Where

Introduction

My Uncle George was always held up as an example to my siblings and me of how not to live a life. We saw little of him throughout our childhood, as he spent the majority of this time ‘at her majesty’s pleasure’. An incongruously grand term, used by my parents without further explanation, setting up an impressionable nibling for a major fall when learning of its true meaning some years later.

Uncle George’s life, my Mum once told me, was a series of repeating cycles. He would want something, he would realise that he could not afford to buy that something, he would take that something without paying, he would then get caught for taking that something, he would be charged for taking that something, prosecuted and then imprisoned. In time he would be released, his crimes being mostly petty in nature, and would vow never to take such somethings again. But it wouldn’t be long before he would find himself wanting something once more and so the cycle would continue.

My Mum reported that she had seen little of the criminal in a younger George. Telling tales of a sweet boy more likely to share than steal and one that took any sentence to the naughty step to heart. Alas such upstanding tendencies did not endure and Uncle George grew to be a career criminal of much reputation, if not repute. As although he was prolific in his attempts to steal, he wasn’t actually all that great at completing the job untroubled. An A for effort, an F for achievement.

My Mum would claim that his lack of success in his chosen career was a sign of the inherent honesty she saw within him as a child clashing with the criminal tendencies he developed as he grew. Others have pointed that a major hurdle in his ability to benefit from his ill-gotten gains, was that he found it very hard to get away from anyone chasing him, due to the restricted working of a gammy knee, injured when jumping out a top floor window whilst holding a rather large television. The misbehaving joint had a dual impact, first it restricted the speed of his escape, and secondly it made him very easy to identify on security television. I have it on quite good authority that burglars, robbers and petty criminals who lived and operated within a similar postcode to my uncle, developed a limp whenever in the presence of CCTV, such as to throw the police of their scent and into the path of ‘honest’ George.

Alas, this resulted in him spending more time behind bars than in front of them. Time, he would claim, he was using wisely in an attempt to make himself a greater asset to society. Although those that knew him better, believed motivations for self-improvement had more to do with attempts to gain early parole, than any drive to be an benefit to the community. For once out, all it took for him to forget such personal development and return to his criminal ways, was a soft knock on the door from one of his past compatriots. Or the realisation that technology had moved on since his latest incarceration and that whilst his home was lacking such luxuries, his limited bank balance would not allow the purchase of them.

Uncle George is an example to us all, albeit a negative one. It is all very well changing how we feel about a behaviour, but if we are released back into the wilds of the environment that created that behaviour in the first place, we will struggle to build on any good intentions. You would not recommend that someone trying to give up alcohol does so whilst sitting in their favourite pub, or that the reformed drug addict spends a pleasant weekend catching up with friends at their old crack den. So why would you think that the environment that created a love of doughnuts is going to support you in your bid to eat less of them?

Where you live has a direct impact on how you live, including the food you eat. In this chapter, I consider the settings in which we spend our days, looking at the schools our children go to, the places in which we work in and the cities we live in, along with the food that surrounds us as we go about our business and leisure.

Food availability

Chances are that most of you reading this have found yourselves, at some point, in the type of bar that provides free salty snacks for its clientele. I am sure that whilst in such an establishment, few of you thought that management had chosen to litter their environment with free to eat (cheap to buy) food out of the goodness of their hearts. Most of you viewing their motivation as thirst generating rather than hunger curing. Nonetheless, recognising this probably did little to change your susceptibility to their offerings.

In my experience, sojourns to such establishments start unremarkably. You enter, you go to the bar, and you buy a drink. Whilst at the bar and waiting for your order to be fulfilled you may find yourself snacking mindlessly on whatever bowl of food has been laid out for customers, be that nuts, crisps, or even olives - in the more upmarket establishments. You will not necessarily be hungry, but this matters little. There is food in front of you, it is free, you are waiting by it, you eat it until your drink arrives. At which point you decline the offer of purchasing more food, as you are not hungry, and retire to a table to await company. Or, if solo drinking, you sit alone quietly contemplating life, pretending to work on your novel or check share options.

Whilst sat, sipping economically at your refreshment, you reach out for the bowl of snacks provided on your table. You have not become hungry on the short walk from the bar. You may not even want more of the offerings you had grazed upon whilst waiting for your drink. In fact, there is a good chance that you don’t like them very much. But strangely this does little to stop you taking more. You don’t need the food, you probably don’t particularly want the food, you certainly wouldn’t buy it, but by its mere presence you just can’t stop eating it. You are not driven by hunger or need, but by availability.

The popular amongst you may eventually be joined by your friend, or friends plural, and you welcome their arrival for the gift of company. You gently push the snack bowl towards them. Partly through generosity and partly in a bid to curtail your grazing. A bid that ultimately proves unsuccessful, as whether due to the pressures of competition, or support though companion mirroring, your consumption increases.

Thankfully, within little time, the snack bowl is emptied and those at the table can relax. The temptation removed by your surrender to it. Breathing a sigh of relief, you order two more drinks, which you plan to enjoy, along with the company, without the torment of cheap thirst inducing food sitting between you. You sit back in your chair and enjoy the view out of the window, or the flames of the open fire flickering next to you. Only for the ever-attentive barperson to spot your snack free table, refill your bowl and saunter off with the satisfaction of a job well done. It is then that you realise there is no escape.

This behaviour should come as no surprise. You are only here, living in the current environment, due to a lengthy lineage of individuals who beat others to available supplies, either alone, or with the help of their nearest and dearest. Meaning that through evolutionary fitness and social support you are programmed to eat the food in front of you.

The clever amongst you will have spotted an easy solution; leave the establishment and their plentiful food behind you. Choose a new location without such temptations. This seems sensible, but the question then becomes, where would you find such a food free environment? This form of lure is not the sole reserve of thoughtful wine bars and pubs. Those of us lucky enough to live in more affluent countries spend our days in settings in which food is readily and easily available. Long gone is the need for extended trekking and stalking whenever stocks need replenishing. Everywhere we go, everywhere we sit, stand or stare, we are within a short distance of food. There is no escape. Our world is now full of fare. It surrounds us at all times.

A short stroll up any High St will bring with it access to a whole range of ready prepared ‘nourishment’, all of which can be eaten with little effort or consideration. We no longer exit our caves onto vast savannas or open our doors to gaze out upon our personal smallholdings. Gone are the days of tending to the land to feed the family or hunting the grazing animals for the good of the collective. The food now comes to us, it has moved into the cities, onto the High Streets and straight into our homes. The competition is no longer between us as consumers, it is now between those the providers. Food, the thing that we all need and will not survive without, is in such abundance in our rich western environments, that it actually has to sell itself. A precious resource that is so profuse it requires advanced production and delivery systems, along with marketing strategies, just to be bought. It has to be easy, economical and extensive to be chosen in favour of other options.

This move of food from necessity to commodity has been shaped by our environment, but, in turn, it has also shaped it. The way we live has forced companies to grow, produce and deliver food. In return where we live has been shaped in order to enable them to do all those things as cheaply, easily and productively as possible. This ubiquitous availability of food did not just spring up overnight, it developed alongside us. To such an extent that it seems almost impossible to escape the overarching influence of food on where we live. And this is seldom more the case than in our cities, the sprawling modern environments in which most of us live.

Dr Idiot’s Idiets Ideas

The Criminal Diet

I would think that few of you have seen an overweight burglar. I never have. Natural selection would suggest that those carrying a little extra baggage are both less likely to squeeze through the narrow windows of the average house and more likely struggle to make good their escape, compared to intruders with a lithe and limber frame, when pursued by the healthy hand of the law. A life of crime, it seems, although supposedly not paying from the point of finance and freedom, may assist in encouraging some fitness retention. I will concede that shoplifters may benefit from a little extra bulk, with it providing a greater hiding volume. However, it would also seem likely that exiting from a heavily guarded shop with a range of goods hidden under one’s coat could lead to a bout of enforced activity. Particularly when done on a regular basis, with shop security recognising one’s face from previous encounters. This makes me think that stealing is a healthier way to procure food than buying it. Think of the calories you could burn whilst being chased down the street with a beef joint and all the ingredients for Yorkshire pudding, stuffed under your arm. I will concede that ‘I was doing it for the good of my health, milord’ is a weak defence and one that is unlikely to sway any reasonable jury. So those of you wishing to stay on the right side of the law and away from the strict prison diet, can always have your grocery order sent to a neighbour’s home. Just let yourself in to pick it up when they are not around. Houses with a large dog should provide the most exercise.

Urbanisation

We, the Diot family, were proud to see ourselves as simple country folk. Our home being found in the middle of a small village that resided more than twenty miles from the nearest city. It was a typical English parish, with church, post office and pub, all distributed around one road that ran less than 500 metres from top to tail. Fields, meadows and rivers adorned the few houses that supported the village population and a short stroll in any direction would bring us onto the extensive farmland of Britain’s food growers.

