Here Comes Rationing Again

No, this is what they've got in mind for us

This headline is, of course, wrong.

Some takeaway meals contain more calories than daily limit, UK study finds

There is no daily limit. We do not have laws stating how much food we are allowed to eat. Of course, there are those who want there to be such laws but there aren’t, as yet. What there is is a series of recommendations about the limits we should impose upon ourselves:

Some takeaway meals contain more calories in one sitting than someone is advised to consume in an entire day, a study of British eating habits has revealed.

That’s better.

Cafes, fast-food outlets, restaurants, bakeries, pubs and supermarkets are fuelling the UK’s obesity crisis because so many meals they sell contain dangerously large numbers of calories, it found.

That’s not better. Because a plate of food containing a lot of calories is not a danger. Eating many of them might be but that the average household can get a gutbuster for some trivial portion of household earnings is a glory of modern civilisation, the very proof we require that we’re all as rich as Croesus.

And this is actually true too. That we are gloriously rich and it’s our food supply that proves this. As Brad Delong likes to point out back 200 years (yes, about right, 1820s is as it was really changing but 300 years would be better) it took a full day’s work to be able to gain 2,000 calories a day for a day labourer. There are 800 million out there still living at that standard of living. We can buy 2,000 calories - if we go boring stodge - for 30 minutes work now.

By history and by certain geographies we are foully rich these days. Which is the complaint of the wowsers of course. They’re a revival of the puritans and their sumptuary laws. How dare it be true that people fill their bellies with food they actually like?

Six out of 10 takeaway meals contain more than the 600-calorie maximum that the government recommends people should stick to for lunch and dinner in order to not gain weight, according to the research, which was carried out by the social innovation agency Nesta.

One in three contain at least 1,200 calories – double the recommended limit.

And? So, folk can buy lots of food for not much money. This is the very thing that makes having a civilisation possible - cheap food. My wife and I do indeed partake of an Indian occasionally - and find the takeout portions rather large. So, we have one amount for lunch or dinner and we’ve a refrigerator in which to keep the excess for a supper or snack another day. This is not beyond the wit of man to organise.

However, a pizza and chips contains more than either daily maximum – a huge 3,142 calories. A pizza typically has between 2,000 and 2,400 calories, while a burger, chicken nuggets, side and soft drink weigh in at a significant 1,658 calories, Nesta found. Fish and chips, that ever-popular staple of the British diet, is well over the 600 limit too at 1,425 calories.

Nesta? These are the people who were funded with a one off endowment in order to advance British research in the social sciences, weren’t they? So, how did that experiment work out?

“Unlike retailers who are legally obliged to declare nutritional information on-pack, out-of-home in general appears to have little regard for public health. It’s therefore imperative that the next government takes decisive action and enforces calorie, salt and sugar reduction targets in order to create a level playing field and a more sustainable food environment longer term.”

Government policy should be to make your curry smaller. Only one possible response to that, obviously - fuck off.

Sigh. The base problem we’ve got is that the sort of people who should be litter wardens now have political power. That’s the problem we’ve got to overcome. A Night of the Long Budget Cuts.

There is a silver lining here. The rollout of those calorie counts on restaurant food has led to some fun responses. People reading them and thinking, well, 1,100 calories for my £8 sounds better than only 600 so I’ll have that then. Which, given that people are out there buying food is also a very reasonable response. More food for your money.

Entirely the opposite of what the fussbudgets desire of course but that’s why it’s a silver lining. People are, by their simple actions, tellin’ em to fuck off.