Britain and food

It looks like tonight is official Diet Day on tv. After two years and a half in this country, I’m still appalled at all the ‘healthy food’ campaigns you get bombarded with – and not just right now, when new years’ resolutions are still firmly on people’s mind. Surely, you don’t need a tv programme to tell you the basic mechanism of marketing is telling you half-truths, so if you see a massive packet of butter telling you it’s good for you because it contains omega 3, you MUST know it still doesn’t make butter good for your health. I’m sure most people know this, but if they feel the need to broadcast so many programmes on the matter, then it means it really is an issue.

To be honest, Britain’s relationship with food still puzzles me. I come from a country that has made food a matter of pride and, to all intents and purposes, a philosophy of life. A religion. As we were discussing on New Year’s Eve, food must be second on the scale of Great Life Values for an Italian (please don’t ask me what the first is). It is one of life’s greatest joys and the social activity par exellence, as only pubs and drinks can be to the British. Us Italians eat, and eat a lot, we like it and we’re not free from obesity issues that plague most Western societies. Yet, I feel it’s a matter of quantity rather than quality which isn’t, at least as far as I can see, the case in this country. Having a climate that allows you to have an infinite range of fresh fruit and vegetables all year certainly makes things easier, but I didn’t even know things like ceasar dressing and bacon crisps existed before I came to England. The amount of sauces, processed food, butter and fizzy drinks this nation consumes is, to my Italian eyes, shocking. Which doesn’t mean I’ve been spared since I moved here, quite the opposite, hence my joining the fray in the diet resolution.

After too much self-indulgence of months of unemployment, being forced to eat out and in a hurry every day for over a month was the finishing stroke for me. It would have been so even if I had been in Italy, but eating out in England without becoming a whale in a week is virtually impossible. Let’s start with the easiest – sandwiches. Getting a normal sandwich in this country is impossible. My concept of sandwich is bread and something, not bread and everything. You will never, ever find a fucking sandwich that has ONLY bread and ham. Or if it has, be sure that it has mayonnaise in it. I will not mention things like chicken, bacon and eggs, and whatever else. Second, salads: salad, in my experience, had always been actual salad – say, iceberg lettuce/rocket/tomatoes/carrots/fennels/celery/sweetcorn if you wanted to be creative. Here ‘salad’ could be anything. A bowl of pasta with chicken, mustard, mayonnaise and herbs is called ‘salad’. The closest I’ve ever found to my concept of salad is M&S’s egg salad, with an egg, lettuce, cherry tomatoes and rocket. THANK GOD they have the decency to keep dressing in a separate plastic bag. And then again, my idea of dressing is olive oil and salt. End of. If I feel adventurous, white wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar. Whatever they give you when you ask for Italian dressing at restaurants, it is not, BY ALL MEANS, Italian. What else on the list, crisps. Crisps in Italy are what you eat at children’s birthday parties and unless things have changed drastically over the past 2 years, you will hardly see someone eating crisps on a bus, or buying massive multi-packs unless, as I said, there’s a big party coming up. More, biscuits. Ah, British biscuits, how much I love thee, but how is it possible that pretty much any single biscuit has an entire pack of butter in it? These are the examples I can think of at the moment, but what I’ve always felt as a huge difference between Italy and England (possible the only positive one) when going to the supermarket is the lack of simple food you can then cook as you like. Or, at least, looking at others’ baskets it isn’t what the majority of people buy.

As I said, I haven’t been left unaffected by such disastrous eating habits, which is why I put on far too much weight since I moved to England. And this is also why, after reaching possibly the bottom last month, I’ve decided it’s time to unearth my old diet, the one my nutritionist did for me in 2005, and follow it religiously until I lose at least 6kg. The point is, my idea of healthy food sometimes still clashes with English idea of healthy food, or healthy eating habits. Everyone in the office declares to be on a diet, and I see them either munching on carrots, eating yoghurts and fruits, abhorring pasta, potatoes and bread. It makes me scratch my head, because that, to me, is starving, not being on a diet. Back in 2005, I lost 22kg in 6 months, eating pasta, potatoes, bread, pizza, even cakes and biscuits, and that was even without physical activity. It took me 5 years to gain not even half of them back. I think food is one of the massive cultural differences between my own country and the one I’m living in I will never get used to it, and that will never stop leaving me puzzled.

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