It was therefore quite a shock when, at the age of 18, I left behind the rolling fields and blissful pastures to move to the city. Gone was the greenery, the sun and fresh air and in its place came the trappings of metropolitan consumerism and consolidation. The barely affordable, if not entirely comfortable, flat I had taken was to be found above one of the many fried chicken takeaways in the area. The smell of hot oil and cooked meat filling the rooms every evening of every day.

Whereas the cycle from my parents’ house to the village school, or parish meadows, normally involved cheery greetings from residents whose families had resided in the area for several generations. My new route, from flat to a choice of public transport hubs, involved a speedy saunter past three burger bars, two pubs, a Chinese takeaway, pizza restaurant and a fish and chip shop, along with a lack of eye contact from just about anyone hustling along the same pavement that I was.

The food options and outlets were easy to ignore on my way to the early morning metro. But on returning home, late, tired and hungry, their welcoming cheap menus and readily available fare enticed me in with the promise of an evening saved from the grind of food preparation. On the rare occasions I was able to run the gauntlet without nutritional injury, I would arrive home to be greeted by the thick stench of fried breaded chicken, flowing up from the ‘restaurant’ below. There was no escaping the attractive bait of the food outlets surrounding me.

This was a new experience. At home, it had been a lengthy drive from chez Diot to obtain fare of any description, fast or otherwise. The closest supermarket was of a suitable distance that our infrequent stock ups were a family event, with additional food often acquired through farm visits and neighbourly vegetable patches. Now, in contrast, food was all around me, with the large neon signs and home delivered menus that advertised it proving hard to ignore. The city, it seemed, wanted to feed me in a way that the country had not, in vast quantities, with little effort on my part. The food may have come from the kind of place I had recently left, but it had changed to suit the place I had moved to, and I could relate to this.

I am not the first person to be attracted by the bright lights of the big city. Everyone from Dick Whittington to Holly Golightly has made a similar move, in the hope that these sprawling metropolises will benefit their lives. City living, whilst I was growing up, was seen as desirable and exotic. Those of us who lived away from it ignored tales of slums and destitution and focused on the opportunity and wealth these urban wonderlands provided. City folk were revered as special and exclusive. Parents commonly brought tales of someone’s son or daughter living in the city, their location of residence always used as a sign of success, without any further information on what they did whilst they were there necessary. Visitors from London or Bristol, Birmingham or Liverpool were greeted with the fine china and the expensive biscuits, in a desperate bid to show them that we weren’t as backwards as our country ways may suggest. We had to put on a show for the urbanite and marvelled at tales of life in whichever big smoke or large conurbation they had come from.

They were desirable locations to live, the money, the jobs, the entertainment. City living was revered and celebrated, moving to one was aspirational. It was for the elite. It was special. But only for a time. Now that most of us live in a city, doing so cannot be considered unique. Urban living is now the norm and for many of us an expensive, impersonal, stressful, busy, polluted norm. We are part of the crowd of highly-strung employees rushing around busy road and public transport networks to get to work as quickly as possible. In order to earn the money, we need to keep us in our undersized, rented, garden-less apartment, in a heavily populated part of whatever metropolis we have found ourselves in. With few of us seeing an easy way out and many of us looking wistfully on the countryside we left behind, or the version we see on any number of escape the big city television reality shows or dramas.

Rather than celebrating our role as the urban dweller, many of us look enviously at the country homes and village communities that were once pitied for being remote and undeserved. We long for a time without the polluting noise, light and air that bombards our senses and body as we try to sleep, relax, or exercise. We curse bustling busy roads, bumper to bumper with transport options, cars and limos for the more affluent, public transport for the honest worker. We also bemoan the people who make up these densely populated conurbations, not as individuals but as a collective, despite being one of them ourselves.

There is no escaping the masses. Cities are designed to shelter and support a lot of people whether they be workers, residents, children, or adults. And housing, transport and other services have been developed to enable them to do just that. With the cities then unable to sustain the rolling fields and farmland needed to feed such numbers, if they are also to accommodate them. Little food is sown and grown in these concrete homes, despite vast amounts being processed, cooked and consumed within them. Produce must be brought in and provided in a style that suits the urban dweller. City life is stressful and busy and that means that food choices are made with time and space in mind, as these are the resources city residents miss most. Every second billboard advertises food; cheap, big, sugary, fatty, ready to eat food and every second shop allows you to buy it.

Many have tried to change this. To introduce a little of the countryside culture into our urban food options. As we walk around the farmers’ markets, street food souks or artisan bazaars of our city home, we think wistfully of the country gardener selling or supplementing their home grown produce. We imagine the wild field picnics, long lazy days by the river and family meals made from locally grown, hand prepared, produce. However, just as we once viewed life in the city through rose tinted spectacles, we now may be doing the same for country living. Yes, you might have more space and time, but with that comes fewer jobs and less access to many of the services and infrastructure that we rely on, or enjoy, day to day.

Although it does undoubtedly play a part, it would appear that where you live is not the sole determinant of how you live. If you have the money and resources, it seems that wherever you choose to reside, you will be ok. The country estate, or the townhouse, even a combination of the two, works out for those who can afford them. But those without the means, may find challenges in either location. If you are one of the lucky few enjoying a healthy and happy rural routine, be grateful for your lot. If you have a nice life in the city, celebrate that as well. On the other hand, if you’re one of the minority who are able to make a choice, now might be the time for you to consider doing so. Take my quiz below to find out where you live and how that might be affecting what you eat.

Dr Idiot gets quizzical

This is my urbanicity quiz, just answer the questions below to find out if you live in a dense urban area or a rural one.

Question 1) Do you live in a city?

A) Yes

B) No

C) I don’t know

Question 2) Do you live in the country?

A) No

B) Yes

C) I don’t know

Answers

Mostly As

You live in an urban environment; this can affect the food and physical activity choices you make.

Mostly Bs

You do not live in an urban environment; this can affect the food and physical activity choices you make.

Mostly Cs

Go and look outside the window and then take the test again.

Advertising

You may be getting the impression, if you have been reading carefully, that I was not the most scholarly of pupils. You would be correct in thinking this. I passed most of my school days in fear of having to demonstrate my lack of knowledge through exams, tests, or questions in class and I developed a few coping mechanisms to avoid such occasions. If I was unfortunate enough to be picked out to answer a topic relevant question designed to aid my learning, I would immediately freeze and not move for the duration of the interrogation. This would rather confuse my predatory teacher, who would soon move on. On the rare occasion in which they demonstrated frustrating persistence, deciding that my prolonged inaction was not a satisfactory response, I would collapse on the floor and remain there obstructed from their view by my desk or classmates seated in front of me. Almost all the tests and exams I was subjected to resulted in a similar reaction.

Such an approach served its purpose. Teachers largely left me alone throughout my school career, in the fear that they would have to fill in an accident report. My behaviour got me labelled, in this less politically correct past, as someone ‘not comfortable with effort or achievement’ and brought me the nickname ‘fainting goat’ from all the staff in the school. I will concede that it was true that my brain would not retain information of the type judged important by the educational classes, such as capitals of the world, French verbs, or methods to solve quadratic equations. But I was not without the capacity to learn. If you had shown me the symbol of a popular burger chain, I could have recounted the entire menu and the costs of each item without pause for breath. Give me a pound and I could tell you what combination of candy I would be able to purchase from the local shop and how much change I would expect to receive back, without stopping to look at a calculator.

Engagement seems to me the key to academic success. I did not connect with the lessons being held in many of the classrooms I was forced to sit in, but I could soak up information if I felt it was important. Where I focused my energies, I was able to learn. An obvious example of this is that during the advert break from my favourite television programme I could name the brand, product and message milliseconds after every commercial started. Throw a history textbook in front of me and I might draw horns on Henry VIII before closing it; but expose me to a range of marketing and I could retain and recall all the information from it after one or two viewings. This, it seemed, was a family trait, my siblings being equally adept at learning better from television than they did from books or blackboards.

There is a position shared by a number of educators, that we should celebrate the skills and achievement of children, no matter where they lie. So it was within the Diot family, that we invented the rather competitive ‘advert guessing game’ - AGG for short - which would be held in every break of every programme we watched. AGG would involve a tense three minutes, in which the first to shout out the focus of the advert, as soon after it started as possible, would gain a point. Points that would be tallied up at the end of the evening. It is amazing now to think that having preceded to fail most of the exams and tests I sat for throughout my school career, I was unbeaten at AGG over the same period of time.

