The best food advice is simple – make it yourself

Authentic carbonara. Honest

In a surprise move today, Mars Food announced that it was going to add new labels to its foods to indicate what should only be eaten once a week and what could be eaten on a daily basis.

This is largely a response to the government’s recently-unveiled sugar tax, and products would be in the once-a-week category because they contained high levels of sugar salt or fat.

So it’s probably fairly safe to assume that “a Mars a day” will no longer be recommended as the ideal way to “help you work, rest and play”.

Setting aside for the sake of this post the fact that increasing evidence is helping to topple the myth that fat, per se, is bad for you, one is left wondering just how much sugar and salt is in some of the Mars products.

The two brands mentioned are Uncle Ben’s and Dolmio, and Mars Foods claims that “some foods were higher in salt, sugar or fat to maintain the “authentic” taste of products”. So let’s take a little look.

A 500g jar of Dolmio bolognese original pasta sauce apparently serves four people and provides one portion of your fruit and veg for the day. The usual price at Ocado is £1.79.

It contains: “Tomatoes (76%), Tomato Paste (11%), Onions, Sugar, Cornflour, Lemon Juice, Salt, Sunflower Oil, Basil (0.3%), Garlic, Parsley, Herbs, Spices”.

A jar of Dolmio’s bolognese low fat sauce (same weight and price) contains exactly the same ingredients. Presumably, since no percentages are given below 11%, the percentages on oil and sugar change a little as it claims to be a low fat version.

The same company’s lasagna “creamy pasta sauce” (470g jar for £1.80) has a rather more complex ingredient list: “Water, Sunflower Oil, Modified Maize Starch, Butter Fat (from Milk), Sugar, Fat Powder (Palm Fat, Lactose, Milk Protein), Natural Flavouring (contains Celery), Lactose, Broth Powder (Sugar, Flavourings, Yeast Extract, Dried Glucose Syrup, Salt, Coconut Fat, Sunflower Oil, Smoke Flavouring, Milk Protein), Salt, Acid (Lactic Acid), Stabiliser (Xanthan Gum), Milk Proteins, Antioxidant (Rosemary Extract)”.

Dolmio’s “lasagne meal kit original” (807g for £3.99) contains: “Tomato Sauce for Lasagne: Tomatoes (67%), Tomato Paste (19%), Lemon Juice, Onions, Cornflour, Sugar, Salt, Basil, Garlic, Herbs, Spices, Creamy Sauce for Lasagne: Water, Cream (20%) (from Milk), Modified Maize Starch, Fat Powder (Palm Fat, Lactose, Milk Protein), Salt, Garlic, Milk Proteins, Sugar, Onion Powder, Spices, 9 Lasagne Sheets: Durum Wheat Semolina”.

The company’s carbonara microwave sauce (150g for £1.40) “serves one”) contains: “Water, Cream (from Milk) (14%), Ham (5.9%) (Pork, Water, Brine Mix (Dextrose, Stabiliser: Triphosphate, Flavouring, Antioxidant: Sodium Ascorbate), Salt, Preservative: Sodium Nitrite), Modified Maize Starch, Cheddar Cheese (from Milk) (2.0%), Broth Powder (Sugar, Flavourings, Yeast Extract, Dried Glucose Syrup, Salt, Coconut Fat, Sunflower Oil, Smoke Flavouring, Milk Protein), Milk Proteins, Salt, Garlic (0.2%), Yeast Extract (contains Barley), Spices, Sugar”.

Uncle Ben’s chilli con carne medium sauce (450g for £1.79) contains: “Tomatoes (51%), Lemon Juice, Red Peppers (7%), Red Kidney Beans (7%), Onions, Tomato Paste (6%), Pinto Beans (5%), Sugar, Cornflour, Spices (of which Cumin, Jalapeño Powder), Salt, Parsley, Coriander, Onion Powder, Cocoa Powder, Herbs, Colour (Paprika Extract)”.

