The Scottish Diet

[Roy Hunter]

If deep-fried foods keep you active and alert and in shape, that's fabulous.

They are not keeping us active and alert and in shape. Therein lies the problem. Part of the economic apartheid in Scotland (and every country has its own form of economic apartheid, not just Scotland) is that in affluent areas you can buy fresh fruit and vegetables, raw unprocessed ingredients to make your own food with. In poor areas you quite often cannot, and if you can find them then the price is so high due to lack of competition that processed foods and carry-out foods are actually cheaper to buy than the ingredients to make them in the first place.

This has resulted in areas of the country where people know next to nothing about cooking their own food, let alone planning a balanced and healthy diet. They don't know about vitamins and minerals, they don't know about fats and proteins, and if they do cook something it is usually straight in the frying pan because they don't know how to roast, steam or poach. Some of them can use a microwave oven. Many of them cannot.

Average life expectancies in some of these areas are 20 years less than in more affluent areas only a couple of miles away. More salient to your point about quality of life, there is much higher prevalence of long-term health conditions like coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke, COPD, asthma; and these all have a debilitating effect on the quality of people's lives. Let's not even get started on the smoking and drinking and taking drugs...

Scotland is now a post-industrial country. We are no longer the workshop of the world, all the steam trains and ships we used to build have stopped, the last Singer sewing machine has long since rolled off the production line. In fact the old Singer factory is now a retail park: that pretty much tells you what you need to know about Scotland's new economy. We are not doing so much physical work any more, and for the most part our diet has changed to reflect that. But in poorer areas (which, coincidentally, were hit hardest by the transformation to a post-industrial economy as it was unskilled labour that bore the brunt) that transformation of diet and lifestyle has not taken place. There are no fruit and veg shops, no gymnasiums, far too many fish-n-chip shops, far too many pubs, and shops that sell cheap and nasty booze at cut-throat prices, and make their profits on tobacco (by sourcing it tax-free through the black market? I couldn't possibly comment).

Bearing in mind that I am a socialist, and I consider it my place in society to look out for my fellow man, to safeguard their health through a free-at-the-point-of-access National Health Service, and to elect a government that is going to shape health policy to improve the quality of everyone's lives, especially those nearest the bottom of the pile, this is a very real problem that requires a very real solution.

Or a flippant thread on a forum about a pasta-based deity. Whatever.

[Arkaeon]

Roy, you're almost scaring me (to the extent that the extinction of our species can be scary). Where I live in mid-size town USA, I can get to at least 10 sellers of fresh produce in less than 45 minutes (without an automobile even), several of which are organic farmed. If you're serious that there are people in Scotland, a seriously modern-west country, who can't get produce in their town, well, that's wacky and disgusting. I don't need to eat a lot of plants, personally, but I do recognize that they are necessary for anyone a little and for most people a lot. There are people here who can't cook, too, being totally dependent on the crooked and poisonous industrial food machine for their sustenance; which is a bit mind-boggling, considering that it's one of the basic needs like air and clothing and a place to stay out of the rain.

If it's really that bad there, you need an entire social-health-diet revolution. I thought we needed one here, but at least the ingredients are available if someone wants them. Do you really have towns where an average income person can't buy carrots and broccoli and beans and citrus fruit all year round? Outrageous and suicidal if true.

[daftbeaker]

Do you really have towns where an average income person can't buy carrots and broccoli and beans and citrus fruit all year round? Outrageous and suicidal if true.

Oh, they can buy them, they'll just be ready cooked in a supermarket, have been boiled to death to remove any sort of vitamins, coated in salt and fat and most people will leave them anyway. The worst bit is I was trying to be funny there but it's still pretty accurate.

Round here there's a similar problem (though nowhere near as bad as Roy's example) where the kids from the local council estate bring a lunch to school. It's usually a pack of Pringles or some other highly processed crisps, Coke or Red Bull and chocolate. I did once see someone eating a Ginster's cornish pasty so they at least had some veg

[Roy Hunter]

If it's really that bad there, you need an entire social-health-diet revolution. I thought we needed one here, but at least the ingredients are available if someone wants them.

Yes, indeed we do need that. Not for the whole country, but for a significant proportion of the country. This is not so much about towns or villages that have worse diet and lifestyle than their neighbours; it is about social housing and council schemes that are isolated, not geographically but socially, from more affluent home-owning communities often just across a major road.

