consideration to COVID-19 and its depressing fall out. Hence, I am responding to my editor’s demands and including a section on the catastrophe myself. I realise that when reflecting on this difficult time, most people will talk about the devastation the disease caused and how badly they were affected by it. I will try to provide a different angle, by refusing to pretend that I was worse off than anyone else and admitting that I actually enjoyed the first few weeks of lockdown. I am used to being by myself and my solitude became less a crushing reminder of my loneliness and more a rare opportunity to do something for the greater good. It also gave me an excuse to treat myself.

Within the initial weeks of lockdown, I was hit, as so many were, by the baking bug. Leading me to churn out a range of flour and sugar-based delicacies, in similar quantities to any family run bakery. Once tired of this I moved to online supermarket orders, then to meal-kit companies and finally takeaway delivery apps. All of which were supplemented by a short, and mask worn, walk to my local shop. Allowing me to stock my house with the necessary goods to support a return to my tonsil infected behaviour, watching lots of television and spoiling myself with a range of sweet and tasty treats.

At the time of writing the world is yet to fully open again. But there are a couple of things we must acknowledge before it does. The first is that the population returning to the communal spaces of old will probably need a little more room than before, both due to some mistrust of close contact and also because a year of little exercise and excess food takes time to shake off. The second is that the food sector provides an essential service to us all.

The rapidly emptying shelves of the nation’s supermarkets, at the first call of lockdown, pointed to the fact that we always valued their work. But it was only once the pressure was on, did we really appreciate how vulnerable they were to disruption. The unfilled toilet roll aisles, along with the rationing of flour and milk, pointing to the fragility of our food production and provision system. Highlighting a little disconnect between its many arms. At the same time that restaurants were closing for business, there were increasing lines at the food banks. The surpluses in one area of the food chain, unable to make up the shortfalls in another. Whilst a vast amount of produce went unpicked as the work force remained in isolation.

There is no question that such an event affected how we grew and distributed our food. But it must also be recognised that these processes can take some blame for the occurrence of such events. In saying this I feel I must be clear that I am not pointing the finger solely in the direction of markets in certain parts of Asia. After all, in the most part they are not too different from ones found in our own countries and without them the majority of their population would go hungry.

Whilst it is true that those housing a range of livestock do provide easy means for pathogens to be shared between species, we should remember that those of us in crowded houses should not throw germs. Rather we should cast an eye on our own factory farms, that seem a perfect ground for pathogen production. And we must recognise that hand washing and disinfecting has been a key part of livestock interaction for many years, in recognition that between species infection is nothing new, even in the lands we call home. It being mostly luck that such transmissions have remained largely isolated incidents. In that they have certainly happened, they just haven’t managed to spread to such a degree that they gain worldwide news coverage.

So, it is about time we acknowledge that the way we treat animals in our food chain and the manner in which we share the environment with them, is important not just for their wellbeing, but also for ours. And if the commonly shared moral defence of these beings is not enough to convey some respect onto our supposedly soulless fodder, perhaps the risk of future disease outbreaks in our own species will.

Dr Idiot busts myths

I have always had cause to think that the oft-quoted advice ‘Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime’, fails on the simple point that not everyone lives near water. Even when they do, the statement is based on a few assumptions. I once spent an uncomfortable day by a river, rod in hand, without catching anything. I realised at the end of my day’s efforts that I would have gained more nutrition by staying at home and eating the bait. Luckily, I was not dependent on my bounty for dinner. Nonetheless my investment in fishing equipment and attire was wasted only partly due to my limited ability and mostly because the heavily polluted river I was fishing in was rather low on stock.

So, by all means teach people how to fish, just don’t expect them to use their new skill to feed their family. Self-sustainability may be a desirable goal for some, but it may not be possible for the many. Rather that teach people the skills to produce and procure food, let’s support those who already have them and help them get the food to those who need it. This doesn’t mean a complete rewrite of our food systems, just a few adjustments with a little more support from farm to fork and we may find we are all the better for it.

MYTH BUSTED!

