Making sure your diet has gotta lotta bottle

If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to have you looking again at your diet and wondering if it’s nurturing you or killing you, then it’s something such as a heart attack in the family.

The Other Half is now attending rehab sessions after his recent Event and these include a weekly talk.

Recently, one on nutrition provided the news that no, locally-produced honey does not render you immune to local pollen. It also included a call for those present to drink more milk, since there’s a risk of an osteoporosis timebomb and they need their calcium.

It’s probably already far more of a problem than most of us realise.

According to Guidelines for diagnosis and management ofosteoporosis (1997) by JA Kanis, P Delmas, P Burckhardt and others, which was published by the European Foundation for Osteoporosis and Bone Disease, in “women over 45 years of age, osteoporosis accounts for more days spent in hospital than many other diseases, including diabetes, myocardial infarction and breast cancer”.

And that’s just women – osteoporosis affects men too.

Of course, the milk-drinking advice included stating that the milk should be skimmed or semi skimmed, and noting that, while calcium can also be found in cheese, you should only to eat a matchbox-sized amount of that in a single day because of the mortal threat of fat.

Look away now – this could be the death of you

Bad luck: today’s lunchtime salad – made at home – included about two Swan Vesta-sized matchboxes worth of feta (together with chick peas, broad beans, sultanas, a little couscous and a ‘dressing’ of plain, Greek-style yogurt).

Having had a small glass of apple juice before leaving home, my breakfast had consisted of a hard-boiled egg, a little poached salmon, some edamame beans and a squirt of teriyaki sauce, with an espresso on the side.

Thank you Itsu: tasty, healthy food, and actually cheaper than the far more conventional breakfast fodder I’ve been having recently.

There was a mid-morning ‘snack’ of a few dates.

Oh dear – never mind the cheese, am I in danger of eating too much fruit, given how it all sugars?

The point, though, is that my rule-shattering amount of feta for lunch should be considered within a wider context of a fairly healthy diet as a whole.

But back to osteoporosis and calcium intake.

I recall reading, approximately 15 years ago, that women on a  diet had a bone density deficit of 22%.

This should surprise nobody, given that one of the first things that goes out of the window when you start dieting is dairy produce.

And on this subject, let’s take a little look at figures for osteoporosis in France and the UK, since the French notoriously eat more cream, cheese and butter than any other nation on planet Earth.

In 2010, there were approximately 377,000 new fragility fractures in France. The number of people aged 50 plus, with osteoporosis, was approximately 3,480,000.

Bone – healthy and not-so healthy

The economic cost of new and prior fractures was estimated as €4,853m each year and it is further estimated that, by 2025, that figure will have increased to €6,111m.

In 2010 in the UK, there were approximately 536,000 new fragility fractures. The number of people aged 50+ with osteoporosis stood at approximately 3.21m. The economic cost of new and prior fractures was £3,496m (€5,408m) each year; by 2025 burden will increase by 24% to £5,465m (€6,723m).

These statistics are from A Svedbom, E Hernlund, M Ivergard, et al, Osteoporosis in the European Union: A compendium of country-specific reports, 2013.

It’s worth noting that calcium deficiency is not the only cause of osteoporosis, but that alcohol consumption and smoking both also increase bone fragility.

In which case, given levels of smoking and alcohol consumption in France (and given that it has a higher population), the lower number of fragility fractures is even more remarkable.

But then again, the French have not – thus far – lost any sense of a national cuisine; of the traditional and largely seasonal food that has sustained them down the centuries.

We have. We expect asparagus and strawberries in December, and are faced with a dizzying array of culinary styles in shops and restaurants.

And in a way, the culinary snapshot from our recent trip to Rye is indicative of that: poor versions of a ‘national’ dish – fish and chips – cooked on the basis of pre-prepped, largely-frozen ingredients, while local gems such as Cromer crab were noticeable primarily by their absence.

That’s not to say that there is no place for culinary evolution and global influences – or that the French don’t have these (see couscous as an example of the latter), but merely that we have gone to an extreme.

Subject to the whims of British culinary fashion

We fall out of love with genuine British ingredients – and then it takes a celebrity chef to bring them back into fashion. See cooking apples and cauliflowers as but two recent examples.

Sainsbury’s summer TV advertising campaign, “tigers don’t eat quesadillas”, also illustrates the current climate, starting from the perspective of a family where the children get to say what they will and will not eat.

