The Word Cloud

Some of you have acknowledged that I cleaned up a nice bit of writing that’s been around on the internet for a while and posted it here in the blog section. There was reasoning behind it, flawed or otherwise: it made a nice introductory lead in to this, which otherwise may not have held its own in the intriguing stakes. Frankly, it probably won’t anyway.

 

 

Health and Diet Versus Price and Cost

 

66 years have passed since the end of the Second World War. Many advances have been made in technology, medicine and health during that time, but in some ways we have regressed.

 

During World War II, it has been clearly demonstrated that people in general actually lived healthier lifestyles. This is contrary to what one might initially think, but rationing meant that luxury products (particularly fattier and sweeter food stuffs) were in short supply, so most people ate rather less of them. For that matter, most people ate considerably less food overall and obesity was not so... er... widespread. In relation, however, more fresh vegetables, fruit and wholemeal produce were consumed.

 

The availability of white bread was scarce because it required more processing, ingredient extraction, time and expense.  Therefore most people rarely had alternative bread-based options to full wholemeal brown bread, which was cheaper and easier to produce.

 

Somewhere between back in them days and now, marketers shifted the value perception of healthier food and we generally pay more for wholemeal or brown bread than the previously more expensive to make white loaves.  Right now, I don't know the cost breakdowns of brown versus white because they are more related to factors such as long-term economies of scale, overall unit sales and popularity. One thing is for certain, though: pricing strategies have caused a mindset shift in the population to such a degree that we now expect to pay more for healthier food, regardless of whether it actually costs more to get it on to store shelves and sell it.

 

What really gets me worked up is the wider picture of profiteering from healthy or environmentally friendly products and practices. In general terms in the UK, the more educated section of the population are more likely to want to be healthy and/or green. Or at least be seen to be. Education also correlates with wealth. Wealth correlates with an ability to pay more for things. So, for the most part, marketers set pricing strategies to deliberately take advantage of this, and their companies make tidy profit margins out of selling a healthy lifestyle.

 

It means that we pay a premium if we want to be healthy or green.  And it means that the less well off are priced out of the market, whatever their intention. Frankly, I find it immoral. And in a time of imposed austerity, that goes double.

The fourth in a series of 10-minute videos about the adventures and frustrations of an ordinary (but rather hirsute) General Practitioner. In this one, Dr Hairy tries to persuade one of his patients to lose weight - with hilarious results!

To view it on my site, go to http://www.edwardpicot.com/drhairy/oldfashionedmedicine.mov ; or you can see it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUdBHsW83bg ; or it should be on DVblog (http://dvblog.org) in the next couple of weeks.


- Edward Picot
http://edwardpicot.com - personal website
http://hyperex.co.uk - The Hyperliterature Exchange

WARNING: Contains foul language and disturbing imagery. Not to be consumed whilst... consuming.



Some of you may know that EzBird has me on one of these new fangled things called a “diet”. Well, I’m here to tell you that, cheese aside, it’s not all that bad. See this is based on lifestyle (sedentary to comatose), height (5’ 10” – and almost that around the belly too; in truth I’m starting to look like a bloody Christmas tree bauble…) and weight (17st 6lb when I started, which is the heaviest I have ever been) and a website that tells you what you should be doing – exercising more (or “at all” in my case) and eating less. (Like I didn’t know.)

It seems that my calorie intake for my lifestyle and height may be a tad… high. According to the website if I want to lose weight (well, it’s not me really, it’s EzBird; she wants me to lose weight. Sigh.) I should be consuming no more than 2000 calories a day. Easy, I thought. Weeeeeeell… no. See before this “diet” do-woppy-thing I appear to have been consuming around about, and not in excess of, some where in the region of, um… *cough*… three, er, calories a day. Oh sorry, my mistake. I mean four. Thousand. Seven hundred and forty nine. Ish.

See bacon sandwiches for breakfast are all well and good and set you up well for the day but they just don’t last. Lunch could wander between MaccyD’s, The Colonel, Subway, Pizza hut or, if I was feeling righteous, another bacon sandwich. Not all on the same day of course. Well… except there was that one time… Anyway… Oh and on Thursday lunch it was “all you could eat for a fiver” at the local Thai restaurant and I’m a sucker for shredded duck. Not that I did that *every* week. That would be silly… *cough*

Then home for tea and whatever delights EzBird had cooked up for me. Or maybe a takeaway.

Then there were the weekends… obviously I don’t drink alcohol. Copiously. So no worries there then…

Not any more.

Now my diet hovers around 2000 calories. I still have a rice crispy square and I still have chocolate; one Rolo in my pack up because EzBird loves me (who made vomit sounds? Who was it? You know who you are! Go on, get out!) and a two finger (steady) kit-kat. I still have crisps; just the one packet though. But most of all I have a hand made salad (with salad cream, granted) of chicken, plum tomatoes, pea shoots, baby spinach leaves and red or yellow pepper. Every day. And you know what? It’s bloody handsome. We eat healthy in the evening too. So food is no longer an issue.

But…

I drink two litres of water every day. Two whole litres. I go to the loo every five bloody minutes and watch it change colour as the day progresses from a deep golden (de-hydrated) to an almost drinkable clear-with-a-duluxable-hint-of-yellow…

See, here’s something I just did not know; the signal “feed me” or “hunger” is the exact same signal for “I’m dehydrated, water me.” What’s the point of that?! Every time I got the munchies, and duly satiated same, it wasn’t bloody munchies! It was drinkies! I was thirsty, not hungry! It’s farcical! Talk about mixed sodding messages. You’d think biological evolution (unless you believe in creationism in which case you should blame God as opposed to blaming Darwin like I am about to…) would have made the two signals far more clear wouldn’t you? I mean, what if your diet only ever consisted of, er, dried food…? Hmm? You’d dehydrate to death… or something…

Anyway, not only that but also…;

I now park far away from work and it takes me ten minutes brisk walk up hill to get to my desk. (A journey I perform at lunch too. I must be mad.)

And I’m rewarded with what? The pleasure of sitting at my desk in my own sweat for five minutes, not daring to go downstairs to the gents because cold damp shreddies are ok when in situ but are gross when they return to position after a brief sojourn floorwards, and five minutes of terror waiting for the palpitations to turn to stabbing pains, for the pounding in my ears to turn to sirens and the flashing lights in my eyes to become blue – the same colour as my lips?

I figure it takes one and a half hours of sweat-free, are-you-sitting-comfortably, chewing and swallowing (easy girls) to chuck four thousand seven hundred and forty calories down your (well, “my”) gullet. A day. However, ten minutes of walking up hill until the sweat seeps through my expensive (£12 from Matalan) shirt and starts to wick into my even more expensive wool (but not a loose knitted) suit and the pedometer reads one and a half miles…vertically (ok, maybe I’m exaggerating but it bloody feels like it) and the calorie counter gloriously exhorts “Congratulations! You have burned 46 calories…” Forty-six?! Forty-fucking-six?! What I just farted would burn more than forty-fucking-six calories! I’m taking in two thousand of the insidious little bastards and nearly killing myself crossing busy roads and walking up half a mountain for forty-pigging-six calories burnt? Give me a break!

On hindsight, though, we decided the calorie counter may be buggered. I think it stopped working after I sat on it. And in four weeks I have lost 9lb’s…

Anyway, according to EzBird, next week I’m going to be jogging round the block after work. God help the local neighbourhood; if their houses didn’t have subsidence before I’m bloody sure they will afterwards.

So, keep an eye on the news and listen out for the words “seven point two”, “Richter scale” and “Kettering.”

Sigh.

Ez
You know what? I really need to post a blog about writing...