Development

There was a dream that purveyed the nation when I was young. Of being released from a dependency on others for our basic needs, such as the clothes shops, restaurants, and supermarkets. Of turning one’s back on the 9 to 5 job, the commute, and the dress code. All in order to become self-sufficient. Such desired independence had its limits, of course. Few people dreamed of making their own medicines, or self-improvising surgical intervention. What they mostly imagined was life with a smallholding. Growing, breeding, and preparing food, with the occasional patching up of clothes, when necessary.

This picture of happiness seemed to be based around 1980s sitcoms and the gentle humour that could arise from such a lifestyle. Unfortunately, not for the first-time, television was not entirely accurate in depicting how life in such circumstances would work out.

I had the dubious pleasure of being exposed to the realities of sustainable living, whilst in my younger years. When a couple moved in next door to our family home, with the sole aim of trying such a life. We learnt very quickly, by observation, that the self-sufficient life is not as attractive, nor as amusing, as television would have had us believe. What we hadn’t learned from these comedies was how few chickens it takes to keep one up at night, how odorous a smattering of animals and home-grown fertilizer can become over only a handful of warm summer days, or how stressful life can be when you can’t just turn to a regular income to ensure your larders and wardrobes are adequately stocked.

Television and allied media coverage at the time was almost entirely driven to promote such an existence as aspirational. We quickly found, through the example set by one dreamy couple, that the good life it was being sold on, was only half the story. To be fair, I would say that they did their best to be nice. Clearly realising that some imposition had been placed upon us, they would offer the odd olive branch by way of sharing their home grown produce, although always at a price and with limited choice.

Eggs were plentiful, potatoes in abundance, rhubarb a constant, but little else. For the few months they were living next door, our diet revolved around the products they passed on at lower prices than the local supermarket. Boiled eggs and potato rosti for breakfast, Spanish omelette for lunch and fried eggs and chips for dinner, with stewed rhubarb for dessert. Ingredients that up until that point had regularly been a part our diet, were quickly jettisoned in favour of the over the fence produce. As a result of my parents feeling that our limited food budget was best spent on the vast quantities of these products we could acquire from next door, rather than the lower quantities of the more varied offerings found in the shops.

It was, therefore, with some relief to most of the children in the Diot family that the happy couple moved on. Returning to the city jobs, restaurants, tailored suits, delis, and happier lifestyles they had left behind some months, perhaps only weeks, earlier. In doing so they demonstrated a predisposition found in us all, to move towards modern-day developments and away from the more basic life of times past. Most of us welcome such progression, generally up until an age at which our enthusiasm for learning new technology has diminished. Even then most advances require little agency from us. As they are stealthy introduced into our lives often without us noticing and certainly without our input. It is only when we lose them that we wonder how we are ever going to manage without them. And on occasions, we take it one step further, in thinking that no one else should do without them either. Particularly those we perceive as less fortunate than ourselves.

It wasn’t so long ago that the government in our country made an open and welcome declaration to ensure universal and superfast broadband access across the land. Pledging millions of pounds to do so. It is strange how such modern developments alter our perception of need. A decade before and the inequalities we were focusing on were more aligned to medical care, health, and education outcomes, than download speed and 4G coverage. We didn’t miss it before it existed, but now we feel deprived if we don’t have access to it. And we think it is unfair if others don’t benefit from it as well. We didn’t know internet access was such an important issue until so many, but not all of us, had it. Only by comparison do such things seem important. After all inequalities are, by their very nature, relative.

On occasions, such moves seem worthy. No one would question the spread of the most recent medical treatments to all corners of the globe. Most would also ultimately approve of the building of permanent and sustainable housing, the creation of integrated sewage systems and the provision of safe drinking water. But such developments seldom come alone. As we export and share the benefits of our progress, we also share the burden. If the modern world spreads, so do modern world problems. With increased traffic come road accidents, with industry comes pollution and if mobile phones are actually doing something to our insides, as some claim, by the time we find out what, most of the world will be affected.