Uncle Ben’s sweet and sour original sauce (450g for £1.79) contains: “Water, Tomatoes (17%), Sugar, Onions, Pineapple (6%), Vinegar, Carrots (5%), Cornflour, Red Peppers (3%), Celery, Green Peppers (3%), Bamboo Shoots (2%), Tamarind Juice, Salt, Colour (Paprika Extract), Spices”.

In some cases there’s no much obviously wrong with the ingredient lists. Although who puts cornflower in a basic tomato sauce?

A basic tomato sauce requires finely-chopped onion, softened in some olive oil, with either skinned, fresh tomatoes or a tin of good-quality ones added, a squeeze of purée, then a pinch of salt and maybe a tablespoon of milk to cut the acidity, a little time and a few gentle stirs. Rocket science is is not.

Cornflower doesn’t come into it. Nor does sugar. And it’s a fair bet “sunflower oil” isn’t an “authentic” ingredient in Italy.

And once you get to the lasagna or carbonara – go on: hands up who looks at those ingredient lists and actually wants to eat that?

There’s one very simple way to avoid the crap and the inauthentic ingredients in these products – eat fresh food rather than processed.

The prices can make it appear that this is the affordable way to eat: that £1.79 for a jar of sauce might look very cheap, but as illustrated above, you don’t need much to make a decent tomato sauce. Oil, purée, seasoning and milk are store cupboard ingredients. Tomatoes and onions – well, you’ll be able to make more than £250g per person for your money and, by doing it that way, you’ll get two portions of veg.

To clarify further: you can get a 400g tin of high-quality, organic tomatoes from Ocado for 89p. A portion of veg is classed as 80g (or a handful), so that’s a portion per person for four. A couple of onions gives you a second portion – large brown onions at Ocado are 24p each. So that’s £1.37 for tomatoes and two onions. The other 42p will probably cover your store cupboard ingredients. And, as with the jar of sauce, you still need to add meat and pasta to make your Bolognese.

Of course, if you were really trying to be “authentic”, you’d need some celery and carrot too, plus red wine, garlic and bay leaves – and that’s before you get to the meats (pancetta and minced beef), the pasta – tagliatelle, NOT spaghetti – and Parmesan cheese to serve.

I shiver at the thought of that carbonara being “authentic”. But then again, part of the trick of Big Food is to work on the basis that most people won’t know that’s it’s wrong and won’t question such a statement, so they’ll get away with it.

By the way, carbonara is simple.

Dice some good pancetta (or top-quality, unsmoked streaky bacon) and cook gently in a little olive oil.

Cook your spaghetti. When it’s done, drain and mix in the bacon.

Stir grated Parmesan into a bowl with a beaten egg or two and then, with the pasta off the heat, gently fold the eggy mix over to coat the pasta – and serve.

Or if you want to be a little different, try the Perpignan way – the best I’ve ever had and which I replicated here.

Whatever you do, you do not want it scrambled – just a silky egg coating on the pasta.

So … no water, no cream, no modified maize starch, no cheddar cheese (what planet are these people on?), no “broth powder”, no sugar, no yeast extract, no glucose syrup, no coconut fat (WTF?), no sunflower oil, no smoke flavouring, no garlic …

And I would confidently assert that my version is a damned sight more “authentic” than anything that has a Dolmio label on it.

* All ingredients lists reproduced as they appear online.

Marketing at its brightest – a food and drink special

A few weeks ago, my grocery delivery included in it a bottle of still water: a sample of a new(ish) product to try to induce me to buy more.

In this case, it was 850ml of ‘Glacéau Smart Water’, which proclaims itself to be: “vapour distilled water with added electrolytes”. “Vapour distilled” should be hyphenated, as it’s a compound adjective, but I’ll stop the grammar pedantry there (possibly).

It claims that it’s “smart because it’s made that way”. And just how is it “made?” you might ask. I mean, it’s Adam’s ale, for goodness sake.