My views on advertising are less charitable now. As I see it not only as an interrupter to my chosen entertainment, but also largely misleading and off point. I would not be the first to question the link between the overpriced, pretentious novellas of the standard perfume advert, and what, whichever fragrance they are promoting, actually smells like. Nor would I be original in questioning whether the food or drink being constantly sold to me would prove to be as life enhancing as the advertisement suggests. Few snacks I have eaten have made me more attractive to the opposite sex, nor have any meals led to the kind of wholesome reflective family moments, that commercials would have us believe. The real shame of the advertisers, though, is that it doesn’t have to be that way. Not all marketing gets away with such fabrication.

My cousin tells me that if you are ever to watch a commercial for some form of drug therapy in America, you will be exposed to about 20 seconds of promotion followed by around three minutes of full disclosure and disclaimers. A snapshot of a pain free life, followed by an impressive list of potential side effects that you are more to experience, were you to actually take the drug. Wouldn’t it be great if the same could be done with food advertising? If industry could be forced to warn of the possible consequences of consuming their product at the same time as promoting it. If every time they tried to sell us their mass-produced processed snack, they had to admit that the over consumption of such things could lead to some less welcome consequences than the wholesome fun depicted in the advert. Similarly, perhaps rather than casting the most attractive of struggling actors to sell it, they could be made to enlist a truer representation of those who survive only on a diet of fast food.

Some suggest that advertising has no effect, that we will ignore it and continue to make our decisions unaffected. After all, we know when we are being sold to. If this is so, it could be the first billion-dollar industry based on ‘something that doesn’t work’, potentially outside of diet books and self-help literature. More alarmingly, although we think we can take each promotion at face value, we are not always aware that we are the target of advertising. It may seem obvious to those of us reading newspapers and billboards that we are being sold to, whilst the advert breaks in radio and television are also easy to identify. But cleverly constructed marketing is not always so apparent and one thing we have learned is that whatever technological development our generation achieves, advertisers are commonly the first to take advantage of it.

Maybe more worrying than the posters and programmes we get exposed to at select times, is the stealth advertising that surrounds us all day, but to which we are often unaware. Sponsorship and product placement mean we don’t even know we are being sold to; sporting events, concerts, school equipment can all be emblazoned with whatever someone wants to sell as long as they are willing to pay. Celebrities can augment their already bloated salaries with compensation for openly using a brand in public, whilst the characters they play can be manipulated just as easily. The vlogger currently talking to your children whilst sipping a soft drink or using a specific make-up range may not be providing as full a disclosure on product placement as you may like.

The cynical amongst you may guffaw at those of us stupid enough to be led and influenced by the mildly famous, but not all the actors employed in advertising are recognisable. Groups of ‘friends’ all using the same phones, or eating the same food, in the town in which you live could have been paid to do so. The humorous self-effacing online video shared around the office may not be quite as genuine as the phone-filmed feel would make it seem. Whilst the cultural desire for certain products, though still strong, may have been the result of clever marketing many years ago.

It is time to admit that we are all victims of and vulnerable to advertising, but we can also be wary of it. We can question messages from those selling us a product as much as we do from those we didn’t vote for. The first step is to realise how susceptible to advertising we are. Recognise our vulnerability to it, so that we can learn how to deal with it.

Use my (yet to be) scientifically proven quiz below to test how strongly you are influenced by food marketing and promotion.

Dr Idiot gets quizzical

Answer the six questions below and then use the key to determine if you are sucker for today’s food marketing.

1. What is Ronald McDonald’s greatest achievement?

A. Being the only Scottish immigrant to be known for his smile

B. Bringing the socialist agenda to British politics

C. To survive so long on a diet of ground beef

2. What do you like most about Larry the Quaker?

A. The delicious cholesterol busting breakfasts he serves

B. His winning smile and recent weight loss

C. I prefer my oats secular

3. Who is Captain Birdseye?

A. A respected navy veteran whose commitment to the nation’s defence must be recognised

B. The friendly widower who survives on a diet of frozen meals

C. The irresponsible old local who should not be allowed to have so many children on his boat without life vests on

4. If you were his lawyer what defence would you give for the Hamburglar?

A. It wasn’t him, the stripped short and eye mask are simply in fashion

B. He is doing a public good, stealing fast food before children can eat it

C. No defence, crime is crime and he must pay his dues

5 How do you respond to the laughing cow?

A. Ask her where she bought her earrings

B. Tell her you didn’t realise cheese was the secret to a happy temperament

C. Tell her to stop sniggering or you’ll turn her into high steak

6. Your partner comes home and says they have invited Mr Peanut for dinner, how do you feel?

A. Great, it is lovely to have such a classy gentleman visit

B. Excited, hopefully he will bring you some of his delicious goods

C. Worried, anyone who deems it ok to dress formal from the waist up, whilst remaining naked from the waist down should not be allowed in the house

Answers

Mostly As

You respect these people as individuals but are less concerned about their food. You can decide for yourself what you eat, without referring to some cartoonish characters.

Mostly Bs

Oh dear, you are susceptible to clever, and not so clever, marketing. You might not trust the average person in the street but put them in clown make up and suddenly you respond to everything they say.

Mostly Cs

Good for you, never trust someone trying to sell you something, buy my book on avoiding advertising to learn more.

Restaurants

I remember an occasion – although it stands out as a singular one only – in which my mother had persuaded my father to go for meal at what she was proudly calling a ‘nouveau cuisine’ restaurant. I can still recall the excitement in her voice as she told us. She clearly saw this as a step up the social ladder and a sign that life was finally working out. An optimism that was eroded by the early drips of the meal and drowned in waves of disappointment once the bill had been delivered. The evening, she reported later, was a crushing realisation that some people had settled into their routines and habits and had lost the discernment necessary to enjoy some of the more refined experiences life had to offer. It was clear that she was not talking about herself, but instead was referring to my father whose general demeanor and disposition, she suggested, was not suited to high end dining. They certainly never returned to the restaurant in question, but had they done so they may have struggled to find a warm welcome anyway. Although the manager did not disclose the length of the ban he imposed on Dad, I have it on good authority that his photo remained with the door staff for some time.

His defence, when he was allowed to give it, was that he was simply rather loath to part with his ‘hard earned cash’ for the meal in question, as he was going to have to save some money to buy fish and chips on the way home. I concede that it probably wasn’t right to share this opinion so loudly in the restaurant, but I do have some sympathy for his point of view. His description of the food was that it was fine looking but not filling. And full was something he generally liked to be after eating. Especially if he was footing the bill. I have never had the pleasure, nor the finances, to dine in such establishments, but my father’s description of style over substance, in his words ‘all fart and no poo’, has not encouraged me to save my pennies for the pleasure of doing so.

It is true, however, that eateries of this type are a growing breed. The well-heeled always on the lookout for increasingly pretentious food on which to splash their hard-inherited money and the less well-off hoping to experience a slice of life in the fast lane. The very creation of nouveau cuisine is the epitome of the transformation of food into a luxury, the commercialisation of a necessity and the creation of a business. For it was not always this way. There once was a time that eating out was the reserve of vagrants and vagabonds. With dining establishments less focused on hygiene than modern laws demand, the more upstanding members of society were not to be seen eating outside of their homes and would generally only dine safe in the privacy of their expansive dining rooms.

As with so many things to do with the restaurant trade, the idea of public dining was given to us by the fine foodies of Europe’s culinary capital, Paris. With their egalitarian invention, eating out was no longer the reserve of those who could not eat at home and became desirable for all. With this aspiration, the types and trends of restaurants multiplied and adapted to cater to all tastes, wallets and purses, the role of the restaurant changing at the same time. Where they were once there to restore, now they are here to spoil and pamper, to encourage excess and indulgence. They are, after all a business, just like any other.

It does not matter the establishment one visits, from cheap café to decorated bistro, they all want to make money and to do that they need to make you eat. They want to sell you numerous courses and turn the cheapest cuts and least expensive fare into the highest profit margin. Then they want you to drink. A wine for every course, bottles of spring water or fizzy soda. They dangle huge menus in front of you with a multitude of delicious sounding options; hor dourves at the top, next to starters, just above the mains, not forgetting the side dishes at the bottom. All of which is supplemented with constantly filling breadbaskets. When you have had enough to eat, they offer you the dessert menu followed by a final coffee and accompanying chocolates. Each mouthful or sip proving an addition to the final bill.

Restaurants are the masters at upselling and are an indulgence because that is exactly what they want to be. No one pays a restaurant for the pleasure of abstaining and no restaurant would want to encourage that. Set meals, special deals, food challenges, tasting menus are all there to incite gluttony and spending. No one goes out to eat reasonably, so we are happy to pay if it leaves us content and replete. After all, we are out. We are treating ourselves. We are there to indulge, to gorge. We are happy consumers. Otherwise, we might as well stay at home. Restaurants give us what we want from them, or we don’t give them what they want from us: our hard-earned money. A healthy, calorie counting restaurant quickly becomes a bankrupt business, until there is such a time at which we are prepared to choose it over the multitude of indulgent options available to us. And choose it we must, regularly and in large enough numbers to cover ground rent, staff costs, energy bills and produce, if it is to survive.

