14 April 2016
Obesity
Industry solves the problem.
By Chin Chin
Thank the Lord for Susan Jebb, Professor of Diet and Population Health at the University of Oxford, Senior Obesity Adviser to Public Health England and to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, known to the general public as the “weight Tsar”, who has said that the fact that Britain has a bigger weight problem than any European country should not be blamed on a national collapse in will-power.
I read Professor Jebb’s comments on my return from the gym where measurement had explained why all my clothes seemed to have shrunk since my last visit. Not that they actually criticised me there, of course. They are much too nice for that, but there was a sadness in their eyes which betrayed a certain disappointment. Actually their very patience made me even crosser with myself for having let the progress I had made during Lent go to waste. “Okay, Porky,” I said to my reflection in the changing room mirror, “we’ll put that right over the next week. That’s it. No excuse. No more milk in the porridge. Let’s see some daily exercise”. I set my jaw for the walk home, being careful to pull in the stomach muscles. Yes, a model of determination, a fine upstanding figure of a man, that is how I wanted to be in a week’s time and there was no better time to start than now. “Discipline”, “self restraint”, “strength of will”, those would be my watchwords: the qualities which had made British infantry the finest in the world. I really believe that if someone had shouted “look out” I would have tried to form a square.
On arrival home I saw a bag of icing sugar on the draining board. Well, I knew the enemy when I saw it. That needed to go into the bin. In my present mood the thought was as good as the deed and I moved seamlessly into action. A little too seamlessly as it happened because, rather than just dropping the bag into the bin, I flung it in athletically. It was rather a good throw – or at least it would have been if I’d been playing cricket for Australia or something like that – but unfortunately it burst the bag and the bin lid, being one of the sort which revolves very fast when struck, the room was filled with a thick white haze, rather like a sea mist only a great deal stickier. It was when I was trying to wipe down the ceiling and walls to get rid of the stickiness that I saw Professor Jebb’s article in the newspaper and realised that my whole approach was psychologically wrong.
Resolving to pull myself together would achieve nothing. Indeed, according to Professor Jebb, it would simply push up the cost of some dystopian treatment in the future. It wasn’t absence of will-power which caused obesity. Thank goodness for that; it wasn’t my fault after all.
Well, if I wasn’t responsible, who was? One culprit, according to Professor Jebb was “aggressive marketing”. That clearly had to be resisted. As I glared across the kitchen my eye lighted on a bottle by the stove which someone had brought me as a present. It was a hard glare but then if it was going to cow an aggressively marketed southern hemisphere wine it probably needed to be. The label looked back unperturbed. “Rats Bane,” it said. Well, that was certainly descriptive but was it marketing? Only if the name indicated that the wine would taste better than it actually did, I supposed. I needed to taste the wine to be sure.
We have all seen how that is done on television. You pour a little into the glass, swill it round and sniff before looking at the colour against a white cloth. You then simper charmingly and say something clever like “petillant!” or “right bank!” or “a pleasant little paraffin!” and your fellow guests nod and simper back. Well, the sniffing bit was going to easy, though this being no TV show I would have to simper into the mirror. Looking at the colour was more of a challenge because it needed a clear glass and I only had a blue plastic tumbler. Still, the great French connoisseur André Simon, when asked whether his smoking might affect his ability to taste food and wine, replied that someone with a real palate could pick up the flavours through the smoke. Perhaps I could distinguish the colour of wine through blue plastic on the same principle.
Actually I never found out because things went wrong at the sniffing stage. In my anxiety to do it thoroughly I got my nose a little too deep into the blue plastic container and inhaled it. If you have ever had water up your nose you will know that it is not pleasant. It comes back out soon enough or at least Rat’s Bane did but it left a burning sensation. As far as I could judge the wine tasted worse than its name suggested. A clear case of marketing. Down the sink under the Jebb rule.
The other thing which Jebb blames is the availability of food. For an urban dweller it is a little hard see how you avoid this. It is no good letting your stores run down because supermarkets are open round the clock and you can always buy more. There is little point in hiding food because you will remember where the hiding places are and get it out again.
While I was wondering how to achieve unavailable food I decided to make myself a sandwich. It was towards the end of lunchtime so there was a choice. I could have a savoury sandwich full of smoked salmon or a jam sandwich, spread with a raspberry jam. I decided on the jam. I suppose there are people with steel wrists who are capable of opening any jam-jar. If so it is greatly to their credit but, alas, I cannot claim to be one of them. This time I tried all the usual remedies such as heating the jar, tapping it upside down on the draining board and trying to use the tea towel as a sort of tourniquet. Nothing would move it so in the end I decided that I would have the smoked salmon instead.
I picked up the package and was glad to see the little black mark in the corner which showed you where to pull it apart. I tugged hard with no result. Then I got two pairs of pliers and tried to use those. Again nothing happened. After a bit I grew desperate and wedged one side of the plastic in the jamb of the door heaving away with my pliers at the other. To begin with nothing happened but when it did the whole packet flew apart, scattering the contents on the floor. The floor had not been washed for some weeks and the pieces, when I picked them up, were black and hairy. Still, I was glad to see that they had usefully absorbed some of the powdered sugar.
It was then, of course, that I understood. Manufacturers had read Professor Jebb’s article and resolved to do their bit to solve the problem. They would sell food but so packaged that it was not available to eat. What better example could there be of capitalists working in the national interest?
Please click here if you would like a weekly email on publication of the Shaw Sheet