I know it’s not hip parenting these days, but what was actually wrong with ‘Dinner time! Come and sit down!’ followed by (if required) ‘that’s what’s on the table – if you don’t like it, there’s nothing else’?

The idea of giving small children a choice about what they eat is nonsense: they need to be able to make an educated choice before being given a choice – and that means a food education first.

Nor is that an education where you make pronouncements on what’s good or bad for health. It’s a question of educating the taste buds.

Okay, it’s still probably going to be something of a battle, given the amount of high-processed, industrialised junk around the place for children to be tempted by. And Big Food spends an awful lot of money working out precisely how to get children hooked on that junk, so it’s not an evenly-matched battle: this is classic David and Goliath.

But getting home in the evening and asking your pre-primary school child what they want for dinner – and then responding with “you can’t have dippy chips every night” because they regularly have that because you don’t want to cook a fresh meal after a day at work, is not the answer and not the way to a healthy diet.

And why quesadillas? What’s wrong with a salad? It doesn’t have to be limp, tasteless lettuce and cucumber, with flavourless tomatoes.

Take some broad beans (in season at present). Pod and cook for 3-4 minutes, in unsalted water, depending on size. Allow to cool before popping the little green gems out of their skins.

Hull and halve some strawberries (also in season).

Broad beans. In season now. Yummy

Pop on a plate together with some feta – the natural saltiness of the cheese is a fabulous foil for the beans, and works well with the fruit too.

Dress with some Balsamic vinegar.

If it’s a main meal, have some good bread on the side or a few new potatoes (also in season).

Colourful, tasty and healthy – and not complicated.

The media doesn’t help – producing scare stories about health and further confusion about diet.

I freely admit that I find myself wondering if I’ve got it basically right: am I getting enough calcium, for instance, or do I need to start guzzling a pint of skimmed milk every day?

Indeed, am I really getting it all so badly wrong that today’s second matchbox of cheese will ensure that I won’t live long enough to get osteoporosis?

Spot the war profiteering disguised as charidee

Don't forget the profit opportunities

A few weeks ago, flicking through my Twitter feed, I came across a retweeted contribution from one Douglas Carswell, the newly-elected – and first – UKIP MP.

In just 147 characters, he managed to mention both “sofa government” and “citizen consumers”.

The former is all about government policy being made by senior ministers and a handful of advisors.

The latter refers to an idea that citizens, via their consumption, can ensure that companies make ethical decisions.

It has been done. In the 1980s, declining sales of aerosols producing CFCs forced manufacturers to rethink the products and come up with less environmentally damaging solutions.

But apart from such high-profile campaigns, how much can it work?

For instance, will enough people to make a difference boycott companies that pay such low wages that the taxpayer has to top them up in order for workers to be able to afford to live?

Underlying it all is the ideology of deregulation: if the consumer makes the choices, no government intervention would be needed. And, of course, The Market, given free rein, will provide the ‘perfect’ results (as though the market were somehow not entirely dependent on human intervention, including political intervention and decisions – but that’s a different subject).

All of which sounds lovely, but is as divorced from reality as telling people that, if regulations are removed and those at the top were just allowed to do whatever they want in order to make money, the increased wealth would ‘trickle down’ to everyone else.

It also supposes that the majority of people are, when being consumers, able to make ethical choices that often mean spending at least a little more cash – or that most people have the time or inclination to investigate the ethics behind every purchase that they make, which itself often means digging quite deep behind the façade of corporate bullshit.

Blingtastic way to remember the war dead

In terms of affording the ethical, the fallacy of trickle-down is a major factor in why incomes for the majority have fallen, putting increasing numbers of people in a position where they can less and less afford to look for those ethical options.

Research in the US suggests that consumers (or at least some) want the companies that they buy from to be involved with ‘causes’.

I’ve dealtwith ‘cause marketing’ on this blog previously, but this is just another take on the same thing, spun a little differently and taking it to the level of political ideology.

Over the weekend, there appeared on my TV an advert from Sainsbury’s, linking that store with the Royal British Legion’s poppy appeal.

The company offered, among other things, to recycle your poppy if you return it to the store after use. The advert describes a commitment to the past – and the future – with images of an elderly man (a veteran, presumably) and a young boy (a future veteran?), while also noting that stores sell a range of poppy-related objects (such as an umbrella), with proceeds going to the Legion.

So, is Sainsbury’s doing all this out a genuine sense of charity/patriotism?

Well, it might be. It is entirely possible that the company’s head honchos feel a deep commitment to remembrance and to the wellbeing of veterans.

