You are what you eat

One of my favourite self -improvement shows is 'You are what you eat'. It's a British programme but I think I had only seen a couple of episodes when I was in England. It's also very typical of a British show. Unhealthy people, generally overweight, subject themselves to public humiliation at the hands of a diminutive Scots woman, Gillian McKeith. She's a tartare. She makes them show us their wobbly bits and then she examines their poo. She is very interested in their poo. Like the all-seeing God that we all fear, you feel that Gillian might turn up one day on our doorstep demanding a poo sample. This is how Gillian knows what you are through what you eat. Too sloppy, not good enough, too smelly, you're in for a roasting, wrong colour, not up to snuff.

After roundly condemning her victims from their poo sample - I wonder if St. Peter uses this method - she loads up tables with everything they ate the previous week. Seeing it all laid out like that, piles upon piles of chips and cakes and burgers and general slop, the person becomes penitent, begging Gillian to save them. And as with any salvation, the first few steps are the worst. No more pastry, sweets and beer-swilling, instead seeds and pulses and mountains of veggies.

Now the best amusement is to be had from the faces of the little fat kids as they are denied their life-sapping crap. They carp and moan. You feel sorry for the mums who are having to deny themselves and put up with the whingeing from their spoilt spawn. And when occasionally you get a child who joins in cheerfully and says, 'well, this is going to be good for us,' you want to give them a pat on the back.

But by the end of the eight week period, as their bellies have shrunk, their halitosis cured, spots, fatigue and depression all banished and they have energy once more, they welcome Gillian back like born again evangelists opening their arms to their saviour.

It would be nice to think that Gillian could cure the entire nation one by one, but alas, the task is too great, her best hope is that many will see her programme and convert. Jamie Oliver took on a similar task when he changed the nation's school dinners, but one feels that these miracles are small inroads.

This week we have seen the Canadian Health authority announcing that the officially recommended diet contains too many calories and might encourage Canadians to become overweight. I have to say that here on the West Coast it doesn't look like a big problem. I can remember visiting my cousin in Toronto in 1979 and being struck by how many seriously overweight people you saw. I'm not talking the extra pounds we all think we have that make our nice clothes not fit us, or the extra poundage of middle age, I'm talking Dan and Roseanne and in very young people.

It's an odd thing in some ways. I would say there isn't much difference between Canadians where I live and British people in the South of England. But here, people are able to eat out more, and unless you go to the fancier restaurants, things are frequently served with huge piles of chips. People drink beer more here, I would say that it is like drinking fizzy drinks in Britain, where we would go to the fridge and get a can of lemonade, many people here might get a beer. People don't walk or cycle here as much because the distances between anything are greater and there is less public transport. And yet people don't look much different. But of course the other side of Gillian's message wasn't just about weight, it's about health, and here on the west coast, Canadians live longer than anywhere else in the country. So there must be some factor that I'm missing.

I'm making generalisations of course from some very general observations. When I was in England last month, I felt as though I ate non-stop because I was eating everything I had missed, and yet I lost weight, but again, probably because of the walking.
My British friend Karen pointed out last week that at our age, social events tend to centre around eating and I think she is right. You allow yourself to eat things when out socially that you wouldn't eat at home.

I haven't gotten to the bottom (no pun intended) of this yet, but all I can say is that if you are what you eat, then I am currently a jar of marmite. I must be low on B-vitamins I think, because marmite is definitely my mate. I'm sure Gillian would approve, I'm working on developing an imaginary Gillian who pops up at times of temptation and says 'just say no' in her Scottish accent.

Yes, I think it might work.