The world's my oyster

Oysters: top –rock; bottom – native.

There are times that we seem to be so scared of random dangers that we allow ourselves – or others – not to experience life fully.

Risk can be rewarding.

But we live in a society where companies tell us that we need to buy antibacterial agents to clean every surface – and then other antibacterial agents to clean our hands, and then still more antibacterial products to clean the surfaces that we touched while reaching to wash our hands with those other antibacterial products.

And different companies (or possibly the same ones) also tell us to buy yogurt drinks to put bacteria back into our bodies.

Presumably, they don’t all waste money on developing, producing and then marketing these products – there is a market for them.

So it’s the old chicken and egg question as to which came first: the fear – or the products that milk that fear.

Not that fear is restricted to what we buy in the shops: it’s also part of what people talk about when they condemn the ’elf ‘n’ safety culture.

Health and safety itself isn’t a problem – people dying or becoming ill because of their work, for instance, is something that any sane person would want to avoid.

The problem, however, is in the culture that uses health and safety as an excuse for not doing something – whether because the person or organisation/company concerned can’t be arsed, or because of a fear of litigation.

And of course fear can also be perfectly healthy and sane – if it’s a block on our doing something genuinely dangerous.

But there is a sense in today’s UK that we seem to be afraid of our own shadows sometimes – in spite of reality. Whether we like the idea of empire or not, Britain punched massively above its weight in creating one – and it didn’t do it on the basis of fear.

Yet today, people are so scared of child abuse, for instance, that they cocoon their children – despite ‘stranger danger’ being so, so, so much less rare than abuse in the home or by trusted, known individuals, they ‘prefer’ to be educated by sensationalist headlines than by facts.

Or there’s the fear-related behaviour mentioned at the top of this piece, whereby people buy those products (presumably) because they don’t understand that natural ones are better or that there is a strengthening of antibiotic resistance that may be at least partly caused by the rise in use of antibacterials in everything from liquid soaps to chopping boards.

On the latter, in Bad Food Britain, Joanna Blythman cites a 1994 study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which showed that bacteria spreads more quickly on plastic chopping boards than on wood.

There’s a reason that beech is the idea wood for a chopping board – it has natural ‘antibacterial’ properties.

Yet even some councils still try to insist that food outlets use plastic chopping boards instead of wooden ones.

But many of us are affected by some form of fear – and I’m far from being an exception to that.

Back in the dim and distant past, I could eat mussels. I quite liked them too, even though this was my pre-foodie days.

However, after two successive incidents, where I was violently ill after eating them, I was rather put off.

Yet later, when I’d become really interested in and in love with real food, I found myself regretting that I had never tasted oysters – and never would.

That thought nagged away for years. I discussed it with Vikki, my Broadway Market fishmonger, who suggested that oysters in general are cleaner than mussels, and that farmed ones would be pretty safe.

This point was mulled.

A month or two ago, I realised that a supplement I’m taking has a warning about not being suitable for anyone with a shellfish allergy – but I can take it with no problem.

So in August, in Collioure, I decided to test this out: I planned to eat one – or more – at a lunchtime. The time was important, so that if I was going to be sick, it would not happen suddenly, when I was in bed in the middle of the night.

But that plan never came to fruition.

Then, with my birthday hoving into view – and it’s a big one – I settled on Corrigan’s of Mayfair for the celebratory dinner. Looking at the menu, The Other Half commented that there was a certain emphasis on oysters.

Okay, not as much as Richard Corrigan’s Bentley’s, which is famous for them; but yes, I had noticed it.

While in one sense having a first taste of something so decadent as an oyster on my half century would have been quite a wonderful way to mark it, I didn’t want to risk having the runs in the middle of the night of my birthday.

There were options. There’s a stall that does them on Broadway Market these days. There’s also a small, independent coffee chop/café just off Columbia Road that does them too on a Sunday morning on a rickety wooden table.

And yesterday, when we pottered down there to go Christmas decoration hunting, I resolved to hunt a new taste experience too.

The very first ever taste.

In the event, I had two. One was a native – rounder and flatter shell – with just a squeeze of fresh lemon. The second was a rock oyster – more of a tear shape, and with the characteristic craggy shell – served with a hint of shallot vinaigrette.

It seems that some people don’t take to them instantly – like tobacco or alcohol, it takes time. I loved them straight away.

My god: they were wonderful. A clear, crisp, fresh taste of the sea.

I wanted more but decided not to risk it.

Yet was that going to be my one and only taste of them?