But on the other hand, that’s not why it’s being advertised in such a way. It’s being advertised to show the company in such a light that it will encourage customers to shop there.

That is not ethical: it is nothing other, at core, than trying to profit from war.

Oh, Sainsbury’s might not make a penny from any poppy-related purchase or act of education or recycling – some of these might even cost the company money. But all that is an investment.

The chances of someone responding to that advert just to pop this year’s used poppy in a recycling tub (instead of in the recycling bag or box they get from the local waste collection service), and not then doing some shopping there seems a tad unlikely.

Will people really decide to make an extra shopping trip just to go to Sainsbury’s – when they do not do so usually – to buy a poppy brolly – when you can choosefrom seven different poppy umbrellas at the Royal British Legion’s own online shop – and then walk out and not pick up a few odds and ends for that midweek supper?

This is about persuading the ‘citizen consumer’ to shop at Sainsbury’s because it shows obvious, outward support for a cause that that shopper cares about. The adverts are deliberately placed to coincide with the annual remembrance ceremonies and Armistice Day.

They won’t be appearing next April, with a message that Sainsbury’s is still caring about remembrance and veterans, even when no poppies are on sale and no commemorations are scheduled.

Poppy pizzas from Tesco

If Sainsbury’s cared about remembrance and veterans, and not profits, it wouldn’t spend hundreds of thousands of pounds creating advertising campaigns on the issue. It could donate that cash to the Legion instead, without making a hoo-ha about it that simply screams: ‘just look how good we are by doing charidee stuff’.

This is cause marketing, aimed at the citizen consumer, and with the prime intent of increasing footfall and, with that, profits.

Of course, Sainsbury’s is far from being alone in such behavior. Indeed, Bill King spotted Tesco selling ‘poppy pizzas’.

A Tesco pizza is probably tasteless anyway, but this takes it to a whole new level.

And there will be be countless more companies playing the same sort of games.

So perhaps the ‘real’ citizen consumer should, then, deliberately refuse to spend money at companies that so blatantly exploit the war dead to make a buck.

They might also consider that the Royal British Legion needs funds to help veterans, because governments that send people to war rarely seem much interested in those veterans once they return, and thus the public is left to fill the pick up the pieces via charitable donation.

But then again, all this would involve real and meaningful ethical or moral choices: and that is not what the concepts of ‘citizen consumer’ and ‘cause marketing’ are remotely about.

Broadway Market faces the Tesco test

'Google', so they say, 'is your friend'. And Google does, indeed, provide a most informative search engine.

For instance, earlier today, I tried something. I entered my post code and then I entered a single word: Tesco.

It made for depressing viewing. Page one – eight listed. A further eight on the next page. Ten on the next page. Another load on the following page – and still I wasn't finished!

Indeed, it just went on and on.

I already knew that I had at least five within easy walking distance. There are others I pass on my way to and from work that have sprung up in the last year or so. The screengrab here shows just [i]some[/i] of the Tesco stores in central London.

I know that it doesn't show all of them, because the most detailed map searches I used for specific postcodes do not show the newish stores on New North Road, Pentonville Road and Hackney Road, so it seems reasonable to assume that a few more are missing too.

Sainsbury's is not quite as bad, although it appears to manage some clusters that make you wonder how anyone could justify three stores almost on top of one another.

Morrison's – fewer and more spread out.

Waitrose – a new one I had no idea was almost on my doorstep, just to the south of Hackney Road.

Co-op? A lot fewer, but there are quite a few Icelands.

Why this sudden spurt of searching? Because it seems that we're going to have another Sainsbury's, very soon and very near me. And because local businesses are worried about the possibility of a Tesco, too.

Let me explain. Our local council is dealing with a planning application for a site just around the corner from the top end of Broadway Market.

The site is currently occupied by small workshops and offices for small, local and locally-based businesses.

These will be chucked out and a block of flats will be built instead.

However, for the flats to be financially viable for the housing associating that wants to build them, there will have to be some commercial properties on the ground. Planning permission is being sought for office space.

Yet in similar developments only a few metres away, spangly new office spaces continue to stand empty.

And here we hit the nub.

Only recently, Hackney Council changed the nature of planning permission on one such block around the corner, on Mare Street, so that its empty office space can be used for retail instead. Sainsbury's will be moving in soon.

This was done with absolutely no consultation with local businesses or residents.

So it's hardly surprising that local businesses are now worried that this new scheme is just a ploy to shoehorn yet another supermarket in the area, without the bother of formally consulting on such a plan – and the one that they most suspect is Tesco.