Some try to argue that restaurants are not here to feed the masses and rather they offer the occasional outing. But an occasional outing establishment is either very expensive or vulnerable. Covers need to be filled now on every evening of every week. Quiet kitchens and empty eateries do not stay open for long. Restaurants want to be an all-week option, not just a weekend treat. They want to be an easier, more desirable choice than cooking at home. Just as they changed from public service to private extravagance, the role of the restaurant changed to be a substitute to home cooking, rather than a complement to it. Some blaming the young upstart of fast food for this move. Although still viewed as the poorer cousin of fine dining, it is hard not to acknowledge its impact on the food industry. We may revere the starred and celebrated chefs for their culinary competence and turn a nose up at the mass produced heavily franchised sibling. But the market share and pervasive influence of fast food impacts our dietary environment whether we visit these places or not. There is no escape and I am one who may not know much about the linen tablecloths and wine lists of the finer eateries, but I know all about the meal deals and supersized portions of the fast-food trade, having experienced them from both sides of the counter. And I have to admit I know which side I prefer to be standing on.

Dr Idiot says

Isn’t it nice to go out for dinner with friends? To enjoy their company, over a long lazy lunch or dinner, with fine wines and fabulous conversation. There can be few better ways to while away an evening. So don’t do it. Go to restaurants with people you don’t like and you will be restricting yourself to only one course and refusing the dessert menu before running off. Bad company seems the perfect way to promote restaurant-based abstinence and may even lead to increased exercise on exit.

Fast-food

My coming of age coincided with the highly promoted opening of a shiny new, quick to serve, burger restaurant in my hometown. Fortuitously, or otherwise, I became legally employable around the same time that the establishment was making a very open recruitment for cheap labour, targeting those young enough not to question the paltry wage and dubious working conditions. Indeed, I distinctly remember gazing upon my first pay slip with a supersized portion of disappointment. This was some time before the advent of any form of minimum or living wage and the paltry offerings seemed unreasonable when compared to the painful feet, greasy skin and stress of dealing with impatient customers, that were proving to be a hallmark of the job.

Just as the idea of working for my keep was novel to me, such an establishment was new to our town. Not the burgers per se, but more the means and methods of delivery. We had had cheap cafes for many years, even those that have served minced beef patties. But the meals in these establishments were brought to us at our hardwearing tables by a range of disinterested waiting staff, an unpredictable time after ordering. Despite the British love of queuing, such a fast-food experience was relatively innovative in the UK. The bright colours, the matching uniforms, the fixed tables and chairs and the large portions of ‘American food’ served on plastic trays, to be carried by the consumer to the place of consumption, were still a novelty to many.

One of the motivations for my seeking employment in this particular company was that it brought an extra benefit in the free food that could be accrued for the time one worked there. This meant that all employees breakfasted, lunched, or dined on the paper wrapped, or cupboard packaged, meals they were spending all day passing out to paying customers. Unexperienced adolescents - and even occasionally misguided adults - have been heard to make hasty vows on trying a new restaurant, or describing their favourite type of food, that they would eat it every day if they were able. Before working in the undisclosed establishment, and after only one short visit as a customer, I was happy to declare that I would consume every meal in it if I were so allowed. To a person my peers agreed. Predictably enough, I had cause to question this claim sometime into my second week of employment. Gone was the anticipation of free lunch in my favourite restaurant and in its place a dread of having to eat the food I had worked all morning to assemble – assemble, rather than cook, being the operative word. My body, through its subcutaneous pores and expanding waistline, was trying to tell me something and my brain, was following suit. I had started to find the food offerings unappealing, I realise now, with good reason.

If one were ever to look enviously at the diets and eating behaviour of a certain type of people, one would probably ignore the drivers of this world. The travelling salespeople, the truckers, or teamsters, are seldom seen as those following the most optimal of lifestyles. This may be unfair to some, but it matters little what they sit behind the wheel of: coach, bus, taxi, or car; they are rarely considered mentors or models for a nourishing and healthy diet. I doubt many of you will have ever turned to a long-distance lorry or car driver for dietary advice, but yet we have found ourselves following those very same people in large numbers. Subconsciously we are happy to emulate the dining of those who spent their lives on the roads and who wanted quickly served, ready to go, fast food, prepared through a production line rather similar to the ones used to build the machines they were driving.

Establishments of the type I began my working career in, proliferated on the back of the extensive road networks being built around the many states of America. Gradually the land of the free became easier to transverse and navigate and the roads became busier, as people took to them for business and leisure. Fresh food and cooking to order was not an option for those who wanted to eat quickly and get back out on the highway. Ingredients had to be prepared and stored sometime before service. Stacks of processed, heat stored, paper, cardboard or polystyrene wrapped food becoming the meal of choice by those who wanted to get on with their journey.

It is possible, of course, that things could have stopped there. That the fast-food restaurant may have stayed exclusive to the highways and byways of America. But the goal of the fast-food restaurant, or at least of some fast-food enterprises, was not to survive by serving its regular customers, it was to expand and spread. To reach out to an untapped consumer base: the non-driver; or more accurately all the non-drivers and they did this superbly.

Promoting themselves as a cheap alternative to restaurant dining, they became an option for those who could seldom eat out. Those who could rarely afford to treat the family, or themselves, to a restaurant meal could do so at a fraction of the price. Profit was maximised by serving a greater number of customers. Just like the cars driven by those that inspired the first fast food revolution, the goal these restaurants sold was to refuel and move on. Maximise business, by moving people quickly, sometimes so quickly they didn’t even need to park to get served. A line of cars at a drive thru replacing what would have been a queue of people waiting for tables. Serve them quickly and they can be on their way, no waiting for them to finish drinks and settle bills or peruse the dessert menu. Fast service leading to fast profits.

Soon America was full of options, competition was great, so companies looked further afield for new custom. Chains, businesses, establishments, circumnavigated the globe and brands expanded. Fast food was celebrated. It became a term of development, of progression and even of liberty as the opening of yet another franchise in yet another country marked a development in openness and equality by the latest welcoming state. For many years people didn’t question food origin, nutritional value, marketing strategies, food promotion, or brand development. But in time, tastes changed. After being appreciated for so long, suddenly the fast-food brand was challenged. Challenged for its product, for its promotion and for its influence.

This didn’t sound a death knell for the industry, rather it signalled a second coming. It encouraged fast food to widen its appeal. A multitude of options coming to market, many of which were trying to distance themselves from the term. Where once it was synonymous with burgers and chips, the industry has now become international and diverse. The old names serving novel recipes, new names promising alternatives. Food can still be ordered and served quickly, but now it can be done with greater variety in choice, origin, and environment. Be it in the shops of the town centres or the food stalls of the farmers’ markets, we can now access, with great speed, a variety of food options. It is all available to us without the need for patience. We can eat it on foot or sit and enjoy it in the ambience of a family restaurant. Fast food is everywhere and choice has expanded to fill every remaining gap.

Some would argue that we, the consumer, have benefited. Eating out has never been so accessible and we have a greater choice than ever before. But with increasing reach comes increasing influence and even those who choose not to eat it are affected by it. It has shaped the way we produce, store, and consume food. For a fast-food brand to survive, its dishes have to be consistent wherever they are bought. A tank of fuel has to taste the same in all its restaurants and this is best achieved by one supplier delivering identical food across a vast network of units. Better to make deals for thousands of restaurants than one. Better to dictate what is being grown than to choose from the options laid before you. Better to control as much of the food processing from production to plastic tray as possible. The whole industry has been influenced by the supersized reach of the fast-food phenomenon, and so have the individuals.

The way we choose our food has been driven by the large portions and cheap deals of the restaurants who survive on a constant flow of custom. To compete, shops must drop prices and all types of restaurants must maximise custom. Covers must be quick and prices must be minimised for profits to be made. Only in the most high-end of establishments will a booking be for the night; one group, one table, one evening, with prices high enough to allow such indulgence. We are no longer a globe made up of fast-food nations, we are a fast-food world and all produces, providers, restaurants and retailers have had to adapt to survive in it.

We can try to avoid buying and eating fast food, if we so choose, but we can’t evade its influence completely. It has become such a powerful force in our food industry that all aspects have adapted to feed it. As with all of things around us we must learn to live with it. So, rather than pushing back against the environment we find ourselves in, why not try to use it to our advantage. Check out my modern environment exercise plan below, that tells you how you can use the settings that have developed to encourage gluttony and sloth to your physical advantage.

