Recently I spent some time traveling round the United Kingdom. It didn’t take long for me to realize how incongruous the message of healthy eating has become.
If you are already eating a predominantly healthy diet, you have already made lifestyle choices. You are part of a niche group, while most people continue to eat as they’ve always eaten. It’s easy to get caught up in your niche, believing that everyone thinks like you.
When traveling, you are out of the familiar, and when eating you are faced with multiple choices every time you are hungry.
And those choices can be jarring. Here’s why:Message 1
Large supermarkets stock a truly impressive array of foods. Over the last 40 years we have seen a massive growth in the amount of product available at all times of the year. The supermarkets in the UK (Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda, Morrison’s, etc) carried all kinds of fruit and vegetables as well as aisles of ready-packed meals. The choice was amazing.
The message: “You can enjoy a large and varied diet complete with all kinds of fruit and vegetables.”
Message 2
Many of the cafés and small restaurants seemed to lack imagination. Many times the menu left me shaking my head. The only vegetables on offer were chips or fries. With meals being very heavy fat/carb combinations. I once ordered a steak meal (expecting some veggies, salad, and other condiments). What I got was a piece of steak on top of mashed potato, with half a plate of fries.
I don’t want to offend anyone British but – the law of supply and demand must be at play here. People were queueing up to order ‘stodge’. Forget the fruit and veg. If it’s beige or brown — then gulp it down. This was the norm.
The message: “Yeah we know there’s fruit and veg around, but we all know you really want to eat bulky fried stuff.”
Message 3
TV: I laughed and laughed to see diet ads where glamorous models would talk about saving 20 Calories here or there. Or enjoying a ‘lite’ version of this or that product. What’s the point in saving 20 Calories when your daily diet is mostly fries?
The message: “You’re overweight and need to start consuming diet products.”
Change the Food Culture Before Going After Diets
Now I really begin to understand and respect Jamie Oliver’s campaigning. There’s no point in ‘guilting’ people into buying diet foods when their basic dietary desires are not doing them any good. From the beginning we need to keep educating on basic food choices. Maybe some cafés can begin to take small risks in offering more than just “xxxxx” + fries. Perhaps a bit of color can start appearing on the plate.
I’m not sure how shifts happen, but in my own home town we have lots of sushi restaurants – a wonderfully healthy quick eating choice. Supply has kept in tandem with demand.
How Can You help?
Over the last few months I’ve been quietly thinking about Diet Blog. Going forward my simple goal is: to help educate people on basic healthy eating. I know that many of the regular readers have a very advanced understanding of nutrition (thus the rigorous debates about various dietary dogma).
However I encourage you to be a part of a community, that over the next 6 months will transform this site into a goldmine of salient healthy eating advice and guidance. While it’s great to understand the finer points of gluconeogenesis or ketosis, the average person in the street has been sold the lie that drinking a Diet Coke will make him healthier despite eating half a pound of fries per day.
It’s funny you mentioned Edinburgh — I found a Japanese restaurant there, and had some very nice fresh sushi, although it was a bit expensive.
I hear what you are saying about the costs of fruit&veg compared to junk food – it certainly is an issue.
amen.
I live in a very small town on the east coast of Scotland. There are 3 fruit and veg shops, various lil cafe’s, and restaurants,and I have never seen a menu as bland as that. However, I so agree in the majority of pub food, and some restaurant chains everything seems to be “with fries” but most places have the option “fries OR salad, or baked potato” It is a choice you have to make.
I have also lived in a big city in England, and
From a personal point greasy style cafe’s are for people either with a hangover, or because it is so cheap to buy, for a quick fix while you are out and about shopping.
An example would be the 34p pack of 6 ready salted crisps you can buy in Morrisons (I work nights there) Or alternatively 12 pack of morrisons various crisps for 58p. Can you tell me what health foods I can get for that price? A single apple. I know what 75% of people would choose.
Also the massive selection of ready meals are packed with salt and various other chemicals I have not even heard of!
It is a sad fact but more and more brits are more interested in saving money then there waists!
I do wish we had more sushi, and healthy food places though. I would have to travel to Edinburgh for that-nearly 35 miles away.
Love the blog, you have helped me in my quest to get more healthy!
If you’re determined enough you can fine something healthier, but doesn’t make for a great dining experience when most of the menu is bad….
When I was in England and Scotland I mainly ate packets of Curry mix, fresh fruit from a market, bean soup, and delicious little tea cakes in restaurants. Not the best, but tasty, to me. If I did need to eat out I looked for Indian restaurants. I don’t go out to eat a lot here in the US either, almost always too much grease!
Thanks for the outsider perspective Alexie! you make a great, truthful point – eating cheap is never the best or healthiest option.
on a side, the messages in this article are explained well. fitango.com gives some similar guided advice. please share anyone else where they are getting good info.
