Cathy Dobbs on floods, food and factory fodder
Millions were spent on flood defences for Bewdley but when the Environment Agency needed to get the barriers up to protect people’s homes and businesses what did they do? – ‘Computer says no’.
The ‘Computer says no’ catchphrase coined by Little Britain’s David Walliams is still as relevant today as it was when it was dreamt up 20 years ago. So while everyone in Bewdley knew the town was going to flood, the Environment Agency checked their data and delayed putting the barriers up, instead of playing it safe before the storm hit. But, there again we only spent £6.2 million on defences to keep people in Bewdley safe and dry – it’s a drop in the ocean for a government that seems to love throwing good money after bad.
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Our main topic of polite conversation in the UK is the weather, it’s a good ice-breaker, especially when chatting with someone we don’t know well. Other countries aren’t as obsessed with the weather as we are though. My sister-in-law grew up in Hong Kong and says that instead of weather being their favourite topic of conversation, they discuss food. So, chatting to a stranger in a queue you would ask if they had eaten recently, what they’d had and how they had cooked it. Maybe they aren’t as stressed about body image in Hong Kong – after all the average weight of a Chinese woman is supposedly 8.8 stone, while the average UK woman is 11 stone, and in the US it’s around 12 stone.
If we didn’t have so many hang-ups around food we’d probably find it easier to discuss what we’d had for breakfast – although a bowl of bran flakes and a banana isn’t nearly as interesting as discussing the latest storm or heatwave.
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For years a slice of toast or bowl of cereal has been the mainstay of our breakfasts. They are easy to prepare, tasty and perfect for when you’re rushing around in the morning. However, our trusty breakfasts are now labelled unhealthy and called UPFs which stands for ultra-processed foods.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has gone a step further this week advising that some intensively produced factory fodder should be officially marked as “addictive” due as it produces effects similar to drugs like nicotine and alcohol. This comes from a global analysis, spanning 281 studies conducted in 36 different countries.
According to the study, for some individuals the way they consume UPFs could actually meet the criteria for a diagnosis of “substance use disorder”. It certainly helps explain the levels of obesity we have in the West, but isn’t it a shame that our humble British breakfast, as well as other favourite foods, are being demonised in this way.
Reading document after document saying we shouldn’t eat this, or do that just sucks the fun out of life. Whatever happened to that saying “everything in moderation”?