That there is already a Tesco on nearby Wells Street (the first one), which killed off the old street market means nothing. That there is a vast Tesco metal box just off Mare Street, around half a mile up the road, means nothing either. That there's one on Bethnal Green Road and two on Hackney Road and I've seen a new one on City Road too matters not one shred.

That Hackney Council is spending money to hang banners around the borough linking 'I heart Hackney' with 'shop local' also appears to have no meaningful content – unless we assume that, by 'local', they simply mean at one of the rapidly increasing number of supermarket outlets that we're allowing to open'.

Now, I appreciate that, to some of you, this might sound a tad hysterical. I'll briefly mention – as always do when discussing this subject – the value of reading Shopped: The shocking power of Britain's supermarkets by Joanna Blythman and The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman (Wal-Mart owns Asda and is also a big model for Tesco).

But let's move on.

In the last few months, I've twice been in a cab where the driver has a former butcher, who realised that the traditional trade had little future and decide to change direction.

In the first such instance, his father – who owned three butchers' shops that his son expected to take on – had told him that the only hope for him, as butcher, was to go and work for a supermarket.

So he gave it a whirl. He found that he needed no skills; his knowledge of cuts and so forth was of no use. He had no butchering to do.

He did The Knowledge and changed job.

Travelling across London just over a week ago, there was the time to quiz the second of these quite thoroughly.

In a massive coincidence, he was born and grew up just around the back of Broadway Market. A couple of years younger than me, he remembers there being three butchers on the street - together with the greengrocers and the fishmongers and the bakers.

When The Other Half and I moved into the areas some 17 years ago, the street was a mess. A famous piece of graffiti described it thus: 'Broadway Market - not so much a sinking ship as a submarine'. Witty - and sadly true at the time.

I asked what he thought had killed off the street. There was no hesitation: supermarkets.

How, though?

They'd opened, offering cheap vegetables, he said. When shoppers went there for their greens, they decided to take the easy option of buying other things at the same time.

Gradually, unable to compete against increasing buying might the supermarkets could deploy, most of the independent businesses died.

Then, he added, shoppers found that the supermarkets were not quite as cheap as they had initially seemed, but by then it was too late.

But after the street had been killed off, what revived it? Small, private businesses – simple as.

The council made some half-hearted and completely cack-handed efforts to revive the street, but utterly failed. To give just one example, the council had the bright idea of starting a flower market on Saturdays. They kicked it off with just a couple of really, seriously piss-poor stall.

And yet this is just a stone's throw from the legendary Colombia Road, where people come from (at least) across the city for the Sunday flower market.

What has happened is entirely down to private individuals getting together to build a market – and to small businesses moving in, all at around the same time.

Broadway Market is no longer a submarine – it's no longer even close to being a 'sinking ship'. It is thriving and bubbling and healthy and quite wonderful.

Now this doesn't meet with universal approval. Ultra-leftist, SWP lies that there was ever an option between a privately-run market and a council-funded community centre haven't helped.

As haven't the almost mythical tales of the £3 loaf of bread – which is rendered utterly daft on the basis that it's an organic, seven-day sour, as opposed to a £1.72 loaf of ordinary, mass-produced wholemeal, which you can, of course, still but on Broadway Market from Percy Ingle.

The reality is that the market has been instrumental in reviving a once-almost dead street. Little has been lost to locals (myself included) as a result – and 2/3 of that as a direct result of collusion between the council and the ridiculously-named local commercial landlord, Roger Wratten, who, one imagines, delights in adding notches to his bedpost every time he drives another business to the wall because he, as landlord, can demand more dosh.

Trust me – it's happened more than once, more than twice ... And the most recent example is only just occurring.

Wratten, indeed, is an example of what can happen when greedy, individual landlords get their way. Broadway Market as a whole is – at present – and example of something different and far more positive from private businesses.

It's become a vital, thriving community. Where once there would hardly be anyone on the street at any time of day on any day of the week, now it draws in people for lunch, for dinner, for the evening. In the week and at the weekend.

Where once I'd have been forced to go to a big supermarket to do my shopping, I no longer have to. I can shop locally and stay locally.

And I'm going to defend that.

I have written to the council already with my comments on the planning application. I'm trying to find out the legal situation, I have said that I wish to attend any council meeting at which the application is discussed – and I wish to speak. And, simplest of all, I have signed the petition that is in most local shops on Broadway Market.

I'll let you know how it goes!