Well, there’s no need to fret for long, as the bottle has a lengthy explanation.

“inspired by clouds

“clean, crisp taste [the absence of capital letters is their idea, not mine]

“sometimes the answer is right under your nose, and other times it’s floating above your head... in our case, it was the humble cloud that got us thinking.

“inspired by the water cycle, we vapour distil our spring water and then add electrolytes to deliver a distinctive, clean, crisp taste.

“smart because it’s made that way.”

The ingredients list – yes, this is a bottle of water, but there are ingredients – reads as follows: “spring water, electrolytes, calcium chloride, magnesium chloride, potassium bicarbonate.”

It’s “Made in GB” and “bottled in Northumberland” – in spite of that “Glacéau” bit trying to give it a spot of Frenchified sophistication.

And reading down through the small print, “Glacéau smartwater is a trademark of Energy Brands Inc”. If you want to get in touch with them, you can write to “Coca-Cola Enterprises Ltd, Uxbridge UB8 1EZ”.

So, how does it taste? Okay: it’s no better or worse than any other bottled water. And no better than the water that is ‘made’ by the filter jug I keep in the fridge.

At 80p for 850ml from the supermarket in question (or 56.8p if you buy a crate of 12 600ml bottles), that doesn’t sound too bad, until you realise that Volvic still mineral water is 60p for 1.5 litres, Evian can be had for 84p for 2 litres and Highland Spring for 33.3p a litre; Buxton Spring Water is available at 60p for a 1.5 litre bottle, Brecon Carreg at 30.6p per litre and the company’s basic brand for as little as 18.8p a litre.

‘Smart water my arse,’ as Jim Royle might put it: ‘smart’ only for global sugar merchants Coca-Cola, who will be laughing all the way to the bank when the gullible buy this new piece of hip marketing – because that’s what they’re buying.

This is water for people who are ‘smart’ enough to recognise the word ‘electrolytes’ from drinks marketed for those doing sport, and who will assume that they’re essential for health and, well, they probably need to ingest some more. They might be put off by buying something from Coca-Cola, which perhaps explains why that global icon doesn’t make more of its name on the bottle.

It’s the same way that much else is marketed these days – not least if it’s to do with health. Some of the claims made for ‘detox’ products are, frankly, every bit as laughable as the description of this ‘smart’ water, but it doesn’t make supposedly-intelligent individuals hand over their hard earned in search of some sort of health nirvana.

There are plenty of products out there that are marketed at people who are trying to be healthy, which prey on that desire and an element of ignorance about health, together with the results of our general lack of a food culture.

Watching TV over the weekend, I was reminded of an advert that had previously earned my attention.

It’s for Bertolli spread.

“Farmers tried many ways to combine olive oil with rich, creamy butter, until they discovered new Bertolli with butter: a delicious blend with butter and olive oil, so tasty they fell in love with it,” claims an Italian-accented voice, over pictures of a happy, rustic Italian couple enjoying bread heaped with the spread in question, after he patently fails to get his cow to understand what an olive is.

“New Bertolli with butter: a delicious blend with butter and olive oil.”

I have previously asked Bertolli brand owner Unilever, via Twitter, for evidence of the claim that at least two farmers (since the plural is used) had tried to blend olive oil and butter before Unilever managed it, but I have never had any response.

But then, why would anyone try that?

The ordinary olive oil I buy (the one I use for cooking) is Spanish, with the following ingredient list: “refined olive oil, virgin olive oil”.

My butter has one ingredient: “butter”.

Ordinary Bertolli spread has the following ingredients: “Vegetable Oils in varying proportions (38%) (Rapeseed, Palm, Sunflower), Water, Olive Oil (21%), Sweet Whey Powder (Milk), Buttermilk, Salt (1.1%), Emulsifier (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids), Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Thickener (Sodium Alginate), Citric Acid, Natural Flavouring, Vitamins A and D, Colour (Carotenes)”.

