Philobiblon

In an ideal world, human cultures would change at an equal rate to the environment in which they operate. Of course, that doesn’t happen. Cultures can continue to operate against all logic – and politicians can continue to operate within these cultures, making patently irrational decisions. That’s what happening with the correctly labelled obesity “epidemic”. More than 20 per cent of adults and a very high proportion of children will be obese by 2010, the latest figures suggest. Yet still Patricia Hewitt is trying to say this is a personal problem. That’s an awful lot of personal problems.

Well here’s my tale of how I, more-or-less, stopped myself heading down the path towards middle-aged obesity on which I was set, like so many others, as a child. For when I was small, my parents struggled to get by. When my mother went shopping, she bought the cheapest bulk items available – “No name” supermarket brands of cereal, of tinned meat and similar. She mightn’t quite have thought about getting the most calories for every cent, but that was the framework.

“Luxury” items were high-fat and empty of nutrition – chocolate, ice-cream, crisps. Fruit and vegetables were high risk – they might go off; as a poor cook what she did with them mightn’t be a success. She didn’t know how to judge what items were ripe or good – no one had ever shown her.

Because food was in some sense a luxury, she treated herself, and me, when things went wrong, with food – comfort eating. My increasingly round shape was dismissed as mere “puppy fat”, “healthy growth”, “nothing to worry about”. As I entered my teens at some level I knew that was wrong, but I also found comforting eating a great crutch through the pains of adolescence, and there was an element of self-harm in it – if I was fat, I wouldn’t have to deal with that whole business about boys…

Food was comfort, it was necessary fuel to be shovelled in, it was not something to be savoured, appreciated, tasted. Luckily, along the way, I had the occasional accidental exposure to good food – the Indonesian-language teacher at school had an Indonesian wife who cooked us chicken satay: the peanut sauce was a revelation. But that was an odd shock in a diet of leathery meat, fake mashed potato and frozen peas.

Out on my own, as a poor student, I lived on instant noodles – a shop-bought meat pie was a luxury. Food was a fuel to shovel in, and as I went into the workforce, with 12-hour days, tired and hungry, I’d find myself driving into McDonald’s on the way home – easy food to eat with one hand while driving with the other. Or else it was a microwave frozen dinner. I didn’t eat fruit or veg; I had little idea of how I might incorporate it into my diet. It took time, I thought.

After 30 or so years of that, I knew I was unhealthy, but I had little idea of what to do about it. What rescued me finally was the move away from a health message that said “complex carbohydrate was the answer” – huge bowls of pasta – to the “five pieces of fruit and veg”. It wasn’t easy, I still don’t always make it, but I try to force myself to eat at least two proper veggies at every main meal. Combined with fruit juice for breakfast, that makes the five.

That was a start. Then I moved into central London, gave up the car and started cycling. Then, at the age of 40, I was fitter, with a healthier diet, than I had been in my life before. But I’m not taking credit for that – well not much.

What made that change happen was first of all a clear, better message from official sources about what I should be eating. Then there was the fact that cycling in central London was made more feasible – I doubt I’d have stuck it a decade ago, but the increasing presence of cycle lanes and other provisions have made it an almost pleasant experience, most of the time.

And now I get a weekly organic fruit and veg box delivered to my door. I still don’t really regard spending time thinking about food as time well spent, and this takes away the need for thought. And I still can’t judge when an avocado is ripe, or a mango, or indeed the peaches still in my fridge – I’ve never had anyone to show me. And I sometimes have to ring up the company to ask what some new object in the box is, and what I should do with it. But I’m lucky enough to have the cash to splash out on the boxes – some of which I “waste” (well the composting worms seem to like it).

But what has changed is not fundamentally me, but aspects of my environment. I got the right messages; I was provided with the chance to exercise; I was given the right food supplies that I could afford. None of those things are individual; none of them are broadly available to the British population.

I don’t watch television, so I don’t get exposed to carefully crafted expensive food messages – dripping chocolate sauce, child-grabbing clowns, famous sportsmen advertising crisps. All of those are far more powerful than some besuited government minister or bureaucrat standing up with a boring chart in a 30-second spot on the news. Those commercials are the food messages most people get.

Cycling to work (or school) is, outside a few small inner city areas, a scary enterprise. And catching a bus or train (which would necessarily involve a bit of exercise) is frequently more expensive, and much less convenient, than walking the three paces out to the car.

And the encouragement of mass-production, mass-transported food means that the organic delivery box on your doorstep is a vastly more expensive option that is beyond the reach of many. Indeed were every person in Britain to suddenly decide to adopt such a course, supplies would certainly not stretch.

None of those factors are personal. All of them are things that the government could change – and at least in the case of food advertising change quite quickly. Everything it is doing now – in not acting on dangerous advertising (now being shown as damaging to health as any Marlboro Man), in not acting to reduce and discourage car use (indeed quite the opposite), and in encouraging mass food markets of over-processed junk – is having a negative effect.

Ms Hewitt, you’re talking about this problem as one of personal responsibility. So when are you, and your government, going to take responsibility?