Dr Idiot gets physical

Our current environments are not designed to make us active. They do not welcome pedestrians or cyclists as much as they encourage us to drive or take other forms of vehicular transport. They build obstacles in our roads, our homes, and our workspaces; they even privatise exercise through expensive health clubs requiring exclusive joining fees and lengthy unbreakable contracts.

In this section, I help you fight these indolence encouraging environments through my specialised exercise programme, which uses what traditionally makes us less healthy and turns it into a resource for improving our fitness.

By following the exercises below, you can utilise the environment around you to get fit. Consider it a public city gym:

1. Why spend a fortune to run on a running machine, when every shopping centre has a free one to use? Adopt your smartest jogging outfit and go run up the down escalators of your closet mall.

2. I hear pole dancing is that latest work out craze, but who wants to hang around in sleazy clubs? Every metro or bus stop pole provides a perfect substitute. Streetlamps provide both pole and illumination for a late-night workout.

3. Elevator jumps, go to the highest floor and then jump up as the elevator returns speedily to the ground floor. I am not sure what you will get out of it, but you will feel lighter.

4. Crossing lights shuttle runs. Wait for the green man to appear and then see how many shuttles you can achieve running across the road and back again, keep going until the red man appears again, or you get hit my impatient commuters.

5. Vending machine reaction training. Try to press all the buttons as quickly as possible, pick combinations of foods or drinks to also challenge yourself mentally.

6. Fast food star jumps. Order your choice from the offered meal deals in your favourite fast-food establishment and do a round of star jumps or burpees until it arrives. This will either raise your heart rate or get you banned from all the fast-food establishments, both of which may be beneficial to your health.

Vending machines

Being unfortunate enough to attend a typically under-resourced junior school, there were a number of subjects; namely physical education, woodwork and cooking, for which the school could not support facilities within their limited grounds. This meant that the occurrence of any of these lessons on our weekly timetable would result in a rather long hike over to the exotic world of the senior school, which kept greater provision for such activities. What a world it was. Tall buildings, large classrooms and extended grounds loomed over us and dwarfed the compact environment we had come from. Every trip was a glimpse into the frightening future that stood before us all.

Due to the positioning of the two schools, the majority of these more practical lessons was taken up with walking to and from the classrooms. In hindsight, I can imagine the teachers of these subjects must have enjoyed such excursions in a similar way to which they celebrated the hallowed free periods. By the time we had walked there, changed into our PE kit, or helped ourselves to a cooking apron or woodwork overall, it was pretty much time to pack up for the long walk back.

This did not concern us as pupils. Putting aside that it may have cost me a fine and rich career as a caterer or carpenter (my genetic makeup discounting any success in more active pursuits) the walk was the most enjoyable part of the lesson. Not because we were as keen a class of marchers as you were likely to meet, but solely because there was one feature of the senior school that we all gazed upon with wonder and one that our teacher led alligator meandered straight past. To say it was within touching distance would be stretching the truth, but it was certainly accessible due to the rather limited supervision of the walking train of which we were a part. The staff showing a similar approach to supervision that my Grandfather tells me he experienced in guards of an Italian prisoner of war camp in the 40s, their minds invariably on other things. This meant that in any one trip, either to, or from, the lesson, as many as three of us could exit from the line, race to the arches at the bottom of the stairs by the boy’s bathrooms and reach the celebrated vending machine. A rather archaic contraption that allowed a choice of three chews of varying ‘fruit’ flavours, although the reality was that they changed in colour more than they did in taste.

At such moments, time was of the essence if we were to purchase our wares and return to the line before it reached its educational destination, at which point our absence would have been noted. Fortunately, due to the quick serving mechanism of the machine we were able to insert our 10 pence pieces, enjoy the sound of our money falling to its destination, before exacting a hefty pull on the draw of our chosen chewy treat. A metal tray opening with our selected snack pleasingly presented before us. It was as close to foraging as I could get at the time and the adult-less acquisition of food added a certain frisson to the process.

The vending machine in question provided a second purpose in our educational career, as it acted as a slight alleviant to the fear of moving schools. The dread of being bottom of a big pile, of becoming the latest victims to the feared and revered greasy skinned adolescents that sat above us, along with the anxiety of knowing our entire future was hanging in the balance through a series of tests and exams, were all countered slightly by the excitement of readily available treats. Whenever we conjured images of life in our new school, it was difficult not to think about the amount of chew we would be able to purchase throughout the school day. Little were we to know that things would change dramatically during our time there.

I don’t remember exactly the year in which it happened, but rarely has a new arrival at a school generated such excitement. Exchange students from France produced some enthusiasm in girls with a perchance for highly flammable colourful clothing, but the unveiling of a new big, shiny, backlit vending machine, housing candy, drinks, crisps and a whole range of goods was one the whole school was thrilled by. The modernisation of delivery and selection left the old machine wallowing unloved and neglected in its quiet dark corner by the toilets. Now every break and lunchtime were spent queuing to buy a range of machine-served snacks from a more generous and better lit ‘vender’. The technological development did not stop there. The school recognised an opportunity to make money and vending machines subsequently multiplied and appeared in every corner of the grounds. Pupils now struggled to walk to any lesson, or activity, without passing a range of snack and drink options.

It may seem strange that schools became such a hotbed for these invaders. Sticky sweets and soda had for a long time remained banned on school grounds, but at some point senior management recognised the potential profits they were missing out on and had decided to invest. After all, such developments were not exclusive to schools. There was little escape from these automated feeders on leaving our places of education, as vending machines appeared everywhere; swimming pools, cinemas, arcades, shopping centres, museums and galleries, all housed them. No matter where you visited there was always the ubiquitous snack dispensers just waiting for our loose change. If we pupils were going to buy it anyway, the schools might as well benefit.

For decades science fiction writers had tried to warn that the technology we were developing would rise up and turn against us. Still now, some see safety in the fact that we are a few years from the type of artificial intelligence that so many fear. Those forward thinkers would do well to reflect on our recent history, as these automatons have been impinging on our health for some time. We may not yet be faced with hordes of androids lasering carbon-based life forms, but it is difficult to argue other than that many of the machines we have welcomed into our lives are harming us and that they are working together to do so. The escalators and elevators, which have pervaded our environment, encourage us to reduce our energy output, whilst alongside these, their vending colleagues help us maximise calorie intake. It is strange we did not notice it happening until it was too late. After all, the vending machine had a pretty chequered history, one of peddling racy postcards and deadly tobacco. We may have defeated their attempts to filthy our minds and lungs further, but arguably the dispensing of desirable snacks is having a greater impact on our physical and mental health. Yet still we encourage their creation and development.

There is an unproven, rather dubious, statistic that you are never more than five feet from a rat (or a spider, I forget which), similarly now you must never be more than five minutes from a vending machine and though we may in time turn our back on their current offerings, they are here to stay. Just as once a three-chew option was the height of vending sophistication, one day we will laugh at the simple delivery of packets of snacks and cans of drinks. For if there is one thing we know about technology, it is that today’s creations will be tomorrow’s artifacts. Soon will come whole meals stored, housed, and then heated for delivery, from these impersonal metal boxes. Meat, seafood, baked goods will all be made available to us in the stairwells, lounges, and schools of the future, simply through the dispensing of a few coins, a bankcard, or a button push on a mobile phone.

Some may ask whether this is a bad thing. Improving the food on offer can only be of benefit. Others would suggest that the vending machine itself isn’t the problem, that it is simply a continuation of a world in which food surrounds us and entices us at all times. That you never escape it, so you never stop thinking about it. Food becomes a constant focus and its ubiquitous access helps us eat with little consideration as to what we are actually putting in our mouths. We choose what is available and that is chosen on what it easy to provide.

Further still, there may be some who see the vending machine as the epitome of an environment in which preparing, cooking, and sharing is no longer the norm. The vending machine is taking us away from the many social aspects of food preparation and consumption. Not only can we eat alone, but we can now procure and prepare without any human interaction. Even delivered food requires someone to open the door to a driver. Vending machines do away with all of that. Put the money in the slot, take the food from the tray and you can eat without so much as a smile or a nod to a fellow human being. And it is unlikely that things will stop there.

The world of technology is fuelled by the drive to automate everything we humans can do, along with a few things we can’t. If we let the designers and engineers have their way, in time your houses will have a robot chef, serving up food to you and your virtual assistant, or automated discussion machine, before you skip up to the bedroom for a passionate night with your sexbot. To some this is the height of modern living, to others a dystopian nightmare, but no matter your stance on them, there is one thing on which we must all agree. The machines are coming people and we better be ready for them.