Bertolli Light is made up thus: “Water, Vegetable Oils in varying proportions (22%) (Rapeseed, Palm, Sunflower), Olive Oil (16%), Modified Corn Starch, Salt, Buttermilk, Emulsifiers (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, Sunflower Lecithin), Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Citric Acid, Natural Flavouring, Vitamins A and D, Colour (Carotenes)”.

Is it any wonder those stupid Italian farmers couldn’t come up with the way to combine butter and olive oil? They forgot to think of the modified corn starch or the sodium alginate. Doh!

But hands up – why would anyone want to spread that on their toast and why would anyone think it healthier than olive oil or butter?

Unilever, of course, has come up with such a product (along with its Flora range) in order to profit from the health advice that fat is bad for you – advice that is increasingly being shown to have been bad itself.

But while that’s one thing – and it’s the way in which big food gets away with marketing yogurt stuffed with sugar, by labeling it ‘low fat’, which is viewed as a synonym for ‘healthy’ – it’s another to wonder how companies are allowed to come up with such fantastical claims as this about farmers trying to blend olive oil and butter.

The marketing for that ‘smart’ water is actually quite clever: it makes no claims about any particular health benefits, including for consumption of its added electrolytes; it doesn’t say that it’s the best taste around or anything similar.

It relies entirely on a certain gullibility.

But then, Coca-Cola has been bitten before, when it emerged after the 2004 launch of its “pure” Dasani bottled water, that what punters were getting for their money was simply tap water that had been filtered three times, using “reverse osmosis”, and with ozone injected to keep it sterile.

Bertolli, on the other hand, is marketed partly via a fantastical claim for which no evidence is given, and on the back of an increasingly discredited belief that the saturated fat of butter is inherently unhealthy.

Its claims of contributing to “a healthy lifestyle” and its entire linking to a simpler, Mediterranean lifestyle, are what give it its power.

So there you have it: two sorts of marketing: two sorts of twaddle.

New season, new kitchen

Counts as 'cooker porn'?

If there was one thing – apart from seeing our cats again – that made the return from holiday worth while, it was coming back to a new kitchen, just in time for a new season.

In the last week, a number of people have commented, of our having been away while the work was done in our home, that we were very ‘trusting’.

The implication being that they would be reluctant to leave their own homes in the hands of “contractors”.

It’s difficult, though, to know how they’d continue to live in a home while a room such as a bathroom or kitchen is being gutted and completely re-fitted.

That Tardis carousel

Three weeks using a bucket instead of a loo – unless they get workmen to spend time refitting one every day at the end of the work? Take-away meals for the duration? Yuk!

We’re incredibly fortunate to have Ian, a local, old-fashioned tradesman, has done a wonderful job yet again. And it not only all looks great, but works so much better too.

We have, in the last week, been able to get pretty much everything sorted out and into its new place.

As explained previously, it was an excellent opportunity to cull and clear. Now, though, I have one cupboard that must be the Tardis in disguise – it’s so big, with a carousel inside, that it stores every single pan, casserole, oven dish, earthenware pot, tagine, jug and large serving bowl that I have!

One very deep drawer now takes all my bakeware – which used to take a whole cupboard and a drawer – while another substantial drawer takes ladles, serving spoons, most of which had been hung on the wall, and another cupboard easily hosts all the slightly less-used gadgets, such as the mandolin and the potato ricer.

Neat and tidy – and so much more work space!

Pull-out sections bookending the cooker hold all the tea and coffee-making kit on one side, and all my herbs, spices, salts, vinegars and oils on the other.

The crockery is now displayed in the shelf unit/dresser, while all the cups, mugs and glassware are in further cupboards.

The entire effect is one of far less clutter, while it’s all so much lighter, too.

The butler sink came into its own on the first day back, as it allowed us to soak and wash out the big, retro, enamel bread bin, that previously would not go in a sink.