The afternoon ticked by. I was acutely conscious of every single tiny rumble or comment from my gut.

Please, please be okay.

It was.

I can eat oysters again – and perhaps other shellfish too.

Funnily enough, I mentioned it to a group of colleagues today: the one who I’d discussed it with before – a fellow foodie – was delighted for me, but still (a tad ironically) described it as “shellfish roulette”.

Others almost shivered and expressed the view that what I’d done was far too much of a risk.

See what I mean about fear running your life?

But this isn’t the end of this story.

Way back when I was living on my own in the north west of England, in my twenties, I went for close on a decade without going on holiday.

After moving south for work, and lodging for 18 months with my parents – who were then in Reading, from where I commuted daily to London to sell books to office workers – they dragged me away for a frankly rather strained fortnight in Torquay.

Why no holidays?

Well, I’ve always said that it was the lack of money. And to a large extent, that’s very true. I was (mostly) working, but I was always on very low pay.

But I was also frightened.

From travel agents I got brochures – for skiing trips and for summers in Ibiza. I took them home and spent hours looking at them. They seemed to be filled with young people – just like me – having a good time.

But I was scared. Oh, I was shy and really rather gauche when it came to dealing with my own peers. Very serious, I never knew how to party.

And so I never went any further than gazing longingly at the glossy pages: and then setting them quietly to one side and tying to forget them; only to repeat the exercise with each new season.

A decade ago, I finally went through an adolescence. Better late than never. The cutting free: the fledging – god alone knows how The Other Half put up with it.

Hanging over me ever since, though, has been this fear and this memory of avoiding adventure, of avoiding travel. And I’ve wanted to correct it for a long time.

Next year, I am going to exactly that.

It might not be exotic (whatever that means), but I will travel, outside the UK, on my own.

There are already some plans in place. I’m exhilarated – but nervous at the same time.

But I will do it.

We have one life – and we really shouldn’t waste any of the opportunities that we have. And if we grasp the nettle of our fear later in that life rather than early, then that has to be better than never at all.

Risk can be rewarding.

Yes?

Watch this space.

Cucumbers in a pickle

I must be getting old, because the last couple of years have seen me mumbling, with increasing frequency, the words: ‘common’ and ‘sense’ in that order – usually in connection with questions about where it is hiding and accompanied by dramatic rolling of the eyes. Hurrumph.

In case you've missed it, there’s a new and very nasty strain of E coli on the loose in Europe – a development that was met with a crassly hurried announcement that organic Spanish cucumbers were the culprit.

Now while organic cucumbers are not up in arms, Spanish farmers are – and, stiill struggling with the economic woes caused by a recession caused by gambling bankers - they're now rather peeved with Germany, which is at the heart of the outbreak and made that panicked claim. Thus they're also threatening to sue Germany for damages.

Of course such a story never does much for good old common sense, but it gives the media a nice scare story to get excited about. Anyone else remember ebola?

Let’s be clear: it’s a nasty, nasty bug or virus or whatever – I don’t know the technical stuff. I don’t know much about maths either, but German has a population of ticking on for 82 million.

In 2009, the UN calculated the population of Europe as as a whole at 852.4m. In 2008, the combined population of the EU countries was around 499m.

According to a report from the BBC yesterday, there are 11 UK cases. By the end of last week, there had been at least 18 deaths and over 1,800 infections in Germany, Sweden and other countries.

In other words, however nasty it is, this is not an epidemic. Or a pandemic. Or any other kind of demic.

Yet even the Guardian, of which I foolishly expect better, came up with the question: ‘Is it safe to eat salad?’. And one Stephen Vaughan pandered to fears by suggesting (presumably in total seriousness) that: “the most sensible way to wash vegetables at home is to use Milton Sterilising Fluid.”

Processed food sounds ever more convenient when you consider his next comments: “You need to use a double sink method – one bowl with Milton diluted in water (as per the instructions), then put your fruit and vegetables in there for 20 minutes. Fill the other sink with tap water to wash off the chlorine. It leaves no taste and kills the bacteria.”

Or presumably, since the Guardian kindly provided a link, you could go on a food hygiene course that Mr Vaughan runs.

Now don’t get me wrong: food hygiene is extremely important. But since we don’t even know where or how this E coli outbreak began, it seems at least a tad hysterical telling the public to take greater precautions than basic, sensible ones.

