Bad Food Britain: How a Nation Ruined its Appetite

210 Pages·2006·1.42 MB·English

by  Joanna Blythman

BAD FOOD BRITAIN
JOANNA BLYTHMAN
DEDICATION
For Derek Cooper
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
Bad Food Britain in Numbers
Britain’s Top 10 Bad Food Beliefs
1 Fantasy food
2 How others see us
3 Brit food
4 Renaissance restaurants
5 No time to cook
6 Disappearing dinner tables
7 ‘This is not just food …’
8 Good food is posh
9 Lawful prey
10 We hate shopping
11 Fear of food
12 The yuck factor
13 Safety first
14 Kids in white coats
15 Kiddie food
16 Britain makes you fat
17 ‘No bad food …’
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by the Author
References
Copyright
About the Publisher
INTRODUCTION
One afternoon in early 2006, my phone rang. It was a fellow journalist looking
for quotes for an article he was writing about the significance of Britain’s
doyenne of food writers, Elizabeth David. “Was it thanks to her that we have
become a nation of foodies?’ he wanted to know. The next morning, the Today
programme on Radio 4 was repeating a story about how sales of olive oil in
Britain were now outstripping those of all other cooking oils put together, a
phenomenon attributed to Britain’s increasing sophistication in food taste – yet
another manifestation of the nation’s much-vaunted food revolution.
Nation of foodies! Food revolution! Who are we kidding? British eating
habits are getting worse, not better. In reality, Britain is second only in notoriety
to the United States in the bad food stakes. Of course, this flies in the face of the
perceived wisdom that we are in a ‘You’ve Never Had It So Good’ phase of
British gastronomy, in the throes of a dynamic food renaissance. After all, isn’t
London’s restaurant scene the envy of the rest of the planet? What about all the
farmers’ markets, regional food festivals, and new artisan food products that are
popping up left, right and centre, the length and breadth of the land? And how
about our regiment of chef celebrities? Isn’t cool Food Britannia a runaway
success? At last, after all those decades of cringing on the world food stage,
surely we can now strut our stuff with conviction, and show off our new-found
gastronomic credentials.
This is how Britain likes to see itself nowadays, as a fully functioning,
participatory food culture. In truth, this vision is a chimera, an unconvincing
construction built and talked up by the media, the chattering classes, the
hospitality, tourism and food industries, and TV chefs on the make. It is a
delusion that selectively ignores the gaping discrepancies that don’t fit the story:
• Our growing incompetence in the domestic kitchen and the endangered
status of home cooking – surely one of the most telling indicators of a
nation’s culinary health.
• Our inability to feed our children on a diet of life-sustaining, healthy food,
either at home or at school.
• The stifling of an independent local grocery sector or small food
commerce under the hulking boot of supermarket monoculture.
• Our addiction to industrial techno-foods.
• Our growing resistance to devoting any time to food shopping or
preparation.
• Our unwillingness to take the time to eat a meal.
• Our bulging waistlines.
• Our city centres studded with chain eateries and ‘gastropubs’ where
everything on the menu comes straight out of a lorry into the freezer, and
from there to the microwave or deep-fat fryer.
• Our near dependence on foreign cuisines because of the weakness of our
own native one.
And that’s just for starters!
This book explores all the contemporary manifestations of Britain’s
unhappy relationship with food; the embedded ideas, patterns and practices that
keep us locked in a Bad Food mindset and which feed the nation’s profound
gastronomic illiteracy. Not the least of our current troubles is our inability to
admit that something is wrong. Like an alcoholic who can’t accept that he or she
has a drink problem, Britain is in denial that it has a Bad Food problem. Yet such
an acceptance is a necessary preliminary to identifying creative solutions that
might enable us to appreciate the pleasure we might derive from better food, and
in the process transform the quality of our life.
Bad Food Britain is not a history book, although the roots of Britain’s
current difficulties with food would richly reward such an approach. Perhaps the
weak food culture in Britain is due to early industrialization, and a consequent
rapid growth of an urbanized population divorced from the countryside and food
production? Religion may play its part in the form of a Protestant work ethic
which spawned a breed that would rather build an empire or factory than waste
hours preparing and eating food; a peculiarly Anglo-Saxon form of Puritanism
which holds that it is immoral to enjoy or cherish food too much, parsimony and
abstinence being the higher goals. Other factors might include our grey northern
climate, the legacy of post-war rationing, our close identification with the United
States and ‘time is money’ American capitalism. Or might it be a matter of
simple xenophobia, complicated by a fine overlay of class; the notion that food
is something fancy that only foreigners, or those who ape them, enjoy? Whatever
the historical explanation, the fact remains that food never has been a British
priority and shows no signs of becoming one in the near future.
One of the most amusing but telling insights I happened on in the course of
writing this book was the following letter, published in The Times during the
wave of concern that flowed through Britain in the wake of the transmission of
Jamie’s School Dinners:
Sir,
A letter from my daughter’s primary school in Essex reads:
Change to the School Menu
In response to recent publicity, ‘Turkey Twizzlers’ have been taken off the
school menu and replaced by ‘Chicken Teddies’.
What is it about the British and food? We just don’t get it, do we? Well, it’s time
that we did.
BAD FOOD BRITAIN IN NUMBERS
1 One in every four British households no longer has a table that everyone
can eat around
57 The percentage of British men who have little interest in food
38 The percentage of British women who have little interest in food
1 One out of every three Britons say they do not eat vegetables because they
require too much effort to prepare
50 The percentage of Britons who really enjoy eating
2003The year by which Britain ate more ready meals than the rest of Europe
put together
40 The percentage of patients entering and leaving British hospitals in 2004
with malnutrition. The equivalent figure in British nursing homes is 60 per
cent
29 The number of unique British products with protected status in the EU in
2005. Italy had 149, France had 143, Portugal 93, Spain 91, Greece 84
40 The percentage of food bought in Britain, but never eaten
35 The average amount in pence spent on food ingredients for a primary
school meal in 2003. This is half what is spent on lunch for residents in
HM Prisons and a quarter of the sum allocated to feeding an army dog
48 The percentage of Britons who say they are fed up being told what to eat
20 The percentage of British viewers who say that TV food programmes
encourage them to cook
4 Only four out of ten Britons enjoy eating meals with their children
69 The percentage of Britons who are still confused about which foods are
healthy
1 One out of every two meals eaten in Britain is now eaten alone
63 The percentage of the food eaten by Britons in 2004 that was home-
produced, down from 75 per cent in 1994
1 Only one in five Britons will go out of their way to buy British food if it
means paying more for it
50 The percentage of all British shoppers who say that they do not care where
their food comes from
2020The year by which at least a third of all British adults, one fifth of British
boys and one third of British girls will be obese, if current trends continue
51 Britain eats more than half of all the crisps and savoury snacks eaten in
Europe
BRITAIN’S TOP 10 BAD FOOD BELIEFS
* Eating is about refuelling, not pleasure. A part of life’s routine, just like going
to the lavatory.
* Home cooking takes too long. Successful Britons buy ready-made food
instead.
* Food is not important. Pretty much everything else in life matters more.
* A dining table is a redundant item of furniture.
* The single most important thing to know about food is what it costs.
* There is no point in giving children good food. They won’t appreciate it.
* There is no such thing as bad foods, only bad diets.
* British supermarkets stock such great food, there is no need to shop elsewhere.
* You can live on a diet of processed food and still stay healthy and slim.
* A microwave is the only piece of kitchen equipment you really need.