It says in the Daily Express (caveat something? don’t really know) that
THE COST of fresh fruit and vegetables will soar this year as European farmers shun the plunging pound. British importers believe shoppers will face increases as high as 20 per cent in coming weeks, with some produce disappearing from our shelves altogether.
Serious stuff. The quoted official reaction?
Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum said …: “As prices rise and incomes fall, people will be drawn to the cheaper, less healthy processed foods, which are precisely the sort of things we are trying to wean people away from. Once habits change, it becomes hard for people to go back, especially because cheaper junk foods are so seductive.”
I imagine that Mr. Fry (one of those peculiarly apposite names) is being paid handsomely by his tax-funded quango to spout this sort of patronising, paternalist piffle, and so, even if he wanted to, could not introduce any element of common sense (which might be more than his job’s worth).
Perhaps, therefore, it has occurred to Mr. Fry that food in general, whether his quango approves of it or not, is of natural origin; but he isn’t mentioning that.
I fail to understand how a price increase on imported food can affect only certain categories. I suspect that it is more likely that if there is a 20% price increase on fruit and veg., then there will be the same increase on anything else imported from the same countries, including what Mr. Fry terms ‘junk’, for the economic reasons given in the article.
It is really somewhat disappointing that when some people will be dealing with the choice between keeping out the new free-range bailiffs by paying their bills and continuing to feed themselves at all, that public money is apparently being freely spent on a quango the sole purpose of which is to cluck its tongue and scold at them for making decisions that would be disapproved of by the style gurus of fashionable North London society.
Perhaps one of the hidden benefits of national economic catastrophe might be a long-overdue decline in the almost incredible supine passivity which causes the British public not only to tolerate this sort of thing but to pay through the nose for it too.
It is cold. People resisting cold (such as those economising on heating) require calories to survive.
A relative of mine (ex-SAS; currently in Afghanistan) is a surgeon. I once asked him about all this ‘food types’ stuff. His reply:
“Well, if you insisted on trying to live exclusively on peanuts, let’s say, or chocolate, or Gruyère, or whatever, then eventually you’d provide a lot of amusement for me and my mates at your post-mortem. Unless you try that, it doesn’t really matter. If you use all the calories you’ve taken in, nothing much happens. If you don’t, you gain weight. If you use more, you lose weight. Where the calories come from is secondary; essentially, it’s all bloody fuel.”
Whom am I going to believe: an Army surgeon trained extensively in survival, or a fellow who seems to me to epitomise the self-satisfaction, self-righteousness and complete separation from reality now so firmly associated with the Nanny State?
Menu for surviving hypothermia: Hot drink in NATO waterbottle mug, four sugars. Toad-in-the-hole, beans and chips, with seconds thereof. Sticky toffee pudding; ditto. Another hot drink (four sugars). Cheese Processed and Biscuits Brown. Kendal mint cake. Wafer-thin mints, cigars, brandy etc. as appropriate to one’s circumstances.
Menu for re-educating authoritarians: Red herring. Wild goose. Raspberries.
“I imagine that Mr. Fry (one of those peculiarly apposite names) is being paid handsomely by his tax-funded quango to spout this sort of patronising, paternalist piffle..”
Indeed he is – last seen objecting to, of all things, the Wii, because (despite being the only computer game to encourage exercise) it mentioned the dreaded ‘F’ word:
http://kotaku.com/5009320/expert-says-children-should-be-banned-from-wii-fit
[...] The Landed Underclass tells us, I am happy to relate, that the Vegan stuffed vine leaves are off in 2009 because of Sterling’s continuing fall. I can’t say I’m very sorry about that, although I do like stuffed vine leaves, preferably full of a nice lemony mixture of minced lamb, rice, pine nuts, coriander and other poncy (but scrumptious) Wireless Tele Chef type comestibles. However, his main point is the most cunningly marvellous exposition about foods in general by a proper doctor, the kind who knows about war and stuff. We’d all really prefer to get treated by guys llike that whom he describes, if push came to shove: and not the sneering hectoring sub-types of “professionals” like State “dieticians” whom I met in a certain famous children’s hospital not 30 miles form here, a few years ago when our new-born (now five) was rather less well than he orta-av-been. [...]
JM: so that’s him, is it? Duly noted.
DD: the bitterly ironic reference to vine leaves was the inevitable consequence of being the sort of chap who considers American MREs to be ‘posh’, and who is nevertheless from a family consisting currently almost entirely of fanatical middle-class foodies.