Now, to bring things back to the focus of this website: with this development also comes food and not always to the benefit of the population. Of course, there are areas in which nutrition is a scarcity and we must ensure that people do not go without their basic requirements. But we have also seen how an introduction of refined carbohydrates, sugar, and processed food to remote communities can also lead to the development of tooth decay and heart disease. If we share from column B, it seems, we will most likely find that we are also sharing from column C.

For some, the argument goes that it is only right that these populations, once open to the world, get to make the same choices that we do. It is as much their right to get soda as it is antibiotics. However, the reality is that some things move faster than others in occupying new lands. Fast foods precede the most up to date medication, smart phones export before the latest medical technology and vending machines have seemingly conquered every corner of the globe, even though free education and health care for all has not. It appears that you can now trek for miles into the depths of the most remote of rainforests and stumble across a local drinking a can of sugary drink, whilst people around them are dying of disease that rarely claim lives in more affluent nations.

It seems to me that businesses adapt to new worlds and contexts faster than anyone. We may bemoan this, but there is something we could learn from them. They know that expansion does not benefit from a one size fits all approach. Forcing new ideas and cultures on a people does not work. If they just try to replicate what has been successful in one country, they may find that their business does not survive in another. They realise that they can either be satisfied that their beef burgers (or similar product) will never find a place in Hindu (or similar ethnic, religious or culturally characterised) countries, or they will have to adapt to take advantage of a new custom. They therefore spend a lot of time researching markets and menus to target their approach and adapting their product to whichever new custom the company would like to sell to.

We should learn from this. If we force our ways, settings, and food on to new populations we may be doing them a disservice. Not least of all because there is much about our environments that do a disservice to us. Not every aspect of our cities or settlements were developed with our health and happiness in mind. It seems unfair, therefore, to export them mistakes and all en masse to those we see as a few years behind us in the development process. It is only right that we learn from our experiences and help others to avoid making the mistakes we made. We can either see ourselves as leaders in development, or guinea pigs, and when we consider how we got to this point, it is difficult not to judge ourselves as the later.

Reader’s writes

Dear Dr Idiot,

I am concerned. I have been reading a lot about AI and our impending invasion by artificial life forms. Everywhere I look we are surrounded by computers. My partner and I work on our laptops or PCs, our children play their video games on their tablets and consoles, we all communicate with our phones, through texting or face time, even when at home we use our virtual assistants to communicate, rather than having to walk between rooms. We have become so dependent on them that if they ever decide to rise up and overcome us, it will be easy for them. After all they have infiltrated every part of our lives.

What can we do to defend ourselves when the machines revolt?

Yours concernedly

PC Petrified Parent

Dr Idiot replies:

Dear PC Petrified Parent

It may show my lack of understanding of AI when I say that I can’t see it’ll be a problem as long as we can unplug them. I’m not sure how computers can respond to someone flicking the off switch. I would say though, that this seems like the last thing you should be worrying about. Sounds as if the computers have already invaded and they aren’t doing your family much good. Technological progress can only be seen as development if it is an improvement. If humans were meant to lounge around on their ‘handhelds’ all day, we would have sofas for bums and four thumbs on each hand. I would say that now is the time to tackle those computers by turning them off before they pervade other parts of your lives. Why not expose you and your family to a bit of fresh air. But don’t expect to like it immediately, it takes time for the cave dweller’s eyes to adjust to the light.

Yours sincerely

Dr Idiot

Town planning

To those of you residing outside of the UK, I feel the need to clarify that not all of us living in these fair isles do so in similar surrounds to Downtown Abbey. In fact, most of us fail to afford the numerous bedrooms, abundant sitting rooms, large dining rooms and expansive land, common to any BBC costume drama. We are also, sadly, mostly without staff. Take the Diot family as an example, something we have done many times throughout this book. We were not blessed with numerous hectares of land ownership, but we did not mind. Partly as we didn’t know any better and partly as we could find access to all the space we needed. The fences of our property may have left little room for manoeuvre, but there was plenty of land beyond the borders. A quick leap over the old white picket bringing us into the endless meadows and pastures that stretched as far as our young eyes could see.