And of course, although I’m still getting used to the cooker – it has had me purring since day one – while the splashback that we made of features tiles from Casa Latina in Collioure, and the drawer and cupboard handles from the same source, looks lovely.

After just a brace of hobs on this trip to France, the Rangemaster is a big step up!

I should add that the new fridge – the old one was dying on us and would have needed replacing anyway – is a piece of magnificent Bosch. We took account of width and nothing else when planning, but this is another massive step up.

And it provides far more fridge magnet space too – I had a joyous task at the weekend ‘curating’ our personal art gallery!

I had been told, in conversation with a friend, that when buying white goods, the best – and most simple – advice is: “Go to John Lewis and buy as much Bosch as you can afford!”

Our washing machine for the past two years has been Bosch and I can easily see the wisdom in that advice. The fridge-freezer merely confirms it.

But all of this has had me thinking about how our cooking areas and facilities have been reduced in the last three decades.

Not a posh cooker – just an old one

Back in the 1970s, it would hardly have been a luxury to have a cooker that had both an oven and a separate grill.

However, the years since, and the advent of built-in cookers, have seen this end as the norm.

More recently, we’ve moved to new homes being built with, in some cases, only enough room for a microwave.

As food journalist Joanna Blythman relates in one of her books, a developer who planned holiday homes with just a microwave found themselves having to re-do kitchens when Continental visitors complained at the lack of proper cooking equipment.

And as Blythman also uncovered, the UK accounts for more than half the European ready-meals market, while the figure for snack products is similar.

There’s an interweaving of things here, but as I’ve also said many times, there is also a poor culture when it comes to how we see food in the UK.

A few weeks ago, I happened to overhear a ‘conversation’ between a mother and child, the latter having only recently turned three.

“What do you want for your dinner?”

“Dippy chips.”

“You can’t have dippy chips every night!”

The conversation did not, you probably won’t be surprised to know, take place in France.

When and how did it become considered sensible or appropriate to ask a small child what they want to eat? When did it somehow become bad parenting to deploy the old ‘you eat what’s in front of you’ routine?

The glories of a Bosch fridge

For the record, the mother in question is not particularly young and is a working professional.

Having said that, on the subject of school meals, I’ve heard otherwise apparently intelligent adults arguing that choice is good for young children – precisely because it teaches them to choose.

Which is idiotic reasoning. You teach them about proper food – and then, when they’re a lot more grown up and they have some of the food skills required to make choices, they can start choosing.

Why would making choices – without experience and knowledge – be a positive thing? And especially when they are, in effect, up against companies, including big corporates, that are out to make a profit that may be increased by providing less-than-healthy options?

It’s like David v Goliath where people are suddenly rooting for the giant.

‘Choice’ can mean a salad over there and the lasagna and chips over here. How many six or seven-year olds do you know who won’t choose the latter, with all the sugars and salts and fats made to make it attractive?

I spent a day in a school canteen a couple of years ago – and it was far from being a bad canteen, with all food made from scratch by a dedicated team – but because they have to offer ‘choice’, there are children who happily (and apparently regularly) just choose a plate of stodge. And I heard the dinner ladies trying to encourage them to try something different.

The artiest Bosch fridge in town?

There’s a substantial part of the issue with that overheard mother, though, of sheer laziness.

Of course it’s difficult when both parents are working, but is copping out on what you actually feed your child really the only option?

Why does the myth persist that it is ‘difficult’ or too time consuming to cook a meal properly, from scratch, in the evening?

What you eat is one of the most important factors in your life – and if you’re nurturing a child, it should be even more important.

And you don’t need a double oven and a butler sink. But what the gradual reduction of kitchen spaces in homes does do is to shore up the attitudes that then lead to this kind of behavior.

They lead to the decline in sales of dining tables – and the seven-year-old who cannot use a knife and fork properly.

That’s another example where the parents were white-collar, full-time workers who couldn’t be arsed to feed their child properly after a day at work, so relied on finger food, takeaways and frozen pizzas while they concentrated on the important things in life, such as what’s on the telly.

