How did we become so greedy?

I need to reduce my weight for health reasons as I have not lost some of  the weight that I gained during the pandemic.  It has made me examine more closely what I consume, and how much. Even though we have a small food budget, I had to ask myself “How did we become so greedy?”.  Compared to many, we spend less on food, don’t drink alcohol, and cook nutritious food from scratch.  However, snacks, puddings, carbs, and large helpings had become the norm.

Food plays a large part in our life as it is something different that we can experience every day.   It is something that we feel that we have control of. Planning it, growing or foraging it, cooking it, being creative with what we have, and using it to show love to other people, are all things that we do with food every week.  It is more than just the fuel and medicine for the body that I guess it was intended to be as it has become a treat and a social thing.

I know that portions are larger than when my mum got married as I have inherited her dinner plates and they are nearly half the size of modern ones.  We have often used them for a light meal or a lunch, but rarely use them for a main meal.  When I think back to my childhood, we never had snacks.  A packet of crisps (with a little blue sachet of salt to pour over) were a treat that you got on a picnic when on a summer holiday, or on the Christmas tea table.  They were not something that you scoffed, blindly unaware of the amount, whilst watching television.

The only sweets I received as a  child were a packet of fruit gums from my Grandma on a Friday, and chocolate was reserved for Easter and Christmas.  I remember I got things like chocolate shaped spanners or pipes, but my favourite was a mini chocolate machine that you had to put a penny in to get the half inch sized bar.  It was therefore a money box as well.  The whole machine full of chocolate probably doesn’t even amount to a whole large bar that people commonly eat now.

Desserts were for Sundays and holidays until my Dad gained promotions in his work, and then they became a more regular occurrence.  I guess affluence impacts on the food people eat generally, though if you are creative and think outside of the box it is possible to still eat well on a very low food budget, as we do.  However, I believe that food is definitely used as a status symbol and is influenced by income. I know I am guilty of putting photos on my social media when we have eaten a nice meal out when on holiday. Other people shop in high end supermarket and show off their carrier bags (my neighbour shops in a discount supermarket and puts her shopping in M & S bags!).  It is easier to eat more meat, eat organically, and buy food at farmers markets and shops if you have money. If I didn’t make my own sour dough loaves I wouldn’t be able to afford  one at nearly £5 for one loaf.

Food is much easier to get hold of now and there is more variety than when I was younger.  We didn’t have freezers in those days and so it was an effort to go to the shop.  Food was also more expensive in comparison to our wages. I can remember having to pay over £1 for a cheap white loaf when I was first married.  The consumption of things like eggs that were a large part of our diet because they were cheap, healthy, and stored well, were discouraged as we were told that they were bad for us over the past 30 or 40 years (which has been proved to be not true).  Instead we were encouraged to buy ‘low fat’ items that were full of sugar to give them taste.

I was skinny as a child but remember that everything was cooked in lard and often fried. People think that they are eating more healthily now but the fats are often hidden, and are seed or palm oil.  The negative impact of these kinds of fats on the body are only just being recognised.  I have seen lots of changes to the food we eat in my life time, and most of them have probably not been that healthy for us.  Even things that we might think are healthy, often aren’t.

Fruit consumption has increased massively since the 1950s due to fruits being easily accessible and imported from abroad.  There are exotic fruits that would not have been available previously and they can be obtained at any time of the year, and not just from a can out of growing season. However, these are full of sugar.  Even though it is natural sugar, eating too much can still lead to diabetes, which has increased significantly in the population over the years.  In fact grapes are one of the worst offenders of causing sugar spikes. Fruit has genetically changed due to growers trying to reduce seeds, and it has been shown to actually contain more sugar in it compared to that eaten by our grand parents.  That is one of the reasons that I rarely eat fruit from the supermarket and forage and grow my own instead.

I remember in the 1960s when sugar coated cereals arrived in our little supermarkets (which were more like large corner shops in those days).  It was in the 1960s that the consumption of meat and sugar started to increase.  It must have felt great having all that choice after the rationing of the 40s and 50s.  In the 1970s we got a freezer and so ice cream was available all of the time and not just when the ice cream man came round.  We could now store half a pig in the garage and mum rarely bought fresh vegetables any more.  The frozen ones didn’t need preparing.  This reduced the variety of vegetables that we ate and marked the end of eating seasonally in our house.  Gone were the days when I would sit on the step shelling peas, or topping and tailing gooseberries.  Our school meals became things like hot dogs and Turkey Twizzlers rather than the home cooked kind of meals that I had enjoyed in primary school.  All of my mum’s cakes were made from a box and we had neon green Vesta curries for tea.  They put me off curry for years.

In the 1980s I noticed more take aways becoming available.  Previously there had only really been fish in chips where I lived.  I remember when I was in the WRNs down south I tried my first McDonalds (they hadn’t reached Yorkshire then).  We were in training and were not allowed to leave the camp and so we got a taxi to collect it for us.  I remember thinking that it was amazing, especially the chocolate milk shake which years later I found out was mainly fat.  It was so thick that you could hardly suck it up the straw.  More women were going out to work in this decade and so convenience food and take aways became more popular.