My memories of those times blend seamlessly into the children’s novels of my school days, in which everyone ran through knee high grass, illuminated and warmed by the summer sun. Just as these stories referred to a distant more innocent time, my childhood surrounds are no longer as they were once found to be. The fields and meadows we played in proving to be a luxury enjoyed by too few to be retained. The needs of the many eventually surpassing the pleasure of the minority.

Such land could be put to better use for the population, if it carried houses, train lines and roads. Infrastructure was more important than childhood adventure and in the place of the natural playground came traffic. Slowly at first but building overtime. Until we reached such a point at which our village, once so difficult to reach, was accessible for everyone. And the city, always closer in crow fly miles than travel time, was now a short train ride, or car drive, from our home.

Whereas visiting the city had once been a challenge of expedition and endurance, planning and travel taking most of the day, suddenly we could pop in for a morning or afternoon visit. It proved a revelation for us. How glorious this urban world was. One that seemed so different but that was now so close. The bright lights of the advertising hoardings and the busy roads so exciting compared to the quiet existence of our country home. The buildings so large and domineering, the people so hurried and focused. Even the pollution lent an intoxicating feel to the place.

We rode buses and trains, mixing and mingling with the city populace. And once we felt tired and worn from the constant stimulation, we sought sanctuary from the busy streets in shopping malls and food courts. And it was the food that appealed to us most of all. Bars, restaurants, and takeaways adorned every road. Every street corner held some form of vendor peddling cheap and tantalising offerings to the mass of foot traffic. Options for a range of budgets were catered for, as fine dining neighboured fast food, neighboured deli, neighboured street seller. There was a choice for every pocket, and we chose as many options as we could afford.

These seemed wondrous and exciting days, leaving us tired and sickly on the train ride home. But it wasn’t the environment that was so delightful, it was the contrast from whence we had come. Just as we visited the city, those who lived in it came out to see us. And they thought that we, with our rolling hills and fresh air, were the fortunate ones. Up until they got bored of walking around and wanted to find a coffee shop to sit down in. Our lack of resources sending them hastily home to the comfort of the familiar.

This distinction between our old home and theirs is not so obvious now. On the rare occasions I am drawn to visit my childhood village, on making the short drive from the city that once seemed so far away, I now struggle to make the distinction on where the metropolis ends and the parish begins. The rolling fields and expansive grassland that once delineated city and country are no longer there. Built on and urbanised they have been overrun by the sprawling suburbia. The now extensive road and rail network providing easy access to an area that had once been so difficult to reach. Dragging our village, and all those in between, into solid commuter belt territory.

Where such a trip had once been a lengthy trial of winding country roads, the extension of the rail network meant that one could leave one’s quaint stone walled village home and arrive in the city in a matter of minutes. People could live amongst the trees and still work in the offices, the large gardens and open space becoming desirable to a new generation of house buyer. The honest country dweller replaced by commuting city workers with greater wages and borrowing power, demanding more and more from their homes.

Housing grew from the train station and the road network out and the people came to live in it. Then infrastructure followed; restaurants, bars, advertising, traffic, and industry grew slowly but steadily around our village. Soon its quiet little world had been overrun with enterprises and offices. Buildings and parking taking the fields we once played in. It was now an offshoot, a suburb, of the city. And despite having admired it from afar, those in it were not keen to be a part of it. The fleeting visits had allowed us to indulge ourselves in the distractions and entertainment of the metropolis, with the relief of being able to leave it at the end of the day.

To live in it was not so much fun and unfortunately the ‘new town’ had not learnt from the mistakes of towns past. It was not driven by the people who were going to live in it, rather it was built by the people who were going to make money from it. Profit margins were defined by houses sold, floor space rented, and amenities used. If you want to make a profit from your land, you would be advised not to follow the country village blueprint of surrounding the houses with fields of bridleways and fallow land. You build on it. Our country home became a city in all but name and as we have learned previously that may not have been to our advantage.