It does beg the question of how much this syndrome is a question of both partners having to work or the ‘conveniencing’ of our diet.

I’d suggest it’s primarily the latter, since women in working-class communities have had to work for centuries. The textile mills didn’t run on unmarried, childless female labour, for instance.

The difference now is the vast development, in the last 40 years, of ready-meals, microwaves and the takeaway culture.

It has denuded our collective culinary skill level and the result is a culture where increasing numbers of people feed themselves – and their children – badly.

And when you see food as fuel, and all fuel as having the same value, then you’re well on the way down this route.

The examples I’ve given are far from unique. This morning, the BBC online included a report that 12% of UK three-year-olds have tooth decay.

It came a day after I saw a mother on a bus with three small children, explaining to her partner that one of them had had chocolate, a sausage roll and crisps to eat that day – and was still hungry.

And it was only last Friday that I happened to see another small child in a pushchair complaining to his mother that he’d finished the large tube of Pringles and wanted something else.

Laziness, ignorance – and, of course, lack of money, all feed into this, along with the (partly mythical) cheapness of ultra-processed junk food.

A big tube of Pringles is well over £2. You can buy a 500g bag of pasta for comfortably under 50p, a 400g of tinned tomatoes for well under 40p, an onion and some garlic for next to nowt.

Even allowing for a little oil and seasonings that you’ll need from the cupboard, that will create a simple meal that’ll take 30 minutes at most, in one pan on one hob, and will be infinitely cheaper and better for up to four people eating it than that single tube of Pringles for one small child.

So, irrespective of the cooker – let’s take autumn as the opportunity to get cooking proper, real food for ourselves and our families!

Health stories to make you give up: pt2

A salad of rare quality

The award for the biggest throw-your-hands-up-in-despair moment to come out of last week’s health stories was not membership fees for the NHS or even African sand clogging up our lungs.

It goes instead to University College London for announcing that five a day isn’t enough, and we should all aim for seven a day.

Actually, there’s no scientific evidence that five – or seven – a day is an essential health requirement, although this advice does at least have the benefit of making sense.

The recommendation also says not that the majority of your seven should come from veggies, because fruit contains sugar and even natural sugars should be treated with care.

At which point I find myself musing over whether olives and tomatoes – technically fruits – count as such in this context.

I’m not bad on the old five a day: sometimes I don’t make it and sometimes I get more than that.

Breakfast is the biggest bugbear though.

A helpful – or attempting to be – piece on the BBC website last week was trying to suggest how you could increase your intake of veg, but managed only one practical (sort of) suggestion: adding a handful of spinach to a breakfast omelette.

Now, my understanding on five a day has long been that a portion is something like a whole apple, where it's an obvious whole, or about 80g of a food that doesn’t come as such a convenient handful.

But that’s an awful lot of spinach – or any other leafy food.

The advice also suggests swerving clear of fruit juice and drinks like smoothies, simply because they concentrate a lot of fruit – and therefore sugar – into a single portion.

And also based on my understanding of previous advice, only one portion of any veg counts per day – so no, if you have three portions of mushrooms, you can’t count it as three – and the same goes for pulses.

Variety is part of what makes sense.

To be honest, I ignore the fruit juice one myself – a small glass a day of pure stuff will not be the death of me.

So how else do you get your five – let alone seven?

Weekends are easy. On Sunday, for instance, I had a late but substantial breakfast, with quality bacon and scrambled egg, fried bread – and enough tomato, mushrooms and baked beans to constitute three portions. Plus a glass of fruit juice.

After that, it’s a coast.

Dinner came with carrots and leeks, and there was a little fruit after.

That was seven without any strain.

The difficulty is weekdays.

The most I’m likely to get if I breakfast at home is fruit compote (which means some added sugar) in plain (unsweetened) yogurt and a small glass of juice.