During the late 1980s I remember visiting my first hypermarket in France.  Supermarkets still weren’t very large over here in the UK.  By the 1990s large supermarkets began to dominate the high streets.  It felt like a good thing as it reduced the time shopping and everything was under the same roof.  The selection was amazing as well.  Unfortunately the small food shops started t0 disappear as, with their buying power, the supermarkets could under cut the prices of the local shops.  I don’t remember being concerned about it in those days.  It felt like a good thing as we had a brilliant selections and prices were low.  It is probably only in the last 10 years that I have noticed that this dominance and monopoly of the supermarkets meant that they can now charge what they want and make massive profits. They can also control what we eat.

We did become aware of issues like 0besity in the 2000s due to TV programmes done by Jamie Oliver and others. This is the time I probably started cooking more from scratch. I worked shifts and would leave home cooked meals in the fridge for the children.  I did always put crisps or bought fruit leather in my children’s packing up, though, which is not good.  Most children had them and would compare their packed lunches.  Mine would ask for a chocolate biscuit rather than a home cooked flapjack or piece of cake so that they were more like their friends.  We didn’t have a lot of money and so the children probably ate a lot of vegetables by accident as I was trying to stretch the meat.  I would grate carrot into it and add peas and other vegetables. My youngest used to call our Sunday dinner ‘Find the chicken Pie’.  I thought that I was feeding them healthily as I always made sure that they had yoghurts and low fat snacks  like low sugar jellies.  Little did I know that these were full of addictive sugar, or aspartame and was  encouraging them to eat more.

In the the 2010s I started studying nutrition and did a  professional sports nutrition course.  I was trying to manage my own health and lost nearly 4 stone in weight.  We started to hear about ‘superfoods’  and lots of people were cleansing and living on a diet of juices (which I knew were full of sugar from the fruit and so should have been drunk sparingly, as we do now).  Health foods became trendy but I noticed that a lot of the things that were advertised as healthy were not.  More additives and hidden sugar under different names was being added.  Previously I might have thrown a can of vegetable soup into a home cooked meal as a sauce to save time.  I was now becoming aware of how bad they were for me.

During the 2020s my knowledge of Ultra Processed Food has increased, as has my knowledge of the fertilisers and preservatives used on the ‘healthy’ items that we eat.  The way we eat is evolving and changing again to try to stay healthy.  I am seeing food more as a medicine and a fuel and am more aware of the health benefits.  I grow more, forage more, eat less meat, and try to avoid the supermarket as much as possible. I try to buy from sustainable sources. This isn’t always possible on our small income and sometimes I have to compromise and accept things from the community fridge, or buy discounted items like meat from the supermarket. I try to limit unhealthy food and try to be 80% UPF free.  I also try to use old flours to make my bread like ‘Spelt’ that have not been genetically altered and nutritionally reduced, as some of the more common flours have.

I think that as a society we have become more greedy. Obesity has risen substantially. I don’t think that this is all our fault, though.  Food is more easily available (once we would have grown and caught it all).  Although I have to take responsibility for my over eating over the years, I partially blame the food industry as well.  The advertisements of sugary drinks and cereals, the hidden ingredients in food that are addictive, the special offers of unhealthy snacks (buy one get one free), and the pricing that keeps healthy food high when a family pizza is available for less than a pomegranate.  Food has also become a crutch at times, too.

I realise that physical activity for people has reduced a lot over the years.  As well as consuming excess calories, we are not burning them off.  I know as a child we walked every where.  It was a two mile walk to school.  Now most children get a lift or the bus.  We had fields and woods to explore and run around in which are now slowly being replaced by housing estates.  I  think that I do not exercise as much as I did before the pandemic.  The gyms have doubled in price (probably due to making up for being closed for most of 2 years) and are not possible to afford now on my budget. I think that as a society we have got more used to staying at home (and working from home) and sitting and watching telly, reading social media, or playing on games consoles. I still believe that I exercise more than most people as I try to walk 10.000 steps most days, but I would have done double that 5 years ago.  I don’t think that it is just old age, either.

My plan going forward is

1. To move more this winter
2. To only eat in an 8 or 9 hour window and fast the rest of the time.
3. To cut out snacks
4. To reduce desserts and sugary food
5. To drink more water
6. To reduce my UPF to 15%
7. To continue to cook from scratch and eat seasonally
8. To continue to wash any fruit I obtain from other sources in bicarbonate of soda to reduce the impact of preservatives.
9. To eat 35 different fruit and vegetables a week
10. To look for new sources of  good nutrition and continue to improve my foraging knowledge.

I am doing these things not just to reduce weight, but for my health, as there are so many natural foods that are free medicines and keep us healthy.  Have you noticed how food has changed over the years, and are you intentionally trying to change the way that you eat?