One would think that designing municipalities and societies would not be so difficult. After all, adolescents spend all day doing so, forgoing human company, family meals and basic hygiene, in order to pass their hours building entire worlds, albeit virtually. The advantage they have, of course, is that they start with a blank canvas, which is easy to fill with considered and healthful design. Many of the difficulties we face in doing the same in the real world is that we have been left designs based on the priorities, needs, and wishes of past generations. Although it may not seem like it, most of our towns and cities did not spring up by accident, there was, at least at some point, some method to the madness. It is just that both method and madness have changed.

There was once a time that we, as a species, travelled to find loot. Stopping and settling where we came across it. As we journeyed, we discovered the rewards and riches that could be found further afield and developed a love of conquering and pilfering. With a finely tuned appetite for plunder, we became protective over what we had taken and nurtured a fear of those who might eye us with similar motivations. We therefore began to build our metropolises with defence in mind. Encouraging the construction of the type of high walls still favoured by certain colourful world leaders.

In time, we calmed our view on world domination, happy with our lot as a simple nation with an extensive colony. But still we wanted the goods and produce that could be found beyond our borders. We soon realised we could get if we were prepared to trade with people rather than steal from them. This trade opening a taste for the exotic, encouraging an admiration for those goods that were difficult to source. And if we wanted more of them that meant opening ourselves up to the world. Horse carts, so useful in getting us in and out of towns, did not cut the (distantly trafficked) mustard when it came to international travel. With boats being the chosen method of long-distance large-scale transport, we grouped ourselves around ports and rivers through which we could import and export our goods.

As always, our forefathers and predecessors refused to sit still, findings new ways to move. Ships and boats were useful in getting us between countries but limited in helping us navigate internally. The development of new ways to travel their lands, enabling them to spread and inhabit larger swathes of it. They could assemble almost anywhere they chose, bringing necessities to them by the load. No longer were town and cities planned with defence and safety in mind, they were designed for accessibility. Extensive roads and sprawling suburbs brought produce and people into the cities, in huge quantities, and this is where we still find them today, as ever-increasing populations struggle under the infrastructure initially designed and built for far fewer.

It seems, as so often happens, we are carrying the can for the poorly made decisions of our ancestors. And in some cases, it may be more than a little challenging to undo them. So, whilst we try to disentangle the urban design of some of our older conurbations, we should also remember that the world is still developing and the blueprints ever changing. Although we may have our hands lightly tied in those places where things seem pretty much finished, there are plenty of areas where this is not the case. As we spread and colonise those as yet untapped lands, perhaps we should start to think like the light-adverse games-console obsessed teenagers and consider every aspect of our urban design from the beginning. Rather than letting things develop as they have done everywhere else and leaving future generations to fix our ill-considered designs.

Dr Idiot thinks outside the box

As we have discussed above, very few of us get to shape the buildings and municipalities in which we live. Although they do undoubtedly shape us. And not always in a good way. No more is this the case than when it comes to city living. The cramped, busy, surrounds of urban survival doing little to lift our physical, or mental, health. Cities weren’t designed for individuals - but for a populace. They have been put together over a period of time to house a lot of people; to home, move, and feed a large number of citizens. Such crowded conditions are generally not pleasant environments in which to spend a lot of time. There is a reason that prisons and boarding schools are used as deterrents by the criminal justice system and exasperated parents respectively. And now that our capitals and major metropolises have expanded so dramatically, people who live within them have such little personal space that they recoil from even the most minor contact. Any sense of community diluted by an expanding population. However, whilst it is clearly true that you are never lonelier than when in a crowd, some have managed to overcome this dwindling communal spirit to create the kind of close-knit groups in which we as a species thrive.

It is true that many speak ill of the Blood and the Crips, but it is impressive that in such a large city they have fostered a unity and community support in which they can rely on each other for such necessities as hard drugs, untraceable firearms, and regular company. Until you break their code that is, at which point you are promised a grizzly and painful death. It may therefore seem unusual advice to suggest that one joins a gang or a crew, but when I do so I am thinking more West Side Story than Boyz n the Hood. So, find those with a similar interest to yourself and enjoy their companionship. If gang life doesn’t suit you, maybe take tap dancing lessons or pottery classes. After all, there is a place for us all out there.

