In defence of food

Yum. Food (she says sounding like Homer Simpson). I love food so much I carry it as a spare tyre around my middle. Just the one though, since I'm now back at the weight I've always been. I'm the same now as I was when I was 20 and I wanted to lose that extra bit then too.

I've been reading Jane's blog posts about dropping four stone (not four actual stones, 56lb) and it reminded me of Michael Pollan's rules in his book In Defence of Food.

I read it and then gave up dieting (apart from a brief and foolish foray in to the Dukan diet which was awful. I just don't like meat enough to do that one). Pollan says (on an ad for the book I clipped from a magazine and stuck to my fridge):

FORGET THE DIET AND FALL IN LOVE WITH FOOD AGAIN

The ad also conveniently lists his The Rules of the Real Food Revolution. My comments in italics:

 1. Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognise as food. Quorn, for example. What the heck is Quorn anyway? Ugh. 

 2. Eat a wide diversity of species. Pizza is NOT a species. Don't eat anything that's on the 'at risk of extinction' list though.

 3. Pay more, eat less. This absolutely applies to ALL types of meat. Eat good meat or none at all. Free range chicken is more expensive but it's worth it.

4. Avoid foods containing ingredients you can't pronounce. I don't think this means avoiding Szechuan pepper and chorizo. It means things like butylated hydroxytoluene.

5. Shop at the peripheries of the supermarket; stay out of the middle. The cakes, chocolate and junk are in the middle. Run in, grab some Green and Black's 85% plain chocolate, run back out to the vegetables, pulses and nuts.

6. Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot. This means the likes of Twinkies. Sugar doesn't rot (except your teeth). Honey doesn't rot either but I think that's an exception to the rule (in my world). Does chocolate rot? I've never managed to keep it long enough to find out...

7. Avoid food products that carry health claims. I can't think of any examples -  slimming tea? In the UK this sort of thing is quite strictly regulated. I assume it doesn't include blueberries and other such fruit although I'm deeply suspicious of goji berries...

8. Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does. Or, in other words, you don't need chocolate just because the car needs petrol and sandwiches from that sort of a place are just plain wrong.

Grow your own if you can. This year's winter salads (half of them) pictured today.

9. Cook and, if you can, grow some of your own food.  Cook from scratch. Cheap, easy, more delicious. Home made doesn't require additives to keep it 'fresh'. If you've made it you know what's in it (and you've only got yourself to blame!)

10. Eat meals only at tables, with other people and always with pleasure. The BEST bit. Families that eat together stay together. The table in front of the TV doesn't count (except on Saturdays with home made pizza and the X Factor - or is that just us?!)

Sound advice from Mr Pollan. Eat good food, not rubbish. Simple. (Oh and move more - run! - but that's a whole other blog post.)

The Lie of the Land

I watched two interesting, but disturbing programmes last night. The first was the second part of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's 'Chicken Run' programme.

Hugh is highlighting the plight of the cheap supermarket chicken by setting up his own intensive chicken farm and rearing 4,000 birds. It's not a pretty sight. Only a few days from slaughter the birds were virtually unable to stand amd all they did was stagger between the food and water. Visitors - including Jamie Oliver - were horrified. "Why aren't they walking about?" Jamie asked, appalled. They couldn't. Their bloated bodies (the bits we eat) were too heavy.

The birds had no space to move around in, no access to the outdoors and no natural light. Hugh ended up in tears after having to kill yet another sick bird. Part three is tonight (9pm, Channel Four). All he wants is for consumers to pay £1 extra and buy a free range bird. It's not too much to ask is it?

Later I watched Molly Dineen's documentary "The Lie of the Land" in which she followed some of the protesters from the pro-hunt demonstration in London home to see how someone lived when their life depended on the countryside. She watched as the huntsman spent his days going from dairy farm to dairy farm shooting day old 'worthless' dairy crossbreed bull calves. She interviewed farmers who didn't know how they were going to continue farming when everything they produced was sold at a loss.

One farmer said of the supermarkets: "They are superpowers. We're nothing really. They just buy it where they can get it cheapest."

Another said: "The welfare standards of imported food is a damn site worse that we've got here. All you are doing is exporting your problems."

Another, who had been shooting foxes he said would have been much more humanely killed by dogs said: "Everyone's focussed on sport, because you can see it. But nobody's interested in how their food is produced. Look at battery chickens. Why is that acceptable, but hunting and shooting isn't?"

I can't help but think that both programmes were probably preaching to the already converted. I don't think that the anti-hunt supporters shouting at the pro-hunt "privileged toffs" to go home would watch such programmes and if they did would they watch them with an open mind? Do they realise that some of the "privileged toffs" are just hard-working ordinary people - like themsevles - flirting with poverty? They're not all rich princes and earls. Some are, of course. The ones shown on the documentary were not.

The divide between city and country seems to be widening. Farmers are portrayed as fat, greedy, money-grabbing and cruel. In the suburbs it seems to me that the general opinion is that farmers do not love their animals. Last night they would have seen that, when the huntsman was shooting these doe-eyed calves, only one farmer was present. The others could not bear to be there when the knackerman came and instead left the money in a carrier bag (ironically a Tesco carrier bag in one case). One even left a bag of fudge. For the life of a calf.

The programme ended with a farmer, a dying breed, he said, who has a suckler herd. He described his business as 'borderline'. He then went to a field gate and called to his herd which were grazing two fields away. At the sound of his voice the cows and calves lifted their heads and started replying. They ran down the slope to a hedge and mooed enthusiastically.

"They can't get out down there," said the farmer. "If they really love me they'll go back up the hill and through the other gate."

Molly Dineen was astonished.

"They come when you call?" she asked.

"Of course," said the farmer. "They're my girls."

They loved him.