Loose Men on: Healthy Eating

Do you like eating leaves? No, neither do I – mainly because I’m not a bloody giraffe. But from the way restaurants peddle salad, you’d think it’s a delicacy. I absolutely refuse to believe that anybody who pays to eat out really relishes the prospect of chomping down a pile of withered bits of dead plant. Food outlets offer them because it’s a convenient way for them to fill up an empty looking plate, and consumers buy them because they enjoy the sense of smug superiority they feel when looking up from their shredded bio-waste and seeing some meat-guzzling fatty shoveling in the calories like a hungry whale. There, I said it.

Restaurants and salad-lovers aren’t the only guilty parties. Food fascists like ‘Dr.’ Gillian McKeith would probably have us on our hands and knees chewing on grass if they could. Health-conscious colleagues tut at the slightest excursion from the path laid down by Government science aficionados, and parents resort to wild threats – “You’ll get scurvy!” – or bizarre bribes – “You’ll be able to see in the dark!” – to get their children eating their five-a-day.

There is a way to deal with these people: tell them to get lost. The crusading Jamie Olivers of this world must be sent back to their kitchens with the sort of language that would be more at home in Gordon Ramsey’s. Advise them in no uncertain terms to stick their organically-produced, nutritious, vitamin-filled, cardboard-textured ‘food’ where the sun doesn’t shine, and get on with your day. Maybe even buy a kebab while you’re at it.

I’m not one of those wannabe Neanderthals who insists that real men only eat red meat – on the contrary, I enjoy all sorts of unhealthy food and drink. I just like to eat what tastes nice. And I dislike holier-than-thou calorie-counting gastro-snobs who get their kicks by looking down their noses at uncultured paupers like me who don’t get their recommended daily allowance of some obscure vitamin.

‘But it’s so bad for you!’ they moan. Well, I don’t care. It’s my body, and I will make use of its capacity to enjoy food if I want to. ‘But it’ll knock years off your life!’ they warn. Well, I’d sooner make the most of my years on this earth and live them properly than spend them wringing my hands over whether or not there’s enough zinc in my diet. Five extra years of old-aged incontinence and memory loss is hardly an incentive anyway.

No doubt there are benefits to healthy eating – I wouldn’t seek to dispute that. But there are also benefits to eating fry-ups, burgers, takeaways, ice cream and cake: namely that they’re delicious.

But if you disagree so desperately that you want to write in to the Boar, don’t bother. You can probably find me in McDonalds, or in the pub, or at a kebab van, nomming on my life expectancy.

You should try it sometime – it’s quite fun.