Tradition

Many of us in ‘Christendom’ will agree that Christmas Day is special. With even those with a loose commitment to Christianity following the traditions of the day. You don’t have to have committed your life to the name of Christ to sing the carols, enjoy the family gatherings, watch the festive movies, or to give and receive gifts. Whilst even the unsanctified can enjoy the traditional Christmas meal, with a ‘healthy’ side of trimmings and treats. It is traditional, in acknowledgement of the holidays, to loosen the rules around which we normally live our lives. To cast off the shackles of a moderate life and gorge ourselves in a way we would not on any other day, or at any other time of the year.

Despite the restrained procurement we survive on for every other week of the year, shopping trips in the build up to this magical day are performed with military like precision and stocktaking. Everything is bought and eaten in army sized portions, with drinks and snacks served regularly throughout the weeks leading up to the 25th. Then the magical day arrives and all the stocks that have been saved for this one 24 hours are thrust upon us as the year’s most unrestrained orgy of consumption begins.

This is certainly the pattern we follow in the Diot family home. Christmas breakfast is a hearty affair, with bottles of alcohol (normally something on the cheap side of bubbly) opened as a table of French pastries and croissants provide an indulgent start to the day. After the table is cleared the snack cupboard is opened and crisps, nuts, crackers, dips, bread sticks and any crispy wheat or potato based product in the house is shared around with the hope of keeping us going until a slightly later than usual lunch begins.

Christmas dinner proves to be an endless stream of meat, stuffing, potato done numerous ways, veg, gravy, sauces, all served up after a starter that is the size of a normal main meal. We also seem to cater for double the number of those present, meaning we all feel obliged to take seconds, the hardier diner even forcing down a third helping, before dessert is brought to the table under great ceremony.

I don’t like Christmas pudding or mince pies, but I force myself to partake in both in order to keep within the festive spirit, insisting on finishing with some chocolate log, to cleanse the palate. Cheese and biscuits are enjoyed as the final course of the meal, leaving us to collapse bloated afterwards, only wrestling ourselves from the sofas and floor later in the evening, such that we can enjoy a quick turkey sandwich in front of the Christmas movie. After this, we abstemiously insist on no more, save for the chocolates we have gifted each other earlier in the day, which are generously shared around before bed. I imagine many of you reading this will relate to much of what I describe above. For it is nothing more than a traditional Christmas indulgence.

It is also just one example of a tradition or festivity in which food plays a central role. You only have to think of lamb and chocolates at Easter, the turkey and pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, the haggis, neeps and tatties for Burn’s night and the pancakes on Shove Tuesday, to recognise how central food is to these occasions. Similarly, if birthdays were not accompanied by a candle laden cake the screaming of disappointed children would be filling the air somewhere in the country, each and every day. Similarly, have you ever heard good reports of a wedding, of any denomination, serving salad buffets and diet soda to the expectant guests? The dress, the speeches, the location would all be forgotten in such circumstances. And let’s not forget funerals which, in my experience, generally end in a pub or house with a veritable spread of food and drink. Whilst wetting a baby’s head now talks less of watery blessings and more of beery toasts. And without these things it wouldn’t seem right, the occasion would seem to be lacking in some way. If we didn’t have the food or drink, it just wouldn’t be traditional.

So far, I have only talked about celebrations and festivities, but how many of you eat fish on a Friday, have a roast on a Sunday, enjoy toffee apples on bonfire night, or can’t watch a movie without an oversized tube of popcorn? They are all traditions around food that have been so well established that it would seem strange not to follow them. But why is this so? Why should food be so central to all these occasions?

In many cases the connection was formed way before we adopted it. Some may point to the scarcity of such indulgences in the past and suggest that perhaps food was the celebration. Being allowed to eat and drink was what made these occasions special. A moment amongst the suffering in which you were persuaded to relax your restrained stance, casting poverty and hardship to one side, if only for a day. But for many that is no longer the case. We find ourselves lucky enough to find party food on every day of the year if we are so minded. Although, in the same way that Christmas carols and seasonal TV would grate if they never ended, celebratory food and drink would become punishing if we did not allow some time in between.