But the same article does have some interesting things in it. It notes that in 2007, “an outbreak of salmonella in the UK was traced to imported basil, while an E coli outbreak in the US in 2006 was caused by pre-packed spinach. And in 2008, 145 people in the US were made ill by eating tomatoes infected with a rare strain of salmonella.”

A link, perhaps, in that the products seem to have been mass produced? These outbreaks were clearly not the result of produce grown in your own garden.

And it continues: “In her book Not on the Label, Guardian journalist Felicity Lawrence says that between 1992 and 2000, when bagged salads took off, nearly 6% of food-poisoning outbreaks were associated with prepared vegetables and salads. In 1996 a study of retail samples of bagged salad found 13% contained E coli.”

Not that is a bit of a surprise. How convenient does that bag of prepared carrot batons seem now? I’m not personally immune to the allure of bagged salad leaves – particularly for lamb’s lettuce. But once we get the garden sorted out in the coming months, it’s one of a number of things I’m going to try growing in a pot.

Gad Frankel, who is a professor of molecular pathogenesis at Imperial College London, is far more sensible in tone than Mr Vaughan. He’s quoted as saying: “I don’t think salads are particularly dangerous. The rate of infection is very low, so when it happens it really makes the news because it’s so rare.”

And the article adds that he suggests that “any increase in incidents … may be due to the fact we now eat more salad as we seek to make our diets healthier.”

So I’m not the only one who thinks the response is a bit OTT. Phew!

But as mentioned at the start of this piece, the hysteria has already had a negative impact on Spanish farmers specifically and European farmers as a whole – not least as Russia closes its doors to all vegetable produce from the EU (although you can’t help but feeling that Putin and Co will enjoy doing that anyway as a bit of snook cocking in a westerly direction).

In the UK, there seem to be vague reports from supermarkets that sales of fresh salad ingredients have slipped a little.

Not that we should be surprised. It’s the same kind of panic that has seen the rise of antibacterial cleaners for the home, from ones to use on work surfaces to ones to wash your hands with.

And when sales of those had peaked, someone had the neat idea of selling dispensers for antibacterial soap that you didn’t have to touch, thus obviating the risk of picking up more nasties.

Even though we know that the over-use of antibiotics can reduce their efficacy, we lap up products that could contribute to exactly that. Common sense has been replaced by fear. Producers can make money out of that fear.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one for conspiracy theories – Occam and his razor every time for me – but I cannot help but imagine that producers of processed foods (those with ‘added value’) will be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of terrified consumers turning away from fresh fruit and veg and toward processed foods that could be seen to offer more safety.

If there’s a military-industrial complex, as Eisenhower asserted, then how about an agri-industrial complex? The former thrives on war and insecurity and fear. And the second …? Presumably, sales of sterilising fluid will increase, alongside those 'added value' foods.

And I do understand that governments have to act to reassure and/or warn the public. Or at least be seen to do so.

Unfortunately, rapid declarations of the origin of health problems can cause their own problems. In 1989, Stilton cheese was at the centre of a health scare. Supermarkets and customers stopped buying. Government helped persuade producers they would have to pasturise the milk in future if they were to continue producing.

The cheesemakers coughed up for the new machinery. And when Stilton won Protected Designated Origin (PDO) status in 1996, it was legally enshrined as a cheese made from pasturised milk.

But the link with the health scare was never proved. But pasturisation changes the flavour of a cheese. Fortunately, Joe Schneider started making Stichelton with raw milk – and those in the know say it's much more like the 'original' Stilton.

So there are consequences to rapid claims of blame when health scares come around – as European farmers are finding now.

So in other words, where possible, avoid snap conclusions and statements. Let scientists do their work and, when reassuring the public, let them know that the experts are on the case, that it's not an epidemic and that they should continue to take normal hygiene measures with their food.

And then hope you've got a grown-up enough media to act sensibly too.

There is something else too. I have a sense of nostalgia for a past that I personally have never experienced, but one where you could pick a carrot from the ground, rub it with your hands and eat it, there and then. For a world where nobody would stop you scrumping apples because you hadn't washed the fruit after picking it off the tree.

Amid the relative dearth of food memories from my childhood, one stands out: drinking milk that had just come straight from the milking shed. Warm and thick with cream; almost yellow in colour.

I remember it because it was special – because it was unlike any other milk I had tasted before or have tasted since.

How many people would be terrified now of doing that themselves or of letting their children do it?

Chicken and egg: which came first? Such fears or an attitude that sees food only as fuel? I suspect they nurture each other.

But enough of all this: cucumber sandwiches – with or without the crusts?