We need some fat in our diet, not only because it contains essential fat-soluble vitamins but also because it contributes much of the taste to foods. Very lean meat is tasteless unless enriched by a sauce containing fatty flavouring. No one would suggest that eating hamburgers and chips every day would constitute a good diet, but it would be better than one made up of Waldorf salad. The answer lies in a diet that is both varied and balanced.
The idea has grown up that some foods make you fat and others are slimming. It is true that pound for pound the fat in cheese contains about twice the calories of carbohydrate or protein but one eats much more carbohydrate and probably more protein than fat each day. It is the amount you eat that makes you fat.
One thing that the fast food industry has changed is the cost of food. Some would argue that it is now so readily available and cheap that it is not sufficiently rationed by price. As a result, people eat too much. In a world where some people are starving, this seems to be a perverse reason for objecting to the contribution made by the food industry. Many people of my generation can remember chicken being so expensive it was considered a luxury reserved for high days and holydays. It does suggest that the real cause of the problem of obesity is not the food or the ready availability of certain foods, it is a social phenomenon associated with affluence and the leisure time to enjoy eating. In other words, the ‘junk’ appellation should not be applied to the hamburger but to its consumer and his lifestyle.
We have been so indoctrinated about the evils of junk food, a concept so closely tied up with hamburgers that, if you were to ask the man in the street which was the better meal, lobster mayonnaise salad or a hamburger, he would almost certainly condemn the hamburger. In terms of its contribution to the food requirements of the body, the lobster mayonnaise, with its high cholesterol and fat and low-value protein, approaches the junk-food profile while a hamburger with tomato ketchup is much better value as a mixed food. A tomato, basil and chicken salad from Safeway is presented as ‘healthy food’ although it contains roughly the same amount of fat and calories as a Big Mac and chips (Sunday Times, August 2004). If, instead of eating a Big Mac, people were suddenly to start eating these salads, it is unlikely they would be any healthier or lose any weight.
There is no doubt that snobbery and cost contributes to the perception of what is called ‘junk’. The term is associated with foods originating in the fast-food chains of America rather than those coming from ‘foody’ France, home of the croque monsieur and foie gras; from Belgium, the country of moules et frites; or from Italy with its creamy pastas covered with cheese. For a century, generations of Britons ate fried fish and chips, liberally dosed with salt and vinegar, without becoming dangerously overweight. However, when the fish protein is replaced by the meat of a hamburger or by Kentucky Fried Chicken, it suddenly becomes a national disaster.
The present obsession with obesity has resulted in any food providing a high calorie content being labelled as ‘junk’. It is obvious nonsense: cheese is good food, as are fish and chips and hamburgers. It is not the particular food that makes people fat, it is the amount of it that they eat. The three heaviest mammals – the whale, the elephant and the hippopotamus – are all vegetarians; they don’t eat hamburgers, chips or crisps but they get fat. The whale is hugely fat – it is covered in fatty blubber – but most whales eats only plankton (which would no doubt qualify for the five-a-day portions of vegetables and fruit we are told we must eat). It is fat because it eats lots of plankton, it grazes continuously, it’s the whale’s lifestyle. It is not fat because it eats food containing a lot of calories. A person who also continuously nibbled food all day long would become fat even if he grazed on fruit and vegetables. A person who sits in front of the television eating bags of peanuts (a good food) is more likely to become fat than one eating the occasional hamburger.
There is often confusion between so-called junk food and fast food. A pizza can provide an excellent meal even if it is likely to be a little heavy on fats, whereas a cherry tart that took hours to make is likely to contain more carbohydrate – even before the cream has been added to increase its fat content. Neither is junk, and both contribute food essential for the nourishment of the body.
So what is junk? I suppose the nearest one comes to a substance that is not nourishing is water. Nevertheless, a fluid intake of about two litres a day (some of it as water) is essential for survival. Without salt we would all die. We need fat, protein and carbohydrate. Even fibre, which contributes so little towards our essential nutritional requirements that it could be considered a ‘junk food’, has a part to play in digestion. The lettuce and cucumber salad we are told we must eat every day to prevent us dying prematurely is made up of over 98 per cent water, while most of the rest is fibre and contributes little of nutritional value. We all know of children who have refused any salad or green vegetables and have grown up to be long-lived, healthy adults. Lettuce and cucumber would qualify for junk-food status but for the small amounts of water-soluble vitamins and antioxidants that they contain. Celery is said to require more energy in the eating than one gains from its consumption – that might qualify it for the label ‘junk’, but there is no evidence to suggest that it is in any way harmful.
Processed Foods
Since the junk food title makes no sense the food zealots have lined up another culprit in their search for something to ban, it is ‘processed food’. Why processed food should be bad is not clear as it is difficult to find out exactly what they are. Since we eat relatively few foods without cleaning them, cooking them and flavouring them, it is difficult to see what particular processes are considered to be a health hazard. Those foods that are partially prepared in some way by the food industry are no different from those prepared at home although their culinary treatment is probably better controlled. The food we eat in restaurants is certainly processed but is it therefore bad? Do the food police seriously believe in some sinister plot by the food industry to introduce dangerous or harmful substances into the meals during the preparation process? Most evidence points to the meals prepared and served at home as being more likely to cause a health problem, such as food poisoning or obesity.
Certainly, some classical methods of preparation for preservation, such as pickling and salting of meat and the preparation of some bacon, introduces nitrates and salt, which in great excess may be injurious to health. Modern food technology has allowed us to avoid an excess of nitrate and salt in preserved food. All the preservatives used today are well tested and harmless even in 100 times their concentration in any food. Almost all have stood the test of time and none has ever been linked to any health hazard.
Fast Foods
What exactly are fast foods? It seems that they are bad for you but since no one claims to know what slow foods would be like it is difficult to see what it is that causes the harm. Some of the fastest cooking I have encountered was the cooking of scallops in a wok in China. The actual cooking time was under one minute. They were delicious and seemed to be without any danger to my health. Would they have been better for me if they had been cooked for ten minutes? Fast food is such a meaningless term that one has to question the authority of those who bandy it about as a form of verbal shorthand to conceal their personal dislike of foods such as hamburgers, pizzas and hot dogs. It displays a food snobbery that is so unjustified that it needs to be disguised behind a wall of meaningless jargon.