But some traditions are more recent, or even more personal. The family pizza and board game night, the old school friend’s spa and dinner date, the cricket club curry night, can all be traditions those involved in would hate to lose. And hence they endure. In simple terms, food is a central part of the tradition, its helps to bring us together for it. It is fixed around moments that mean we can plan, anticipate and enjoy it. We can spoil ourselves today because we won’t do so tomorrow. That this is the time we can let ourselves go and after it has finished, we will go back to our sensible ways. The problem is that we are very good at doing the first bit and not so great at doing the second.

Dr Idiot gets quizzical

You are holding a traditional dinner party, pick one option from each of the choices below to find out how much fun you’re going to have.

How do you seat your guests?

1) Alternating by sex, couples apart

2) Sat on the floor, shoes off

3) Reclining leisurely around the food, with a vomit bucket to make room for further courses

Once your guests are seated, how do you start the meal?

1) By holding hands and saying grace

2) With a round of batter and gravy to fill up expectant guests

3) With an argument about the upcoming election or the country’s dictator, depending on the current political situation

What type of cutlery have you provided?

1) Only those utensils that will be used, placed in order of use, forks to the left, knives to the right and spoons above

2) Only a spoon, forks are the height of rudeness and knives must never be used with salad

3) No cutlery, guests must eat with their right hand only

What have you prepared for the fish course?

1) A nice piece of cod, covered in batter and deep fried

2) Canned and fermented herring served with boiled potatoes and red onion

3) Dangerously toxic options, served raw

What do you expect your guests to drink throughout the meal?

1) A choice of white or red

2) A shot of fiery stuff, downed with a toast between each course

3) Blood served fresh from a cow

You provide a tomato side dish, how is it served?

1) In sauce form with chips

2) Fresh with basil and olive oil

3) Hurled at people from the back of a truck

And then for dessert?

1) Apple pie

2) Candy bars fried in batter

3) Ice cream; gelato; kulfi; mocha; dondurma; or red beans with shaved ice, sweet corn, and evaporated milk

Once the guests are finished how would you like their plates to look?

1) Empty, with cutlery side by side in the 4 o'clock position, with the fork on prongs down and the knife on the outside, blade in

2) Crockery should have some food left on, otherwise you are distraught that you have not provided enough food for your guests and must apologise

to them

3) Smashed on the floor

How do you take your cheese?

1) In cake form

2) Infected with live maggots

3) Pursued down a very steep hill

People have finished eating; how do you bring the meal to an end?

1) Enquire after the bishop of Norwich until the Port is passed left

2) Check your phone to see if you have missed anything whilst eating

3) Belch loudly as a sign of appreciation

Answers

Mostly 1s, 2s or 3s, whatever you do I think people will just be grateful you invited them over.

Religion

I attended a Buddhist wedding once and rather enjoyed the experience. The service went on a little longer than I was used to, but it was nicely relaxed at the same time. In general, I wouldn’t say that I particularly enjoy weddings. Churches always seem a little cold and uncomfortable and the day and service act as a crushing reminder, to everyone, of my singledom. I spend most of my time at such events being introduced to people old friends or family see as suitable partners. This one was a little different, however, as it was largely a celebration of food found in the country from whence the marrying couple - or their families - originated. I was not expecting such delights and whilst sitting in the extremely large room in which the service was being held, I was overjoyed to have a plate of treats thrust upon me. Anyone who has visited a Sri Lankan restaurant and ordered the mixed starter platter for two, will have a fair idea of the bounty brought to me at my chair and will no doubt empathise with my feelings of joy at their delivery.

Though generous in portion, the offering was merely a sampler to the day’s extensive eating. I have never been to a wedding that has been short on food; the meal, speeches and wedding dress being the three pillars of a successful day. But this event took catering to a different level. What with it being my first Buddhist wedding, I am unsure whether the astonishing quantities of fare on offer, as well as the surprising number of uncles mentioned in the wedding speeches, are peculiar to this religion, or to this wedding in particular. Similarly, I cannot say whether such events normally pass without the service of alcohol or meat. Buddhists, or the Buddhist people holding this particular ceremony, apparently frowning upon the eating of animals and the drinking of booze. No meat was on display at any point with not one drop of cheap sparkling wine, or similar, available to toast the happy couple.