Dr Idiot’s ancestor attester

My gran was one to reflect fondly on the past. Whilst doing so, she was also often prompted to question why we did things differently now. Preferring the approaches and methods followed in her day. I recognise the powerful pull of nostalgia, but if the world were never to move on, we’d still be alleviating headaches with skull holes and bloodletting simple infections. Those of you who gaze upon a rosy past may do well to recall that the Romans washed their clothes in urine and sewage flowed freely in the streets of London, until the ever-inventive Victorians decided it somewhat ruined their afternoon strolls. We may take our flushing toilets and tumble dryers for granted, along with antibiotics and paracetamol, but they were once considered revolutionary. Similarly, although we may not recognise it, in many ways our food environments have improved. Food access has seldom been greater and whilst we might moan over the brown colour of the bananas on offer in our local shop, the fact they are there in the first place is nothing short of miraculous. Their availability and affordability are much greater now than for those who went before us. Sadly, their future may not be quite so bright.

The developments that provided an almost universal access to these exotic fruits also put us at risk of a worldwide shortage of them and one that we could have seen coming. After all, banana extinction is a hole we have stumbled around before. I don’t wish to pick on these yellow marvels, but they do have a dark history. The industrialisation of banana propagation and promulgation has put the sustained reach of the world’s most popular food crop in jeopardy. And whilst many may have gained from its expanded reach, some have paid a price for it. The banana is not alone in this, as we see a similar pattern in a lot of our foods.

Agricultural and technological advancements in food production and provision may be seen as central to feeding the world, but they may also widen some of the inequalities we should be looking to tackle. Whilst a uniformity of yield leaves our harvest more susceptible to attack, the associated land grabbing and crop production monopoly helps the wealthy few over the impecunious many. Some may still see this as development, but others would argue such a term can only be used when we all move forward, rather than just some. Maybe now is the time to stop copying the past and instead reflect on what we could learn from it. Only then can we really call it progress.

Schools

School mealtime was a very different experience, when I was a pupil, to that depicted in the flyers and adverts for the modern-day educational caterer or food service provider. Rather than queue for a varied and diverse selection of foods, all served by cheery staff from behind a shiny canteen, we would stand, as a school, in age hierarchy, around large wooden tables. We would then sing grace before sitting down on long benches. With the formalities done, the food would be brought to the tables in large tin trays, to be served from the top end by the senior pupils. One meal, no choice, eat what was passed down to you.

As juniors, very little actually made its way to our end of the table. And we soon learnt that seniors were not as equitable in their distribution as some of our socialist teachers would like them to be. Their plates being noticeably fuller than ours. As the years progressed and we moved further up the benches our portions got larger, until, at last, we were the top year and were therefore charged with service responsibility. Whilst it is true that we could have broken the cycle, being the ones to initiate change, we were not the type to rock the boat, especially when such actions would disadvantage us. Rather, it was our turn to enjoy the bounty promised to us for all these years. We had not suffered all that time just to share the reward as soon as we had received it.

Taking a larger share was not as easy to do as watching the world’s top 1% would have us believe. The kitchen staff, aware that children needed help in distributing wealth, would deliver lunch already arranged into servings. The chicken pie, for example, would be cut into the required number of equal sized portions, ready for senior pupils to lift unadulterated onto the stack of plates, which would then be shared with the table. I developed a skill in removing just enough from each serving, such that to the patrolling staff inspecting the plates of the younger members of the table, nothing was amiss, but we were then left with double portions at our end of the bench once the rest of the diners had been served. Schools, pupils are far too aware, are not fair societies.

It is strange, therefore, that to many people, our educational establishments hold the answer to every challenge our country faces. Religious fundamentalism, antisocial behaviour, knife crime, violent crime, domestic crime, gun crime, teenage pregnancies, smoking, drinking, drugs, can all, they argue, be solved through some carefully placed lessons in our nation’s schools. Others riposte that schools have no role to play in these life lessons and we should leave them the tricky task of maths and science results. Some even balk at the idea that schools may be replacing parents in their variable delivery of sex, drinking, and drug education.

When it comes to food, people are even more divided. For every advocate of fast-food-free schools and colleges, another argues that an open choice from a cheap well-stocked canteen is the only fair way to feed pupils. Teenagers, they argue, should be allowed to choose their own food, without any interference from authority. A choice we can predict too readily. You may have the best collection of well-meaning and sensible children in whatever college you attend, but chances are if you leave them to select their midday meal, they will base it around some form of fried potato, perhaps accompanied by a slab of reformed meat, most likely washed down with a sugary soft drink. A counter to the argument that a freedom to choose is a benefit to our developing members of society.

It also seems odd that we may recognise the need for each school to run on a carefully fostered and implemented set of rules, with firm timetables and curricula, if we are to maximise educational achievement. Only then to propose a lunchbreak in which anarchy reigns and children can choose to do something that is ultimately not great for their future, in choosing three portions of fries and a can of soda as the nutrition that will sustain them throughout the afternoon.

If we were to argue that schools do not have to provide a safe environment, allowing gangs of angry youngsters to patrol the playgrounds armed to the teeth. Or we were to suggest a more liberal approach to employing teachers with dubious criminal records, we would be shot down as foolish libertarians whose belief that societies can regulate themselves will ultimately prove the cause of our demise as a species. But some of the people critical of such approaches also seem to believe that as the potential danger of a misplaced diet is someway off in the future, it is not one we need concern ourselves with right now and that it is every child’s right to fill their faces with whatever they choose.

I would imagine that very few parents would allow a gaggle of greasy skinned thirteen-year-olds to choose the diet for their own beloved and precious offspring, arguing that they may not make the best choice for growth and development. The reason for allowing them an open pick over their own food is therefore unclear. Adolescents are not known for their considered and careful action and they are already gaining increasing access to environments in which they can act as reckless as we all are at that age. The school, one would argue, should be a place in which they can avoid such temptation and focus on preparing for a future which is going to be difficult enough without the additional burden of malnutrition. Schools are a preparation for life, they are there to build the foundations for a healthy and happy adulthood. If we want to support growth and development before we send pupils out into the working world, we are better doing so with something more durable than fries and soda as a bedrock.

Reader’s writes

Dear Idiot,

I have just started in my new school and I don’t like it at all. The dining hall is so big and scary; I never go there for food. Instead, I buy snacks from the vending machines when no one else is around or I creep off the school grounds to buy from local takeaways. I have started to get really bad spots which have made the kids tease me even more. I am so down that I hide in my office all day and refuse to attend staff meetings. What can I do?

Yours learnedly

Harry Headmaster

Dr Idiot replies,

Dear Harry Headmaster,

Very funny, you had us there. You made us think you were a pupil and you turned out to be a teacher. I haven’t heard that plot twist since I stopped attending prize giving 40 years ago. Normally I wouldn’t indulge such unoriginality, but I am struggling for word count, so I’ll

keep your letter in.

Yours sincerely

Dr Idiot

Workplaces

I have always found that the initial high on being offered a job dissipated as soon as I was actually required to do any work in it. In my experience, there is only so long that one can stay enthusiastic about paid employment once one is ensconced behind a desk, sitting behind a till, or wandering around a warehouse. Obviously, work environments differ widely between sites, but few seemed welcoming once they were associated with the responsibilities, rules and regulations that governed me during any working day. Having a disinclination for any level of work, there is not one workplace I would say that I enjoyed, but I will admit that there was one office setting for which I held particular disdain and that was the much-maligned open plan layout. Despite being common to many a workplace, such a setup, in my experience, has never proved popular amongst the staff housed within it. Though loved by architects and management it always seemed to be despised by those it was designed to accommodate.

I have never held the seniority, nor the respect, that leads to the ownership of a private office and have always found the open working conditions in which I have been paid to sit rather oppressive. The interiors of such offices may differ on a number of factors, such as arrangement of desks, the presence, height and colour of cubicle dividers or attempts at personalisation of individual workspaces. No matter the decoration, I have always found such shared environments unsettling. Most likely because my overarching career aim is to not have to do too much work, without anyone noticing. Which is difficult to achieve when one remains on full view to all colleagues at all times.

Over my working life, I have seen a number of attempts to improve the feel of such workplaces, from a light scattering of plants, through decoration with weakly humorous motivational posters, to attempts to segregate the office into smaller units. But none of them ever made me feel more positive about spending my days behind a desk, under limited natural light.

I will concede that there was one factor common to all the open plan offices in which I worked, that I did appreciate. For every shared workspace I was forced to sit in held a communal table of food. A desk on which a large collection of snacks and treats would be deposited to mark any legitimate occasion anyone could think of, such as birthdays, holidays, engagements, weddings, Easter, Christmas, end of the week, beginning of the week, Wednesdays, so on and so forth. In every office in which I have failed to build a career, all genuine and dubious festivities were marked with the delivery of a cake, chocolates, cookies, crisps, or any suitably celebratory products to the aforementioned desk. The addition of any offerings to the immoral table signalled with a triumphant cry from those within reach of it. The sound carrying across the vast open plan wasteland calling all office workers to rush towards it like vultures to a fresh carcass. On occasions, disapproving looks would be thrust towards the nattering feeders by those continuing to work, as the feasting masses commented on the delectability of their sugary prey. But it was never long before all would be dragged in by temptation.

