Food, glorious food
Nov. 27th, 2025 02:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseMy brother-in-law needs a low-FODMAP diet; so when I heard about a new range of ready meals specifically designed for such a diet, I obviously thought of him straight away. The range is called "No Bloat", and it's also vegan, so it's theoretically suitable for me too - and, in fact, I did briefly consider it in the hope that it might perhaps mollify evil little Sibyl. There are about eight or nine different meals, and they come in little pouches at £4.50 a throw, which is quite expensive for a ready meal but might be useful to keep in the cupboard in case of emergency.
Or so I thought, until I discovered the portion size. All of them are under 200 kcal.
That is not a main meal. Even for me - and I'm not the world's biggest eater - that is, at best, half a meal. So I was very puzzled, because I couldn't find any indication that these meals were meant to be for small children or very elderly people. They seem to be marketed at regular adults. Who's going to spend £4.50 on half a meal, or, indeed, for most people, much less than half a meal?
And then it occurred to me that there's always the obsessive weight loss brigade. I'm not talking about people who genuinely need to lose weight and are doing it sensibly; I'm talking about the sort of people I used to work with. Most of my immediate colleagues were SWODs, as I called them, which stood for Skinny Women On Diets. I don't know if any of them actually counted as anorexic, but they were all pretty close; they weren't interested in being a healthy weight. They wanted to be as underweight as they could manage. My boss was positively gaunt, and when I gently suggested on one occasion that if she was serious about looking better she should perhaps consider putting on a few kilos, she told me she liked the way she looked. Though at least she hadn't transferred her entire moral sense to food, as one of the others had. This woman spent so much time moralising about food that I eventually lost patience with her and said, "Listen. Lying is a sin. Cheating on your husband is a sin. Stealing is a sin. Chocolate is not a sin, it's a food!" I think I also, at a later date, gave her the benefit of my opinion that food guilt is one of the most toxic things that people are wont to swallow, but I doubt it did any good.
It's all a question of balance. Obviously you don't want to go wild on food that is energy-dense but not so great nutritionally, but you are not somehow "bad" if you eat that kind of food now and again, and it won't do you any harm as long as the bulk of what you eat is the other way round. In fact, as Food Guilt Lady repeatedly discovered, denying yourself a particular food because you think it's "bad" just gives you an unhealthy craving for it (followed by a pile of unnecessary guilt feelings when you, inevitably, cave). It's much better for you, both physically and psychologically, to have a bit of chocolate (or whatever your favourite indulgence is) now and again, rather than telling yourself you're not allowed to eat it and then going through a starve-binge-guilt cycle.
I'm reminded of the time I was stopped coming out of Sainsbury's by a little man who was trying to sell diet plans. My first question was "do I look as if I need to lose weight?" He managed to stammer that I didn't, but everyone could eat more healthily. I said nothing, letting him run his gaze over the contents of my trolley. It was full of, mostly, fresh fruit and vegetables.
"Well," he said, rather desperately, "there's chocolate..."
"Yes," I agreed. "There is chocolate. Do you have a problem with that?"
"Er," he said. "Well, um. You're doing very well. Most people just eat what they like."
That was too much. "I eat what I like!" I retorted, just barely managing to bite off the words "you silly little man" before I said them out loud.
I don't know where this idea came from, but it can go right back to wherever it was. The basic idea is that foods fall into two main categories, Delicious but Unhealthy and Healthy but Boring. And there's just no evidence at all that this is true. There was an experiment done with children once (I think children were used because children don't have so many preconceptions about what they should eat); a bunch of them were put in a room with a massive buffet containing a huge variety of different foods, and what they ate was carefully observed. At first they all gravitated to the cakes, biscuits, and snack foods; but it didn't take very long before they were all self-selecting a pretty much balanced diet. The thing is, if you're allowed to eat cake whenever you want, then actually you don't want to eat cake all the time, no matter how much you enjoy it. Your body knows what it needs, and it's pretty good at telling you.
There are exceptions, of course. For instance, the body telling you what it needs can often be overridden by force of habit, so, for instance, someone might have a biscuit with their cup of tea at a certain time whether or not they really want one, because they're used to it. And it's undeniably the case that some people are better at listening to their bodies than others. Even so, most people like most foods, regardless of whether or not they're considered "healthy" (and, let's face it, that is inclined to change to some extent in any case). I am pretty sure that the straw person who doesn't like anything other than "unhealthy" food is a figment of someone's overheated imagination.
Which takes me handily back to the No Bloat. Most of the meals look delicious. They really do.
But I won't be buying it, all the same.
Or so I thought, until I discovered the portion size. All of them are under 200 kcal.