These days, breakfast out usually means eggs on toast – the toast might not be top-quality bread, but at least it's mostly my only bread of the day.

Quality eggs on toast

Lunches are easier – if I take my own, which I manage approximately 2/3 of the time, then it’ll be assorted salad and pickled veg, with some source of protein.

But if lunches are bought out, then most of the time I either end up with soup (vegetarian, so a source of at least one portion) or something between lumps of factory bread, which is never going to give you much on the greens front.

It’s worth noting here that mass-produced bread may be the reason for the rise in some intolerances: there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of people who cannot eat bread in the UK because it makes them feel bloated, but have no such problem on the other side of the Channel. And that’s without mentioning the taste.

However, back to those bought lunches: most salads struggle to be appetising.

Last week saw an exception that proved the rule. Arriving early in Islington for a job, I had time to while away and a need for lunch, so took the opportunity to enjoy the first al fresco meal of the year on a gorgeous spring day, at a café called The Blue Legume (geddit?).

Scanning the menu, I opted for a goat’s cheese salad.

It came in a large bowl that was filled with a veritable mountain of assorted leaves, plus cherry tomatoes, all topped with garlic ‘crouton’ – actually a thick piece of baguette, sliced on the bias – and a roundel of very slightly melted cheese, and with a dressing that included loads of finely-chopped walnut.

The main thing to point out is that the leaves were worth eating – not bland or lifeless or left in a dressing for hours to become simply depressing, as it so often the case. Even the little tomatoes had actual taste – no mean achievement in this country, particularly at this time of year.

The crouton was seriously garlicky, the cheese as pleasing as it should be and the dressing an ideal compliment without overwhelming everything or soaking the leaves.

I like salad, but there’s a reason I still remember one eaten in a café for local office workers near the railway station in Perpignan in spring 2006.

And the reason that I remember it was because it wasn’t a posh café and yet it was one of the first times I realised how good leaves can be – and it had three sorts of cheese and not just the one, rather bland one that you’d be likely to get in the UK if you ordered a cheese salad.

Dinner, as on Sunday, sorts itself out quite efficiently: it's not difficult or time-consuming to peel and slice a carrot and toss a few peas into boiling water out of the freezer – and frozen peas are one of life’s decent conveniences that don’t destroy the nutrition.

But given UK food culture in general, it’s not difficult to see why anyone would, on reading this new health advice, just feel like giving up entirely.

Ultimately, all this sort of advice seems counterproductive and will leave people feeling that they face impossible challenges – particularly if they read enough to know that it’s not even grounded in concrete scientific proof.

So what do you do? The easiest thing, it seems to me – and I realise that this too has its logistical complexities – is to eat fresh food, freshly prepared; to eat as little heavily processed food as possible and to eat as big a variety of vegetables as possible.

Eat good-quality protein, cut back on the crap bread, eat three meals a day and don’t snack as a matter of routine.

Don’t worry about a couple of sugars in your afternoon cuppa, but avoiding processed foods and loads of fizzy drinks will keep your sugar consumption down – and there seems to be a growing body of evidence that artificial sweeteners aren’t good for health either. But do drink water – something that you can even get free.

Apart from our food culture, though, there is another elephant in the room. And that is falling incomes and the rising cost of living.

It’s easy to tell people to eat better: to eat this or that or the other. But when the majority of people’s incomes have been falling steadily for 30 years – and more rapidly in recent ones – against a rising cost of living, then something has to give.

And for many, one of the few things that they feel they can control to a degree is food. It’s arguably easier to buy cheaper food than it is to cut lighting or heating beyond a certain point.

It’s no surprise that, in the last few years, average household spending on food has declined further, from a point that was already well below that on the Continent.

If we really want to change how people eat, there are a very great many things that need changing. Hectoring them with constant messages about what they should eat and how many minutes of how many days a week they should do whatever amount of exercise really will only start to make them feel it’s all hopeless anyway.