In one such employment, the celebrated ‘desk of sin’ was in direct line to the office exit. Such that almost everyone had to walk past it to get to the toilets or printer. I witnessed very few individuals strong willed enough to resist a sly steal of whatever delights were being offered when doing so. By an unfortunate quirk of fate, my desk was immediately adjacent to this tempting table. The contributions sitting an easy and surreptitious arm’s reach from my chair. A chair that had been dubbed the hefty seat, due to the weight gain commonly experienced by those who sat on it for any length of time. Predictably, I was not immune to this and saw my work clothes tighten in the brief time I spent there. An ever-expanding wardrobe proving an additional burden on my rather limited pay packet.

This was a typical work experience for me, in that I did not linger long, the employers realising that their need for my limited skills and commitment was not as great as they first thought. So it was that I moved jobs and offices some months after starting there, to yet another cost saving, comfort light, open plan office. Despite the commonalities between the place I had just left and the one I quickly joined, they differed in one key area. Whereas I had left an office of cake loving layabouts, I had moved to a company in which the majority were fitness focused health aware employees. This communal interest had developed such a standing within the office that rather than have a desk of sin, they had introduced a table of virtue. A colourfully arranged desk carrying an arrangement of fruit, and other fresh produce, that everyone could stand around to talk about cross fit, or their latest triathlon, whilst effortlessly obtaining their five a day.

This desk, although starkly different in some ways to the previous less honourable ones I had experienced, provided a very similar role in bringing people together and allowing them a break from their salaried tasks. Despite the difference in food provided, it still allowed a pleasant interruption to the mundanity of the constant commute, to the same chair, at the same desk, supporting the same screen, surrounded by the same colleagues, with the same faces, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. The pattern only ending on retirement, death, or in my case, dismissal.

Although work practices and places may differ, the stress of chargeable minutes, climate control, looming deadlines and bullying bosses are common to us all. Many of us have adapted to get through the day by developing a routine of achievable goals and rewards. Work for an hour and have a cup of tea, finish the spreadsheet and eat a biscuit, send an email and then take a piece of cake. We need to invite some excitement, some pleasure, into the day. Within the limited confines of work, food and drink invariably becoming the treat.

In doing so we turn the workplace into a veritable minefield of temptation: the snack draw in the desk, the table of sinful holiday food, coffee and biscuit kitties, desk lunches, vending machines and canteens; all support and promote the daily eating that many use to get through these work hours. Mindless, appetite light, feeding is indulged as both a treat and a distraction from the mind-numbing repetitive work that many of us endure. With all this happening at a time in which employment is becoming a more sedentary pursuit, with most of us now able to achieve everything we need to from the click of a mouse, or the sending of an email, without ever having to leave our desks.

There is no question that such developments have certain benefits. For example, there once was a time in which employment, in its many guises, was a much riskier affair. Employees juggling the perils of death, amongst those of overtime and deadlines. The modern service industry proving a much safer environment than the manufacturing or engineering pursuits of yesteryear. Much of this improvement comes from the rather maligned development of health and safety at work, many feeling that the reduction in workplace accidents and mortality is simply the nanny state sticking its nose into areas in which it has no concern.

Although I may feel some sympathy to this view whilst in the middle of yet another office workstation assessment, there is, I feel, one thing always missing from the now obligatory workplace health and safety induction. As the food on offer in the building is never considered. It seems strange that we can demand that workers must wear hard hats on building sites, but then let them feast every morning on a full fry up, when the deaths from heart attacks are much greater than those from falling masonry. We might worry about the immediacy of the Work-Related Upper Limb Disorders due to the incorrect positioning of our chair back or keyboard, but the future risk of diet related illness is clearly a greater burden on our nation’s economy.

I am all for health and safety but wonder if we should begin to consider the things that are the greatest risk to our wellbeing in our current more safety conscious climate. Trip over a loose carpet at work and we head to the lawyers to sue our employers for failing to keep a reasonable working environment; free food and drinks on a Friday and we celebrate them as considerate management.

Those of us (you) lucky enough to be employed can spend more of your waking week in work than any other environment. If we can insist companies provide the seating arrangements for a healthy back and shoulders, surely, we can demand that the food on offer does the right thing for our heart and stomachs as well. Only then will truly be putting the health into health and safety.

Dr Idiot thinks outside the box

I have never been a stander. I see it as an overrated position. In fact, as one renowned for the low-slung position of my chair, I am more commonly thought of, and referred to, as a sloucher. A reclined position proving immeasurably more comfortable that a vertical one. It is, therefore, no surprise to hear that I find the whole standing desk crusade slightly off putting. Not only due to my own personal aversion to standing, but also because the addition of any model, or make, of standing desk to anyone’s corner of an office always seems to come with an increased level of smugness. Such desks being seen as signs of high achievement and ambition, despite them actually being about standing up. Something most of us can do. In addition, the standing desk is being sold, by those that use it, as a revolution in physical health and fitness. I struggle to see this. Vertical typing remains someway short of marathon running. If you really want to make your workstation more energetic sit on a static bike and use it to run your PC. You are bound to find support in such a setup from your employers, as it may limit the number of amusing cat videos you watch throughout their paid hours, now that you are required to pedal for the pleasure. The high gear cycling needed for such pursuits making it less attractive to the distracted employee. While you’re at it, why not go the whole hog. Install a whack-a-mole keypad and replace your mouse with a giant dumbbell. You may have to invest in some particularly effective deodorant and replace your office suit with a spandex onesie but think of the calories you’ll burn whilst replying to emails.

Shopping malls

My cousin tells me that where the French are quite proud of the claim that they gave the world restaurants, the Americans are equally keen to suggest that they invented the shopping mall. Some would see this a dubious boast, citing the historical markets, bazaars and sooqs found in all corners of the world as an early form of such things, but the modern mall industrialised shopping in a way that these older markets are now revered for not so doing. I clearly remember my cousin returning from one trip to ‘The United States’ with tales of entire shopping cities enclosed in giant buildings, that both delighted and disappointed me. I marvelled at stories of these sprawling complexes with their endless indoor entertainment, shops, and food courts, but they also made me turn towards the shopping facilities of my home with a disappointed eye. Thereby ruining for me the adolescent entertainment of ‘hanging about downtown’. A dubious pursuit in which I, and an increasingly large number of teenage acquaintances, wandered aimlessly around the mass of stores and eateries, skipping in and out of shelter to escape the grey clouds and drizzle of a standard shopping afternoon.

I use the term shopping reasonably loosely, as none of our merry band carried any form of disposable income, meaning that buying things was not really an option. Our chosen (or enforced) pursuit being to mope around aimlessly, with the occasional glance in a shop window at things we couldn’t afford. Sometimes we would try clothes on, but generally on such occasions we were either confused with shoplifters or recognised as adolescents trying on goods we were not going to buy. After a day of being escorted out of shops, we would return home, normally wet from rain or shivering from the cold, happy with what we considered a day well spent. My cousin’s talk of these shopping metropolises, with their indoor fun fares and water parks, belittled what we had on our doorstep and the attraction of downtown was slightly diminished in the knowledge that there were better options out there. If, at that time, a little far from home.

Thankfully not even my home was immune from development, as sometime after hearing my cousin’s tales it was reported that an out-of-town mall was being built only a twenty-minute drive from my house. Such news was greeted with much excitement amongst my friendship group, as the doom lifted and light shone upon our formative years, if only for a moment. Such malls, it would appear, are not constructed quickly. For years we waited for the building to cease, for the promised wonderland to be completed and for our lives to truly start. Unfortunately, once completed, as so often happened during these troubling and exciting years, the reality only delivered more disappointment.

I have often wondered if the persistent frustration I experience throughout my life comes mostly from exaggerated and unrealistic imaginings of how things will turn out, setting a bar a lot higher than the eventual realisation of their being. My cousin had conjured images of wonderful, colourful, cheerful cities of happy shoppers and joyful families all appreciating the modernisation of their shopping environment. Alas, my first visit to our new shopping complex, only days after its official opening, thrust upon me the reality of the UK mall, which seems to be mostly based around parking spaces and shopping units yet to be leased to retailers. On entry, at what I thought would be a seminal moment in my life, I was slightly disappointed to find lots and lots of shops, full of products I still could not afford, arranged in a rather artificial environment.

In the same way that casinos have developed an ambiance to keep people gambling, malls, it appeared, had evolved ways to encourage people to keep shopping. The carefully chosen lighting, music and samples may differ between the two establishments but they have the same aim; to stop people leaving and to keep them spending. Just as casinos are not organising cards games and roulette wheels for the good of the consumer, malls aren’t there to serve the shoppers. They are there to serve the shop. They retail to the retailer. Malls must sell space and custom if they are to survive. They exist because, and only if, they manage to attract a suitable number people who are all happy to part with their hard-earned pennies.

