Publications

Medical Scribblings - September 28 / 2002

The food in the supermarkets is really fantastic nowadays: isn’t it?

You can buy a hundred different types of crisps and if you are really keen there are special deals with monster packs at give away prices. When you walk out of the shop there are a profusion of fast food outlets all crying out for your custom.

It’s got to the point where in America they are suing the companies for making them fat. I guess that it is about instant gratification. So if you are feeling a bit down and maybe a bit hungry there it is. You don’t have to wait or do any preparation you just eat. Like any addictive drug the effect is very short lived and then you need some more. In fact many of these foods are designed to be addictive.

Humans evolved in a world where food was in short supply most of the time. What they really craved were fats and sugars as these gave them lots of calories in concentrated forms. In the wild these two constituents of food are in very short supply. You can find sugar in a wild bees nest but have to be a brave man to try and get it. Our technology allows us to refine basic foods and concentrate them down to the bare ingredients. When we take these we have a sudden ‘hit’ and then a subsequent downer needing another ‘hit’.

I don’t have any easy solution to the problem and it is a very real problem. We are all getting heavier and the children in particular are very susceptible to the appeal of fast food with entertainments or toys thrown in. One possibility would be to change our whole way of living. I can’t see that happening – can you? Another would be a technological fix. They are on their way in the form of tablets that stop you feeling hungry or modified foods that you can’t absorb or liposuction to suck the fat out again. Probably the easiest is to make us all do some walking every day. No longer will you be able to park the car next to the house but will have to walk half a mile to get to it. That would really cause an outcry!

Some safe cycle ways and footpaths would be a start. The UK has the highest child death rate due to being injured on the road. I feel that we should press for these at a time that billions of pounds are being spent on the infrastructure of the airport etc. Where is the cycle path to the airport?

John Schofield