Health & Beauty - October 2013

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Cartoon by Lisa Wyman

Health & Beauty Oct 2013

I'll take that to go

At what point did it become de rigueur to wander the streets clutching a beverage or snack?  When did it become fashionable to order what is essentially a cup of coffee using a long string of nonsensical words?  Why do celebrities feel unable to leave the house without portable liquid?  Do you get particularly dehydrated if you are famous?  Water in bottles is so chic there is a fashion statement to be made with whatever brand you are dangling between your French manicured fingers on the red carpet.

We are not fleeing a war torn country, food and drink is not in short supply, so why do we feel the need to be constantly grazing or drinking calorie laden, cream based, beverages in between meals?  Why are people so puzzled by the soaring obesity rates?

Enterprising students have become millionaires on the backs of our need for a sandwich 24 hours a day – fresh and hand made please!  These companies have a moral message for us.  Every single thing they use is ‘fair trade’, so my sandwich, from their shop, is saving a community in a far-flung land. 

I just want a cup of tea not a lecture or a guilt trip connected to my purchase.

Feeling a moral obligation to which drink you buy is actually a kind of gentle blackmail.  Do we have to be responsible every minute of the day with our every choice in a minefield of charitable doings?

Carrying food and drink is not a new concept (sometimes it is essential). It was just kept under brown paper wraps and not flaunted.  Eating, drinking, smoking or adjusting our underwear in public was not the done thing when I was a girl!

Bodies preserved in the ice caps, that have been discovered by plucky explorers in recent times, always seem to have been carrying a small drawstring leather pouch containing berries or dried meats that we can still identify and from them learn lessons about the diet and lifestyle of the time.  These mummified morsels can teach us if they were hunter/gatherers or if crops were being grown.

Imagine their confusion with our form of hunting and gathering.

The abundance of food would bring tears to their eyes. Wide eyed with wonder at the cavalier way we treat our food production today and wondering why we are carrying it about when its so plentiful on every street corner and preserved in big silver boxes in the draught-proof, heated homes we inhabit instead of their caves where running water was a drip down the wall at the back.

We produce more food than we can eat and somehow when we try to airlift the surplus to other countries in need, it never quite makes it to the people who need it.  The words butter and mountain should not be seen together.

I am guessing that most people reading this magazine have dry goods in cupboards and butter and milk in the fridge at the very least.  An ashamed confession that you throw out food every week will come from at least 75% of you.

The way we shop has also affected the way we eat.  Vast trolleys in supermarkets encourage us to fill them with enough food for a small army for a week at a time.  Our Mothers shopped almost daily, were distrustful of frozen goods and had very little waste.  We buy what we fancy at the time (when was the last time you wrote out a week’s menus and stuck to them?) and if that changes then in the bin it goes at the end of the week: and then we repeat the process.  It’s shameful.

Being caught up with how much we weigh – another thing our ancestors would find bemusing – is our prime focus as a race or so it would seem from media reporting.  It’s even worse for those women in the public eye whose every inch is analysed to the point where at the end of a pregnancy the baby takes second place to getting back into their skinny jeans ASAP.  We either live in a country with such poor resources that we are literally starving to death or countries where we voluntarily starve ourselves to lose weight from eating too much.  Does that seem mad to anyone else but me?

Our need to describe our current diet to everyone is so boring!  Yes, no carbs for me, no wheat for you and nothing at all for her. 

The responsibility of how we eat has been taken away from us and put in the hands of thinktanks who make declarations about calories, amounts of vitamins and minerals we need and how often we should eat using (pie) charts, facts and figures. 

You don’t need a stranger in a suit to tell you that eating junk food in vast quantities is not doing you any good.  You can make the connection between eating too much and being a size 24.  It’s not rocket science.

You know that alcohol affects your liver, that fat affects your heart and ingesting ice cream three times a day makes it difficult to move about which means you don’t exercise and so the circle goes round.

So listen to your body.  Fed up with your thighs rubbing together? Stop moaning and do something about it.  Eat less, move about more, stop worrying about government guidelines and start using your brain.

Trying to stabilise your eating habits is not a quick fix overnight.  Take it one step at a time and start with cutting back on portion sizes if you’re feeling a bit uncomfortable in your clothes.  I won’t tell you to eat a piece of meat the same size as a pack of cards or how many potatoes are too many.  Zzzz.  It’s your call and your choice.

Stop eating in between meals whatever size you are.  You will have more energy if your body isn’t in a constant state of early digestion.  Think of most food as fuel and use it as such.  The occasional treat should be just that - occasional.  If it happens every day, it’s not a treat.

I bet Elizabeth Taylor lost her excitement for diamonds after a while in the same way we no longer think of chocolate as something special. As with all good things, less is more.   

Happy Trails, Readers, Happy Trails.

First published October 2013 By The Dart