Similarly, both institutions use food to encourage spenders to stay where they are for as long as possible. The endless, health defying buffets of the dark, clock-less gambling dens are mirrored by multi-national food courts in the enclosed self-sufficient shopping precincts. A multitude of quickly served, generously portioned, lowly priced offerings found in a concentrated area, allowing shoppers to review the food on offer with a quick turn of the head. The plastic seating encouraging you to stay on site but not to linger, inciting you to return to your spending soon after consumption. You can sit and eat in a safe, clean environment, but one that is not designed for lounging and loitering. The aim is to re-energise you and move you and your wallet on, such that the next customer can be served. They are there to stop you leaving the mall to feed, fearful that you may never return, but are not such a draw that you waste valuable shopping time over a long and lengthy lunch.

So disappointed were we by the new shopping environment that we eventually returned to town. The fresh, cold, wet air and disappointment on what we had discovered in the out-of-town mall, unifying us as a group. Unfortunately, the centre was not as it once was. The shops had closed, vacant facades and empty roads adding fuel to the hormonal frustration of our lives. The city centre, in many a location, it seems, has suffered at the hands of the climate controlled, easy to park, mall. An accusatory finger pointing in the direction of these shopping metropolises as a tearful eye gazes on the wasteland of our high streets and town centres. But this is unfair to both humble and brash shopping malls, as they are a product, rather than a cause of our environment. They are simply an extension of our drive for simpler living. A collection of shops in an easy to reach, easy to park centre, all sheltered from the elements.

In addition, just as these malls were a product of our unerring desire to make life less work for any paying customer, they are also under threat because of it. Everything they provide and more, from electrical goods to food, can be found online. No longer do we need to leave our houses, drive, park, purchase, carry and return home when acquiring our much-needed wares. Meaning that there is little need for shops to pay extortionate rates to house and display far fewer options than can be found on the world wide web. Remote or virtual shopping is easier for both consumer and seller, and it takes us another step towards reducing the interaction we have with the outside world to the movement of our thumb on our phone, or the typing of our fingers on a keyboard. No need to browse or peruse our weekly shopping, leaving someone else the task of cooking and delivering food. Just a click of a mouse and whatever we want to eat, or wear, or play, will turn up at the door. We shop online, we socialise online, we date online. It can’t be long before the only thing procreation consists of is the uploading of an attachment into a private folder.

We may have bemoaned the mall for the impact they had on our town centres, but in time we might find ourselves having no need for them as well. Once they are gone and we are living within a virtual, dissociated world, we may reminisce fondly on the times we spent wandering from shop to shop without buying anything. With the only memory of these shopping metropolises being the abandoned buildings on the outskirt of town and the photos we find online.

Dr Idiot’s ancestor attester

My Gran was rather fond of the phrase ‘a full fridge is a happy fridge’. Particularly when someone commented on the excess of food kept chilled in the two coolers of her one-bedroom bungalow. A residence she moved into following a serious knee injury, caused when a front-loaded Smeg toppled over on to her. When the emergency services arrived, to find her trapped under the offending refrigerator, she responded to the paramedic’s first question of ‘what seems to be the problem here?’ with a rather concerned, ‘I don’t want the milk to spoil?’ On further pressing, she also admitted to some discomfort.

Many in her generation share her resilience and stoicism in the face of adversity, along with her belief that a house will only be a home when it contains enough food to feed a family. It is hard to argue this point. Walk past the large screen TVs, luxury furnishings and numerous reception rooms in a house of the well-heeled, to enter a kitchen full of empty cupboards and you would probably feel the whole place was a little cold and uninviting. You may also be loath to swap your tiny well stocked kitchen for the barren lands of the newly installed alternative. For it matters little where you spend your days, be it work, or leisure, you do have to return home, whatever type of dwelling that is, at some point. And once you are back there, your home environment can encourage you to munch crisps on a lounger or inspire you to sit on a Swiss Ball shoulder pressing canned fruit. You, as an individual, may have little say on what the world outside of your four walls looks like, but you can have some say on the inside of them and in particular the food found within your home. And that can make a difference to what you end up eating. The question is, how much?

Homes

There is a certain routine I follow on return to my parents’ house, whenever I visit. I enter through the backdoor into the utility room and head straight for the ‘drinks fridge’ housed there, helping myself to a can of whatever sugary or alcoholic delights I find - time of day influencing my choice. I then move the short distance to the open top freezer and search inside for choc-ices or similar frozen treats. Once done, I enter the kitchen, opening the snack drawer and perusing the selection of crisps, pretzels, bread sticks or other options handily arranged for the hungry guest. After closing this I turn to the cupboard containing the cookie jar, before opening the ’food fridge’ for a final search of any leftovers which are worth eating. My hunt for fare would stop there, if there wasn’t a nut closet in the lounge, a larder under the stairs and a fruit bowl in between them.

Although my parents are just two in number, they keep enough food supplies to feed an army of sumo wrestlers. It is nigh on impossible to stroll around their property without tripping over soda six packs, snack multipacks, or extensive table scraps. All that food has to go somewhere, and it generally gets thrust in the direction of whoever is visiting. My visits there disappearing in a surge of brunch, elevenses, lunch, afternoon and Tiffin tea such that by the time dinner has arrived, the day has all but flown past in a flurry of food and I feel 24 hours and four pounds closer to upsizing my wardrobe.

In my defence, such behaviour and experiences are not unique to me. My siblings tell me they go through the same process on arrival and many a friend has shared a similar story of indulgence, on returning home to see their parents. For those of us in the Diot clan, it is a simple reversion to an upbringing in which food could be found throughout the house. Returning to our childhood home, is less an emotional return to a happy upbringing and more a physical exposure to the profusion of food that the house still holds. Our parents continuing to shop as if we were still living there.

The stark difference is that now we often visit on our own, without the company of our siblings. We are, therefore, exposed to the same abundance of food but without the same level of competition. Whilst the house was continually being replenished of its food stores when we were young, we didn’t get a free rein on devouring whatever could be found, as we had to share the load with two equally hungry siblings and two younger parents. Those of you who have seen a wildlife documentary of animals fighting over a scarce resource, will picture the scene in the Diot household, throughout my childhood, pretty accurately. There was food to be found but you had to act fast once you had found it, because someone was always waiting in the wings to come and wrestle it from you.

Despite this competition, the house was still a refuge, as it is for many of us, from the outside world. It provided an escape from the social demands and judgemental eyes of my peers and shielded me from the ever changing and unfamiliar. Closing the front door at the end of the day and hearing the lock shut, was a moment of relief. Despite the low square foot to family member ratio, it was home and it was a place in which I could relax. Not necessarily because it was always a calmer environment than the one outside it, but more that familiarity bred contentment despite the complex relationships and multifaceted influences it housed. It was where we laughed, argued, fought, slept, relaxed, sulked and ate. After all, home is where the heart is cultivated and nurtured, or spoilt and hindered. It is central to what we are and who we become. The question is how can we use this to influence what we eat?

Certain Asian learnings would have us believe that table direction and the distribution of wood in the dining room will have a positive impact on your dietary habits. You are, of course, welcome to place elephant statues on your mantel pieces, or paint your lounge the colour of your birth element, but don’t be surprised if this doesn’t help you resist cookies. This doesn’t mean they don’t have a point. We may feel that we shut out many of the stresses and strains of life on closing our front doors, but really where we live will often align or balance with the outside world, natural or otherwise.

Our homes are a part of, not separate from, our wider environment. We may feel we have a carte blanche on our interior design and home set up, but we are mostly making selections from a range of options laid in front of us, never truly able to escape the influence of factors that shape our wider world. Those of you reading this in a red brick terrace on a typical British road may question the validity of such a statement, but the fact that you’re not sitting on the floor of a traditional Minka or staring down at Hong Kong street life from your apartment, suggests that your home has been shaped by factors well out of your control. And this is true for every aspect of our life. We may not always see, or recognise, these influences but their impact cannot be underestimated, as they sit above, looking over everything that happens around us. Move on to the final chapter to find out more on how these determinants may be deciding what you eat, without you even knowing.

Where

Introduction

Food availability

Dr Idiot’s Idiets Ideas

Urbanisation

Dr Idiot gets quizzical

Advertising

Dr Idiot gets quizzical

Restaurants

Dr Idiot says

Fast-food

Dr Idiot gets physical

Vending machines

Dr Idiot’s ancestor attester

Schools

Reader’s writes

Workplaces

Dr Idiot thinks outside the box

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Shopping malls

Dr Idiot’s ancestor attester

Homes