It is sort of similar here. It is rather frustrating to go out for dinner and the only real clean thing consistent on every menu is the Chicken Caesar Salad. Dressing and cheese on the side of course. Or you have to order one of the salad’s and modify it so much the waiter gets frustrated “dressing on the side, no dried fruit, grilled chicken not fried, no cheese…bla bla..”
That being said I can usually always find a clean healthy dish to order in most restaurants.
This is the mixed message. Eat bland food, but then guilt people into needing to eat branded diet food to make up for it.
Fair point about norms. In the smaller towns with no chains, you are left with local food. In many of the smaller places I visited, there were few such options. I guess it’s all about what you are used to.
People don’t want healthier choices – nor to cook. WHy do you think there are aisles and aisles of ready-made meals in the supermarkets?
The chips and mash combination? The Harvester restaurant near the waterfront at Bournemouth.
I’m in the US and I can tell you that things are fairly similar here. The grocery stores often have a huge selection of produce at reasonable prices, especially on seasonable items. However, the industry likes to promote the “diet” stuff–fat free cookies, Weight Watchers ice cream bars, etc. Those things are just a bandaid–what’s the point of cutting 10 or 20 calories from your food if it’s still crappy food? Most of our restaurants also promote the unhealthy stuff–burgers, fries, pastas with lots of meat and sauce, etc. We really need to overhaul our definition of a typical diet here in the States and in the UK as well.
Mooseface, let me qualify this by saying that London is a completely different story altogether, with every food on offer as you can expect from any large city. I enjoyed having a lunch at Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen, and there were numerous options for Sushi, and almost anything.
However, I also traveled round provincial Wales, Scotland, and other parts of England, and was surprised at how many smaller towns lacked good eating places. Certainly if you lived locally you’d begin to figure out healthy options, but this is often not apparent to the weary traveler.
Budgetary constraints prevented me from eating at ‘higher class’ restaurants, so here I’m referring to the more ‘cafe’ experience.
Thanks so much for your input (that’s why we have comments).
I’m not a Brit and I’m not an American, but I travel to both places frequently. To me, this is a very unfair article. The norms of food are different – in England, you often order the salad/veggies as a side dish, which is a different thing completely from saying they don’t serve them when you order a steak. Also, there are plenty of chains like Pret a Manger, where you can get an ordinary sandwich etc. There’s also the rise of the gastropub movement, and it’s very easy to get Indian or other Asian food that’s relatively cheap and full of vegetables. But, let’s be honest, cheap food isn’t a great option anywhere. What’s very strikingly different about the UK is that the supermarkets do, as you note, offer a wide range of fruit and vegetables. This is in stark contrast to many parts of the USA, where such food is either non-existent or extremely expensive.
The other thing is that many American restaurants serve food that is reconstituted and full of chemical flavours and additives, not least of which is HFCS.
Great article, great point! Things are pretty close to the same here in the USA.
This is like one of those half glass empty or full articles. If people want healthier choices then they should learn to cook or eat at home.
@Zoe,
Hi there. Yes, I agree that it does vary depending on where you live. I’m proably spoilt for choice living and working in a city, and it’s not as easy for everyone to get access to the same amount of choices.
I did feel it was important to point out that there some brilliant resturants / cafes that really prioritise healthy eating in the UK, and the menu above doesn’t tell the whole story. Not all food available here is unimaginative brown stodge (and i’ve never been served chips and mash in the same meal).
That aside, your right to point out that the main issue is around making it easier for people to make healthy choices – wherever they live.
@Mooseface: I think it really depends on where you live, and by that I even mean which part of a city you live in. I live in Liverpool and, though we have some fantastic restaurants and lovely small food stores, there are certain parts of the city that just don’t have access to them. In those areas, you’re lucky to find anything more than a greasy spoon. And sure, people could get a bus to areas more abundant in food choices but there are two reasons why they don’t: (1) “healthy food” is more expensive and many people don’t think it is worth spending more on diet and (2) many people haven’t been exposed to eating anything other than the stodge that they are used to.
I would imagine there is a similar state of affairs in certain areas of London. I agree that the UK has an amazing variety of food options in most areas but there are still dramatic inequalities in terms of who has access to it.
I’ve just discovered diet blog, and found it to be a useful resource, but I must say that this article has annoyed me a little.
The menu above looks like it’s from a smallish ‘greasy spoon’ style caff. It’s not representative of eating out in the UK. In fact, as a Londoner I’m lucky to be surrounded by loads of restaurants, cafes and delis that specialise in healthy menus based around fresh fruit and veg – there are plenty of interesting healthy choices to be made. To say that the menu shown above is a ‘norm’ just isn’t representative of my experiences of finding healthy food when eating out.
I’ve traveled to the US several times, and found that there are plenty of places to consume fried stodge over there. But after making a little effort and looking beyond easy tourist options, (which I fear this writer did not), I’ve also eaten in some amazing restaurants, that use great ingredients and offer healthy choices.
Just had to get that out there for the sake of balance!