That is not a main meal. Even for me - and I'm not the world's biggest eater - that is, at best, half a meal. So I was very puzzled, because I couldn't find any indication that these meals were meant to be for small children or very elderly people. They seem to be marketed at regular adults. Who's going to spend £4.50 on half a meal, or, indeed, for most people, much less than half a meal?
And then it occurred to me that there's always the obsessive weight loss brigade. I'm not talking about people who genuinely need to lose weight and are doing it sensibly; I'm talking about the sort of people I used to work with. Most of my immediate colleagues were SWODs, as I called them, which stood for Skinny Women On Diets. I don't know if any of them actually counted as anorexic, but they were all pretty close; they weren't interested in being a healthy weight. They wanted to be as underweight as they could manage. My boss was positively gaunt, and when I gently suggested on one occasion that if she was serious about looking better she should perhaps consider putting on a few kilos, she told me she liked the way she looked. Though at least she hadn't transferred her entire moral sense to food, as one of the others had. This woman spent so much time moralising about food that I eventually lost patience with her and said, "Listen. Lying is a sin. Cheating on your husband is a sin. Stealing is a sin. Chocolate is not a sin, it's a food!" I think I also, at a later date, gave her the benefit of my opinion that food guilt is one of the most toxic things that people are wont to swallow, but I doubt it did any good.
It's all a question of balance. Obviously you don't want to go wild on food that is energy-dense but not so great nutritionally, but you are not somehow "bad" if you eat that kind of food now and again, and it won't do you any harm as long as the bulk of what you eat is the other way round. In fact, as Food Guilt Lady repeatedly discovered, denying yourself a particular food because you think it's "bad" just gives you an unhealthy craving for it (followed by a pile of unnecessary guilt feelings when you, inevitably, cave). It's much better for you, both physically and psychologically, to have a bit of chocolate (or whatever your favourite indulgence is) now and again, rather than telling yourself you're not allowed to eat it and then going through a starve-binge-guilt cycle.
I'm reminded of the time I was stopped coming out of Sainsbury's by a little man who was trying to sell diet plans. My first question was "do I look as if I need to lose weight?" He managed to stammer that I didn't, but everyone could eat more healthily. I said nothing, letting him run his gaze over the contents of my trolley. It was full of, mostly, fresh fruit and vegetables.
"Well," he said, rather desperately, "there's chocolate..."
"Yes," I agreed. "There is chocolate. Do you have a problem with that?"
"Er," he said. "Well, um. You're doing very well. Most people just eat what they like."
That was too much. "I eat what I like!" I retorted, just barely managing to bite off the words "you silly little man" before I said them out loud.
I don't know where this idea came from, but it can go right back to wherever it was. The basic idea is that foods fall into two main categories, Delicious but Unhealthy and Healthy but Boring. And there's just no evidence at all that this is true. There was an experiment done with children once (I think children were used because children don't have so many preconceptions about what they should eat); a bunch of them were put in a room with a massive buffet containing a huge variety of different foods, and what they ate was carefully observed. At first they all gravitated to the cakes, biscuits, and snack foods; but it didn't take very long before they were all self-selecting a pretty much balanced diet. The thing is, if you're allowed to eat cake whenever you want, then actually you don't want to eat cake all the time, no matter how much you enjoy it. Your body knows what it needs, and it's pretty good at telling you.
There are exceptions, of course. For instance, the body telling you what it needs can often be overridden by force of habit, so, for instance, someone might have a biscuit with their cup of tea at a certain time whether or not they really want one, because they're used to it. And it's undeniably the case that some people are better at listening to their bodies than others. Even so, most people like most foods, regardless of whether or not they're considered "healthy" (and, let's face it, that is inclined to change to some extent in any case). I am pretty sure that the straw person who doesn't like anything other than "unhealthy" food is a figment of someone's overheated imagination.
Which takes me handily back to the No Bloat. Most of the meals look delicious. They really do.
But I won't be buying it, all the same.
no subject
Date: 2025-11-27 06:25 pm (UTC)We have such an unhealthy view about food, but we just simply can't blame the lifestyle forced upon us by capitalism, right?
It's the food.
no subject
Date: 2025-11-27 06:32 pm (UTC)Fast forward to Bob the Lodger feeling he had to drive 200 m up the road to the post office. When I said to him, in some puzzlement, "But I thought you wanted to lose weight - why don't you walk?", he'd complain that he hadn't time. Well, of course, by the time he'd got the car out and then found somewhere to park it at the other end, it was as broad as it was long. But nobody would have ever thought to do that forty-odd years earlier.