People in schemes tend not to travel too far. Often they do not have cars, but even if they do they like to 'stick to their own' and shop locally. In some areas, gang rivalries, football affiliations or religious sectarianism stops people from travelling to other areas where they would be viewed as 'the enemy'. This is primarily an urban problem, but not just big cities, little towns like Kilmarnock, Fort William, Stirling also have socially excluded schemes.

Do you really have towns where an average income person can't buy carrots and broccoli and beans and citrus fruit all year round? Outrageous and suicidal if true.

They can afford to buy fresh fruit and veg, but they choose not to. The alternative to fruit and veg that you need to prepare and cook is ready made meals that go in the microwave for two minutes, then you throw the dirty container away when you're done, or chips from the shop so you don't even need to go into the kitchen. For some reason, their thought processes lead them to make unbelievably poor choices about food and drink. I wish I understood exactly why, but I don't.

[Arkaeon]

Oh, I see. That's a bit different. Suicide by ignorance is a legitimate form of population control, in some ways, although tragically it doesn't seem to prevent reproduction. People can pop out a bunch of babies long before their self-abusing diets cause them to run up huge health treatment bills. There may be no solution.

All these variables you have detailed exist in USA, too. Being raised kinda hunter-gatherer, it has always boggled my mind a bit that people seek food that isn't really food until they are so bloated and weak that they can barely reach their mouth. I'm guessing they will continue for as long as governments have enough funds to pander to them (Is that time running out soon?). After that, they will learn to work and cook real food or die promptly. If the right stuff is available and people don't take advantage of it: No tears.

[PKMKII]

Oh, I see. That's a bit different. Suicide by ignorance is a legitimate form of population control, in some ways, although tragically it doesn't seem to prevent reproduction.

The rapidly expanding childhood diabetes problem may end up affecting reproduction. If you've got girls, that then become women, who are almost never ovulating due to their obesity, they're not going to have much of a chance of being impregnated.

I'm guessing they will continue for as long as governments have enough funds to pander to them (Is that time running out soon?). After that, they will learn to work and cook real food or die promptly. If the right stuff is available and people don't take advantage of it: No tears.

I heard an argument from one of the influential figures in the "food-conscious" movement (might have been Michael Pollan), that Obamacare may turn the health insurance industry into an enemy of the low-nutrition/high-calorie, crap industrialized food companies. Given that they won't be able to make money off of ripping off their policy holders anymore, there will be an economic incentive for them to keep their policy holders as healthy as possible. And a lot of the most common public health problems come back to bad eating.

[Roy Hunter]

I heard an argument from one of the influential figures in the "food-conscious" movement (might have been Michael Pollan), that Obamacare may turn the health insurance industry into an enemy of the low-nutrition/high-calorie, crap industrialized food companies. Given that they won't be able to make money off of ripping off their policy holders anymore, there will be an economic incentive for them to keep their policy holders as healthy as possible. And a lot of the most common public health problems come back to bad eating.

Well, f&%k me up the ass with an epileptic hedgehog, there's a government intervention that would actually achieve something! I like that idea. I like it a lot. It makes the NHS look like Stalinism...

[daftbeaker]

I'm guessing they will continue for as long as governments have enough funds to pander to them (Is that time running out soon?). After that, they will learn to work and cook real food or die promptly. If the right stuff is available and people don't take advantage of it: No tears.

I heard an argument from one of the influential figures in the "food-conscious" movement (might have been Michael Pollan), that Obamacare may turn the health insurance industry into an enemy of the low-nutrition/high-calorie, crap industrialized food companies. Given that they won't be able to make money off of ripping off their policy holders anymore, there will be an economic incentive for them to keep their policy holders as healthy as possible. And a lot of the most common public health problems come back to bad eating.

That does assume that the health insurance companies lie back and accept the changes. I'd lay bets (and possibly a testicle) on them finding some new way to screw people out of having decent affordable medical treatment. Mind you I am a realist cynic

[PKMKII]

More pan-UK than Scottish, but fits here regardless:

Pizza Hut UK introduces the hot-dog-stuffed pizza



I love hot dogs, and I love pizza, but this is disgusting.

[pieces o'nine]

I had friends in college who made "hot dog pizza" during peak poverty.
It sounded pretty awful -- I can't imagine ^ would be much of an improvememt.

[Roland Deschain]

^^ I had a pizza from Pizza Hut the other day, and noticed this. I went for the "Italian" base instead, so cannot comment on its flavour, or lack thereof. I'm not sure it would have made anything more awesome, though.

[Roy Hunter]

Some men just want to watch the World fry...

[black bart]

Frying tonight: