Pill-pop nation

They're not sweeties

One of the big news stories last week featured reports of a study by Imperial College, London, showing that statins have almost no side-effects.

It came hot on the heels of a report from NICE – the National Institute for Health and Excellence, which among other things, provides guidelines on medical treatments in the UK – announcing that, in order to reduce death from heart disease further, the threshold for prescribing statins should be lowered from a 20% risk over 10 years to a 10% risk over the same time.

Now: a disclaimer. I am not now nor ever have been a scientist or medical expert. So what follows are merely the personal conclusions of someone who might be judged to fall within the latest category that NICE is talking of.

And after the disclaimer, a statement.

I have never had a cholesterol test (I haven’t been near a doctor in years) and, on the basis of what I have read, I do not believe that cholesterol is the big problem or that high cholesterol is the cause of the UK’s rates of heart disease – and I would not willingly take statins myself.

Cholesterol is a vital building block in the body. Evidence suggests it is actually dangerous to drive it down – especially after the age of 50.

Mind most doctors have big doubts about the latest NICE announcements. According to other research by Pulse, the GPs’ magazine, of 511 GPs polled on a variety of issues, 57% opposed the NICE proposal, and 55% would not take a statin or prescribe one for a family member based on the new NICE-proposed lower threshold.

What we seem to be seeing is what Dr Phil Hammond – GP and comedian (and do see him if you get the chance: he’s very good) – has described as the “medicalisation” of society.

Statins have made vast profits for Big Pharma over the years – due to patents and stuff running out, those have reduced of late, so the NICE advice must be, err, nice for these same corporates.

However, it’s worth noting that eight out of the 12 members of the NICE panel that recommended the change have declared ties to the manufacturers, including Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

On only a very slightly different note, a quick glance at thelist of the NHS website’s partners-in-public-health list – (hat tip to Zoë Harcombe o Zoë Harcombe) – gives an indicator of just how much the country’s health has become utterly tied in with corporate interests and, therefore, with the search for profits.

As I explained three years ago, the current government decided to involve more Big Food representatives in making public health policy – and one of the earliest examples of this sawgovernment health ‘advice’ effectively providing free advertising for branded, processed foods.

It’s not difficult to begin to see where problems lie – or where they can be seen or suspected.

Last week’s research from Imperial College was a meta-analysis: in other words, a meticulous survey of previous surveys – in this case, 29 different studies.

But while the meta-analysis itself had no corporate backers, who knows who backed all those other studies?

Not only do we know that research is often produced that has been financially supported by the industry, but it’s also known that Big Pharma is most secretive with trial data – it doesn’t like sharing it with anyone, even in the medical profession – and there are plenty of people around who will assert that the same companies skew trials to start with by using ‘pre-trial trials’ to weed out anyone who obviously shows signs of side effects.

So the ordinary GP has little chance themselves of knowing all the details of any drug – they have to rely on the companies who sell them, just as we have to rely on our doctors.

The thing with statins, though, is that there is no substantial evidence for the big claim that levels of cholesterol cause heart disease.

That myth came into being because of the American researcher, Ancel Keyes.

After WWII, heart disease among men in the US reached epidemic proportions.

Keyes thought he knew why – that a diet rich in saturated fat caused high cholesterol caused heart disease – and he set out to prove it.

After a small study in the US, using men only, he looked further abroad and eventually produced what has become known as the Seven Countries Study, which bore out his great theory.

The trouble is, Keyes didn’t study seven countries. He studied 22 – and ditched most of the findings because they did not tally with what he wanted to find.

This is not a natural product

It ignores the French ‘Paradox’ – only a paradox if you believe Keyes – that sees the French eat more dairy produce than anyone else on Earth, never mind all that foie gras and duck confit, and yet still have far lower rates of heart disease than exist in the UK or US where the low-fat mantra has been so willingly churned out and gobbled up.

Yet Keyes’s work became the foundation for the health and diet advice of the last 40 years: cut out fat and fill up with starchy carbs.

It’s almost certainly been a contributory factor in the rise of obesity, but on a positive note, it’s provided Big Food with wonderful opportunities for creating and marketing as healthy, artificial fats and fat substitutes.

We now have a position where the British Heart Foundation has links not just with the NHS – see that previous link – but also directly with Unilever, which produced Flora.

And Flora is now able to be marketed as ‘heart healthy’ – watch out for the link between the foundation and the product in advertising. Unilever is also on that list of NHS ‘partners’.

In recent months, an increasingly desperate-sounding British Heart Foundation has taken to making statements on health stories that have the ring of a siege mentality about them.

When Sweden become the first country in the West to ditch the low fat diet advice last October, the foundation was sticking its fingers in its ears and claiming that low fat was still best.

With each new piece of research that is slowly rehabilitating natural saturated fats, it does the same.

The cynic might speculate on how, were it to do otherwise, that relationship with Unilever could become strained.

An increasing number of doctors are voicing concerns about medicalisation, just as increasing numbers of doctors are also stepping away from the diet mantras of the last four decades.

We’re starting to see the issue of sugar being raised much more, in terms of the serious damage that high consumption can do.

And it’s worth noting that, in the case of sugar, much of it is hidden.

I was in M&S a few weeks ago, looking for a yogurt for breakfast. I couldn’t find one that didn’t have sugar in it – not least the ones that are sold on the basis that they are ‘low fat’; healthy, in other words.

This IS a natural product – and it will not harm you

And then there’s high-fructose corn syrup that manufacturers have taken to shoving into all manner of processed foods to make them more palatable and to make the consumer buy them again and again.

Again, this is not obviously sweet foods we’re talking about. High-fructose corn syrup is used in breads, cereals, breakfast bars, yogurts again and soups.

Who thinks of sugar in soup or in bread? Cereals have been sold to the public for decades as a healthy breakfast, and breakfast bars come into the same category.

This is what hidden sugars means.

As an increasing number of people raise the issue of these hidden sugars, and as an increasing number of comparisons are made between the attitude of Big Food and that of Big Tobacco, the industry is fighting back.

Those links with the likes of the NHS and the British Heart Foundation should make us skeptical of any defences of what has become the status quo on health and diet advice.

Just as those links between NICE members and Big Pharma, and between Big Pharma and disease, should make us equally skeptical.

What is needed is far greater transparency in all these cases – and far better regulation, properly enforced.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with profits. But when the search for profits trumps people, then it’s a sign that something is very wrong.

And what is also needed is an honest and thorough approach to dealing with the problems caused by a national approach to food that includes using takeaways and ping food to the extent that the UK does, not taking time to eat properly, constant snacking, the demise of cooking skills, a prevailing attitude of food as fuel, vast amounts of media space given over to faddy diets, new homes built without proper kitchens etc etc – and not just a rather lame sense of correcting it all my medicalising the populace.

That won’t be as easy as sticking fingers in ears and endlessly intoning the low-fat mantra, irrespective of the body of evidence against it, but it would be a damned sight more effective than the equivalent of the three little pigs inviting the wolf to join them for dinner.

Further reading:

The Great Cholesterol Con by Dr Malcolm Kendrick

Although now dead the Cholesterolosaurus will march on by Dr Malcolm Kenderick

Bad Pharma by Dr Ben Goldacre

Bad Food Britain by Joanna Blythman

Worth following on Twitter:

@KailashChandOBE

@JoannaBlythman

@bengoldacre

@DrAseemMalhotra

@zoeharcombe

@drbriffa

The above-mentioned may not agree with all I have written here, but are all very much worth reading and following on the matter raised in this post.

Marketing at its brightest – the low-fat version

If you ever wanted a single reminder of why, with all its faults, the BBC is still a national treasure, it might well be adverts.

Since, like most other people, I do actually view things on commercial channels, I end up seeing adverts. And while some adverts may be amusing and others merely tedious, some are downright annoying or even nauseating.

Take Flora Cuisine, a relatively new product from Unilever, which is apparently perfect for “frying, sautéing & making sauces”, as well as baking and roasting and probably just about anything else.

It has “45% less saturated fat than olive oil”, proclaims the producer in advertising materials.

Well wow. Perhaps if saturated fat was actually a problem, that might be worth noting. But it isn’t.

And olive is actively good for you (like other natural fats). And, of course, it's actually natural.

It’s equally no coincidence that, on it’s own bragging brand page about Flora Cuisine, the manufacturer includes nutritional data – but not the details of what actually goes into the product.

The most is says is that: “Flora Cuisine is a healthy cooking liquid that’s made from a blend of linseed, rapeseed and sunflower oils.”

But that’s not all it contains, is it, Unilever? Let’s look what else is in that curvaceous plastic bottle, courtesy of ocado.com.

“Vegetable Oils (Sunflower Seed Oil, Rapeseed Oil, Linseed Oil), Water, Salt (0.9%), Emulsifiers (Soy Bean Lecithin, Polysorbate 60), Soy Protein, Stabilisers (Guar and Xanthan Gums), Colour (Beta-Carotene), Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Citric Acid, Flavourings, Vitamins (A, D).”

Now, for the sake of being at least a little bit scrupulous in approach, let’s examine the ingredients in a bottle of olive oil.

“Olive oil.”

But,  claims Unilever of Flora Cuisine, “it really is the healthier approach to everyday cooking." Well, Unilever, some would disagree.

It’s at this point that I’m going to ask your forgiveness in advance. Because here is a link to an article from yesterday’s Daily Mail – but it is very much worth a read.

It quotes a doctor – Dr Aseem Malhotra, the lead cardiologist of the National Obesity Forum, no less – on the small matter of saturated fat and health, and artificial fat substitutes.

Most of what he’s saying has been acknowledged by some people for some time, but it’s good to finally see the message finally drifting through into more mainstream media.

People like Dr Aseem Malhotra, together with Dr John Briffa – and many others – would be among those disagreeing with Unilever’s health claims.

According to Dr Malhotra, “the whole saturated fat argument has been ridiculously overhyped.”

He quotes a 2010 review of studies, which “revealed no consistent evidence linking saturated fat and cardiovascular disease.”

Further, he told the Mail: “Really strong data is increasingly showing that the saturated fat from natural dairy products may even be beneficial in reducing heart attacks.”

And he continued: “Other research, by Dr Dariush Mozaffarian from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, found that people with higher levels of the trans-palmitoleic fatty acid (found mainly in dairy products) in their blood were about 60% less likely to develop type 2 diabetes over the next 20 years than those with the lowest levels.”

‘Dairy produce’, you say, doctor? Is that the ‘French Paradox’ we can see coming into view?

Because according to the great saturated fat con, the French should have the highest rates of heart disease in the world, because they’re the biggest consumers of dairy produce in the world and, in the south west of the country, they also produce (and consume) such glories as duck confit and foie gras, which are seriously high-fat foods.

But no, they’re not dying from heart disease more than people in the UK. In fact, the figures are lower.

Anyway, if you think that Flora Cuisine – its very name attempting to imbue it with some class – is bad, then let’s have a look at another of Unilever’s current portfolio; Stork Baking Liquid.

Now, I have grumped about the former since I first saw it advertised. I hadn’t seen the latter until the weekend. Never mind grumping about it, I wondered if I was going to vomit.

Let’s have a look at the ingredients here (again taken from ocado.com).

“Seed Oils (Sunflower Oil, Rapeseed Oil), Water, Salt (0.9%), Emulsifiers (Soya Bean Lecithin, Polysorbate 60), Soy Protein, Stabilisers (Guar Gum, Xanthan Gum), Colour (Beta-Carotene), Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Citric Acid, Flavourings, Vitamins (A&D).”

So, did you spot it too?

The only difference between this product and the Flora Cuisine is in the type of oils used – seed oils as opposed to vegetable oils. Everything else is identical. Mind, the size of the bottle and even the shape of the bottles are too. So perhaps there’s little to be surprised about.

Not that the price is the same.

According to ocado.com, the Flora Cuisine is usually £1.98 for a 500ml bottle or 20p per 100ml. It’s currently on offer at 99p for a bottle.

That compares with £1.59 for a 500ml bottle of the Stork Baking Liquid (32p per 100ml).

So when not being sold under a special offer, the Flora Cuisine will be the more expensive of the two products – now why would that be?

Is that because it’s being marketed as a more 'sophisticated' product?

After all, the marketing is based on health, uses a word like ‘cuisine’ and, in making the claims about saturated fat the way that it does, links itself to olive oil and presumably is intended to appeal to those who would at least consider using olive oil.

Further, via the Flora brand website, we can see that “Michelin starred chef Jean Christophe Novelli has created some tasty recipes for you to try.”

Actually, when you click a link or two, it’s clear they’re not actually his creations, but simply ones that he’s picked that were sent in by members of the public and are now in a cookbook.

The marketing approach to the Stork Baking Liquid is different. On the Stork website, there’s a sense of the retro; much more of home baking – all of which ties in neatly with the current trend for at least claiming that ‘baking is back’, plus retro design.

But since we’re being very even-handed about this, let’s check the ingredients in the best possible fat for baking – butter.

“Butter”.

Come on now: hands up who really wants to eat a cake that’s been baked using a liquid fat?

One simply finds oneself wondering whether, like that icon of artificial US fats, Crisco, these two also double as an effective lubricant for anal sex.

Convenience food – voluptuously

It’s Friday, it’s well gone 4.55pm (but it’s not Crackerjack) and the Voluptuous Manifesto is bloody knackered.

What happens then? I want to eat well – but I am seriously not feeling in the mood to spend an hour or more in the kitchen. Is there a solution?

Well yes – there is. And amazing as it may sound to readers of this blog, it comes in the shape of three cans and a jar.

I had thought about pottering off for fresh fodder, but by the time my shift was done, I was glazed of eye and dull of mind, and all I wanted to do was get home and slump.

We all feel like that on occasions. The question is, can you make a good meal – and I do mean a seriously, volutuously good one – from the store cupboard?

Well, it does rather depend on the cupboard, but here goes.

Set the oven to approximately 155˚C (fan).

From a jar, decant some sauerkraut into a pan, just cover it with water, and simmer for a good 20 minutes or so. If you want, add a clove or two, the odd peppercorn, a few juniper berries and a bay leaf.

Open a tin of duck confit. Lift up the legs gently and let most of the duck fat drip slowly off. Do not throw any of this fabulous stuff away: remember, this is the fat of the ‘French Paradox’.

Pop the duck legs in a dish and from there into the oven for around 15 minutes.

One of the things with this dish is that it is not going to spoil – you’re not easily going to ‘overcook’ it.

Go and have a sit down. Have a cup of tea or a glass of wine.

Then rinse and drain a tin of cannellini beans and a small tine of new potatoes.

Dry the potatoes gently with kitchen paper.

Then pop the potatoes, the sauerkraut and the beans either into the same roasting dish as the duck – or in another one that has had a little of the duck fat melting in it.

Give it 10 to 15 minutes and … voila!

There you are. That’s the easiest gourmet dinner you’ll cook.

The thing is, convenience food is not cheap. But on occasion, it can be perfectly good.

The tinned confit ingredients were simply duck, duck fat and salt. Exactly as it should be.

For the sauerkraut, just white cabbage and salt – again, exactly as it right.

Both are traditional preserved foods: sauerkraut, incidentally, is not pickled, but fermented – and in parts of Germany and eastern Europe, they swear by the liquid as a health drink.

I find myself drifting back to the post the other day about the noble porker: we have forgotten, it seems to me, about preserved foods – other than jams and chutneys.

And it's worth noting that such traditional foods as the confit and the sauerkraut do not come with instructions on the tin or jar: these are foods that it is assumed the cook will know how to use.

The potatoes and the beans may be a slight cheat, but in terms of what I used, the waters came in water only, with no added salt. The only thing, apart from beans and water in the cannellini, was salt, and you can easily rinse them.

If this seems to be a strange combination of national foods – a cross between France, Germany and Italy – well it’s not really. In a cassoulet, beans are as essential an ingredient as the duck legs, while choucroute garni, a traditional dish from the Alsace region, incorporates sauerkraut and assorted meats.

Sauerkraut is also to be found in the cuisine of northern Italy – it’s not just a specifically German speciality.

I would recommend that you get hold of German sauerkraut – Polish is available, but it is, generally speaking, rather rougher.

This is a dish that sates superbly. You could quite easily remove the potatoes altogether. One of the big things here is the mouth feel.

That may sound like a phrase that foodie snobs use – and it is – but it has an everyday meaning and significance.

How food feels in your mouth – how the very experience of eating feels – is one of the factors that influences how sated you feel.

And this is a dream.

Go on – seriously. Take your time and think about how it feels when you bite down, when you move it around in mouth. Relish it.

The mouth feel is a major reason why I like cooking tinned cannelloni in good fat – they become wonderfully unctuous.

Okay, it might not be something to do quite every day, but it is real, real food – and it is as easy as anything.

And by god, as the nights draw in, the leaves fall to the ground and the temperature plummets, it is like being snuggled in a gloriously soft cardi, and hugged by warm and adoring cats.

In a dish.

Now what on Earth more could you want than that?

Fromage sur le pain grillé

It had been a cloudy morning; cool and with occasional rather half-hearted attempts at rain. So we had stayed put on our little terrace, coffee and tobacco at hand, reading.

Not that we were the only ones. A group of Young People in a nearby house also stayed in. They sounded female and, between fits of giggling, were attempting, somewhat flatly, to sing a range of classics, such as Let I Be accompanied by a guitar that was attempting to outdo them for flatness.

All of which may - or may not - have had something to do with the two plant pots that are living on a low roof at their abode.

They eventually went quiet, presumably having got the munchies and gone in search of Mars bars.

I was reading Jeffrey Steingarten's The Man Who Ate Everything, a collection of this lawyer-turned-food-writer's columns, which had been recommended to me over a business lunch a couple of months ago.

The initial thing to bear in mind with Steingarten is that he is American, that his readers are American and that the target of his dry and withering comments are primarily and frequently the faddiness and hysteria of the US food world in particular.

That morning, I had been particularly reading a section of pieces about dieting and the hysterical fear of all fats.

Steingarten appears to have been one of the first people to use the phrase, the 'French paradox', and is consistent in pointing out the appallingly bad and often entirely misinformed advice not just of quack nutritionists, but the US government's own health bodies.

One of his techniques is to write as though genuinely excited by, for instance, the news that a company has produced a new fat - Olestra - that will replace all real fats and leave no impact on the body, not being absorbed, but passing right through.

He describes one low-fat cookery book that, even by the general low standard of such things seemed utterly dismal. Butter Busters was a best seller, but seemed almost entirely constructed of recipes made of the most hideous-sounding artificial, processed foodstuffs that you could imagine.

One assumes that the individual who wrote such trash wasn't intelligent enough to comprehend the links between processed foods and ill health, plus obesity. But then she clearly didn't know - or care - that her ideas of cutting out all fats was downright unhealthy in itself.

Still, where there's money to be made - and the diet industry Is a huge money spinner ...

If one were really cynical, one could imagine that the bosses of the processed/junk/snack food industries and the diet industries sit down to a celebratory feast together every year (with proper food, of course) and toasting their mutual aid in boosting each others already massive profits, as the poor plebs continue on the treadmill of weight worry, diet, weight gain, weight worry, diet, weight gain etc.

Perhaps they're even joined by luminaries from the fitness industries, who presumably find a place like France to be a disaster, since it has never adopted the gym culture with the same frantic, fearful passion as have the US and UK.

Steingarten is very funny, in an extremely dry way and about important issues (the are also plenty of other pieces simply about the joys of food). I had been laughing out load and quoting at The Other Half, who had been very tolerant of this.

But by the time it was around 1.15pm, I was in need not simply of food myself, but specifically, of something that would have offended the so-called 'health' gurus.

Since we had not planned to spend such time at the house, there were limited foodstuffs around. and by now, it was French lunch time, so the local shop would not be open.

There was plenty of food around, but it wasn't what I craved.

The solution, when it presented itself, seemed obvious.

I took two slabs of the day before's leftover campagne gris and popped them on a foil-lined roasting tin under a hot grill. While they toasted, I cut slices from a huge hunk of fantastically mature Cantal that I'd bought the previous day from Caroline at the market.

Mustard ... mustard: there had to be mustard somewhere. A small pot of the grainy stuff was hiding in the fridge.

Underneath the cheese or on top?

I opted for neither, but put layers of the cheese on the toast and popped it back under the grill, deciding that I'd have mustard on the side, which was a good idea, since it turned out to be rather dry.

The Cantal bubbled beautifully and just caught a hint of golden brown before I slid the pieces onto a plate for rapid consumption.

Take that, you joyless, puritanical diet fundamentalists! And if this is anything like our previous sojourns in France, both The Other Half and I will have lost weight by the time we return home. A paradox indeed!

A beautiful city for carnivores and gourmands

It's probably true to say that France is not a paradise for vegetarians. Okay, if you're around the coastal regions, you'll be alright if you fall into the pescetarian category and, if you're on the Mediterranean, there'll be olives and tomatoes to die for, but in many places, even if you ask for a mushroom omelette, then this being France, it could well arrive with a 'garnish' of lardons.

But if a carnivorousness is true of the country in general, then it is even more so in the south west. This is, after all, the home of the Perigord, where the very best foie gras hails from.

And the area as a whole is, more than any other, at the very heart of the French paradox.

A mere one and a half days in Bordeaux was entirely enough to reinforce this sense of a meat-eating culture. Steak and duck don't simply form clichéd menus for the tourists, but they're at the centre of the restaurants where the locals eat too.

Take Entrecôte. It's 40 years old and serves the same three-course menu that it has in all that time. There is no choice. What you get is a walnut salad, followed by steak and frites and then profiteroles, with wine.

There are no reservations and people queue to eat there - which goes some way to explaining how they manage to serve 900 covers a day.

We didn't join them - the queues always seemed too long when we were nearby and in need of food.

But that this is one if the foodie heartlands of the country was emphasised by our host's first questions when we arrived at the 18th century townhouse where we had booked to stay in one if the two guest rooms that help to pay for it's upkeep.

First question: 'what time would you like breakfast tomorrow?'

Second question: 'where were you thinking of eating while you're here?'

Our host recommended Entrecôte, because of it's reputation and because it's open on a Sunday, when one's dining opportunities are a little more limited.

However, after an amble around the city centre on Saturday evening - already feeling relaxed even after such a long journey - we found ourselves a brasserie called Grenadine, on a side street of the tourist trail and sat down at a small table outside for some much-needed dinner.

A house cocktail was followed by a 2009 La Croix Saint-Roc Lussac Saint-Emilion; a pleasingly smooth red, which in both our cases provided sound liquid accompaniment to magret de canard, The Other Half's stuffed with mushrooms and mine with pâté foie gras, with ice cream for dessert.

And that was Saturday, a long day that saw us dead to the world the moment our heads hit plump pillows in our antique bed. I wouldn't claim it was the sleep of the righteous, but it was certainly the sleep of the satisfied.

Sunday was punctuated by showers of varied lengths and intensity. But after a fortifying breakfast in a gallery with chandeliers, our host suggested we stroll down to the riverside and visit the weekly farmers' market, where he went to buy most of his fruit and veg.

With such an eminently sensible suggestion, there really was only one thing to do.

Bordeaux is a delightful city to stroll around; sandstone grandeur in everything from civic buildings to tall rows of town houses. You walk around a corner and find a new delight - but not just a solitary building, the whole of a small square that makes you feel you've stepped back in time a century plus.

France's third city, it has a long history as an important Atlantic port. In the 17th century, the river front was transformed to reflect that power and importance, a point that is still architecturally evident today, not least in the magnificent arc of the Bourse that takes centre stage.

But by way of contrasts, there are soaring gothic spires, with their miraculous stone work, and Sir Richard Rogers's radical court building, with its wooden funnel court rooms held in metal frames, which echo aspects of his Welsh Assembly building in Cardiff.

We found the market eventually, after originally wandering the wrong way along the river front. Not that it was a problem.

The market itself was, as markets on the Continent always are, a real pleasure, with fabulous fruit and vegetables, plus some wonderful cheeses and a surfeit of oysters, which are a local speciality.

After a stop for coffee, it was back toward the centre with the idea of lunch beginning to prey on our minds.

We stopped in a restaurant-crowded square at a modern brasserie called Chez Jean, which had a menu that pepped up the standard fare with a few creative ideas.

Feeling a need for something a little less meaty, I ordered a 'salade sexy', which was a large heap of leaves, with sheep's cheese, little roasted red peppers, some dried ham and a light balsamic ceasing, with shot glass-sized pots of a chilled vegetable soup (like a gazpacho without the garlic) and a black cherry jam on the side.

It was indeed 'sexy' - great combinations of flavour, using very good ingredients.

We had a demi of Chateau La Madronière haut medoc 2008. Very pleasant that was too, with a taste of raspberries and a decent length.

After more wandering, and a visit to a museum of decorative arts, which was housed in another town house built by the architect who had designed the one that we were staying in, we headed back to base. My feet were on the point of murdering me: the shabby weather forecast had led me to pack the only walked-in pair of boots that I currently own, and they were not designed for such perambulations.

A good soak was followed by the judicious application of plasters, before we headed back out for dinner.

Again after ample wandering, we found ourselves at a place called Brasserie L'Orleans, which catered for a mixed clientele of both locals and visitors.

It was a simple menu - utterly dominated by meat and, in particular, steak. I decided to try the veal liver ancien - in other words, with a garlic and parsley butter. On the side were a few mange touts and a tomato, with three quenelles of puréed potato. It's rare that you'd mention salt in such a situation, but there was a tub from the Camargue on the table and it was glorious with the potato, course and bursting with flavour.

As for the veal liver ... well, what can I say? An absolutely superb piece of meat, superbly cooked. Light as a feather and moist, with a magnificent flavour that was wonderfully complimented by the garlic and parsley butter.

We'd decided to try a white Bordeaux, and I eventually picked a 2009 grand cru classé de graves Chateau Carbonnieux from nearby Pessac-Léognan. Not dirt cheap, but it had real flavour (nettles and herbs, we eventually decided) and revealed that most whites we've had in the past have been fairly generic - well, certainly since an excellent Dr Loosen Riesling in Berlin two years ago.

It was a short stay in the city, but Bordeaux impressed us both. The writer Stendhal described it as "the most beautiful town in France", and who am I to quibble?

But setting aside even the beauty of the place, one thing is for certain: it's a meat eater's paradise on Earth.

Lunch just got a lot better

It’s become a regular occurrence to find myself complaining about the state of lunches on a work day.

It wasn’t so much the case that there was no variety available as the quality – and cost. Pret a Manger might have been decent (apart from an obsession with rocket), but it was costly.

The in-house ‘deli bar’ was poor and my own occasional efforts were variable, revealing a distinct lack of creativity on the packed lunch front.

Two things may have changed all that.

One of those has been the move to the new offices, with the company running the catering facilities determined that it should be their flagship contract.

Breakfast is considerably better. Lunch is better too – they have a proper kitchen now to start with.

But the other factor was the arrival of a slender tome from my friend George, which was in direct response to the most recent complaints in these columns.

The book in question is The Packed Lunch, a collection of recipes from Australian Women’s Weekly.

It’s a bit of a revelation – not just because there are some good recipes in there, but also because it offers some very good general tips.

For instance, in many cases, it’s best not to dress a salad the night before: carry the dressing to work in a different container and only decant it when you’re about to eat.

Now why hadn’t I thought of that before? It’s obvious when I consider a few of my previous attempts to prepare something for myself and have made exactly that mistake. You can end up with leaves, for instance, that are simply a mess and utterly unappetising after sitting for hours in a dressing.

As it happened, the first recipe that I tried could be dressed as soon as it was ready to go in the box.

Simply cook some lentils gently in a little water, then drain and cool. The recipe called for this to be added to “canned” beetroot. Now I assume that this is an Australian thing, because I’ve never seen such over here, but unlike the reviewer on Amazon, I didn’t get all negative, but simply halved some baby pickled beets (which I love) instead, and then dressed, as per instructions, with a little Balsamico.

When I sat down to eat, I added some soft cheese that’d I’d diced and then packed into a separate, small container. And very nice it was too, without requiring any great effort.

The following day, I took in two quarters of a frittata that I’d made with a wide array of ingredients – the idea of the frittata came from the book (I wouldn't have thought of it as a packed lunch item), the ingredients from the combination of my imagination, fridge and cupboard.

Again, a success – and the remainder kept well enough to be enjoyed for the following day.

On day four (the last at work before the Easter break), I ate in the deli. Much better than I had expected.

But on Monday evening, the eve of our first day back after the break, I’d sliced red onion, roasted red pepper and celery. And this time, I took the dressing to the office in a little jar, together with another little pot of diced goat’s cheese.

The salad was another of mine ideas, based on what I had in. The dressing was straight from the book: a teaspoon of tomato pesto, a teaspoon of white wine vinegar and two teaspoons of olive oil, shaken but not stirred.

And again, this was very good. The salad kept well and still had loads of crunch; the cheese hadn’t been discoloured by sitting with everything else overnight and the dressing was a success.

Today, it was another frittata – softened onion and three different cheeses this time.

But something else is making a difference too.

In the past, I’d invariably sit at my desk, working while eating breakfast and lunch. Cloud Nine was great as a bar, for drinking and socialising, but it wasn’t somewhere that I ever wanted to sit down in to eat.

The new canteen, with tables and chairs extending into the atrium, is a pleasure to spend time in.

So I’ve been taking my food down there to eat. It’s an enormous lifestyle change – and a very positive one.

I’m currently trying to do some research on ‘the French paradox’ – the question of why the French can consume such amounts of fatty foods (including such delights as cheese and butter and paté and foie gras) without the heart disease that would be considered over here as an inevitable consequence of such a diet. The French also do not have the same levels of obesity – in spite of their incredibly rich diet, that's high in fat and so many of the things that we have demonised.

One of the things that I’m already coming across repeatedly is that the French don’t sit in front of the TV for dinner or at their office desk for lunch.

They pay attention to their food and take their time to eat it – it helps, of course, that it's usually worth paying attention to.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have even shown that French people in a McDonalds take longer over a meal there than Americans in the same restaurant.

Now clearly this is not the sum total of what causes ‘the French paradox’, but it is quite revealing.

At present, sitting down properly to eat my lunch in pleasant surroundings instead of at a desk, I don’t rush – and yes, I have actually been appreciating what I’m eating. Sometimes there’s even company and conversation.

Even setting aside the question of whether it’s good for my health, it’s so much more pleasant.

And a big thank you to George for the book.


• The French paradox (2004 article).