A poor wedding breakfast and limited drink is not normally welcome at such celebrations and many at this ceremony bemoaned the lack of animal protein and alcohol on offer. I was less concerned. I have never felt so fresh the morning after a wedding and I have a clear recollection of everything that occurred, including the drumming, chanting and coconut smashing, which all proved a welcome alternative to the rather dry weddings I had previously attended. Lastly and most importantly to me, the food was as flavoursome and plentiful as any I have had and the fact that it was all plant based had passed me by, until I was informed of such by a disgruntled (non-paying) guest. At the time I did question whether, if one was struggling to go without booze and meat for one afternoon, one might be advised to look inwards, rather than turn one’s ire outwards. But more than this, I felt that complaining about such things seemed to be taking exception to the religious beliefs of others rather than their menu choices.

Once you have settled into, or find yourself in, a religion, it is difficult to go against some of it is central tenants. Food, unsurprisingly, gets a ‘healthy’ coverage in most religious texts. Rules on what to eat, when, along with how to prepare it, are generally set out for believers to follow. Amongst other lessons on life and love.

Having been brought up in a Christian country I was always aware of the rather confusing and sometimes conflicting messages on diet found in the bible, starting with the banishing of humans from the Garden of Eden because someone ate an apple. A message contrary to today’s considerations on a healthy diet. However, I do not blame the authors of the bible, or other religious writers, for what I perceive as a misappropriation of food for the modern times. After all, Christianity, along with most of these religions, materialised some time ago, hundreds and even thousands of years in the past. Hence their dictates and guidance reflect life in those periods. For example, I doubt many people find themselves coveting their neighbour’s donkey in today’s cities, such creatures not being as useful as they once were.

You may have noticed that I am no theologian, or historian, but I imagine I am right in saying that food was a very different resource at the time the bible was written. It would therefore make sense that attitudes towards it would be very different then, compared to now. Recommendations included in the text reflect this. The bible, as I understand it, focuses its nutritional advice on type of animals we should be eating. Although in some countries we may hold true to much of what it says on the issue of legged verses not legged animals, in current climates we would benefit more from divine guidance on our consumption of fat, sugar, and salt. The last a term generally used in a positive way in Christian teachings. Being the salt of the earth takes on a different meaning if we consider what it does to our own health. Similarly, I remember little from my religious education lessons on the dangers of processed food and meal deals, both things that are a greater concern today than at the time most religious texts were written.

With the challenge for such guidance to stay relevant for thousands of years, it may be no surprise, that with no recent update to either testament, our use of food is different to how the good book(s) advised. This is not to belittle the impact of religion over what we eat. Despite a diminishing commitment to religious guidance by a number of our population, there is no escaping its influence. Those of you who read my considerations on traditions above - and I do hope you are not skipping sections - will know that many of the celebrations and occasions that were defined by religion, have been adopted to form part of the food custom and traditions we currently follow. It is just that they have been gradually adapted in doing so. And this should be no surprise. Being one who was brought up in a village in which everyone went to church at Christmas and Easter, danced around the Maypole in spring and celebrated the harvest in Autumn will have seen how religious practices have been integrated into our traditions, along with our more secular celebrations.

This suggests that even the heathens who have renounced religion are not immune to its influence. So rather than keep fighting it, why not make it work for us. Doubters may see our range of religions as a confusing issue, symbolic of our species’ attempts to explain the unexplainable. I see a choice. A menu of faiths from which you can select the one that suits you best. In our creative and imaginative way, we have allowed a choice of creed, whose practices run from uncomfortable seats in cold churches, through chanting and curries, to the ritual use of cannabis. Surely within these offerings there is a religion whose lessons on food suit your tastes and dietary needs. Some advise against eating shellfish, some ban beef, eggs are not welcome by all and even caffeine gets a mention on occasions. So, whatever your food preferences, beliefs or needs, I am sure that there is a religion that supports it. You just have to find the right one.