Imperative cooking: time to kick out Mr Waldegrave

GOOD AND amusing news for all who are worried about health and, more especially, food fascism: a recent research finding claims that the whole population is short of vitamin D. They will, no doubt, all get rick- ets and serve them right. For what the newspaper which carried the report did not make sufficiently clear is that vitamin D is to be found, of course, in dairy products the sauces and cheeses we Imperative cooks like; notably in eggs and in that provider of so much goodness, liver. The production of vitamin D is also helped by sunbathing.

Obviously, if you believe the study, the population, apart from we few Imperative chaps, has been sheepishly following the urgings of the health fascists. After cower- ing in darkened rooms eating muesli and brown rice for years, they are now paying the penalty.

Several recent findings have claimed that alcohol, far from being bad for you, is pro- tective against heart disease. The best of all, from Finland, found that a group of subjects who obeyed the full health-fascist agenda actually had worse health than one which carried on eating, drinking and exer- cising normally — or whatever is normal in Finland.

It is too early to declare the panic about food and health over. But there are clear signs the tide is turning. A new book with which I was associated (Health, Lifestyle and Environment: Countering the Panic, Social Affairs Unit, £9.99) provides some evidence for this change. To date, against two or three whining protests, predictably from people who derive their income from the health-diet scare business, we have a huge number of 'Thank God's and 'At last's.

The book also shows why the panic can- not continue. The health fascists have over- done it. They have now raised so many scares, listed so many 'risk factors' to be avoided that not even the most faithful of their disciples could put the full dogma into practice.

Dr Petr Shrabanek, who, in the book, counted the risk factors which have been 'associated', as the slimy euphemism goes, with heart disease as 246, now tells me it is nearing the 300 mark. Each of the three food groups — protein, fat, carbohydrate — has been 'strongly linked' with subse- quent deaths, many of them from cancer. Each scare may have a certain plausibility but many now contradict others. The mes- sage does not add up.

As the tide turns, ordinary British eaters who have stupidly trusted in the assorted politicians, health lobbyists, vegetarians, environmental oddities and regulation- happy federasts, and gone without the food and habits they so enjoyed, will look for revenge. Who should they attack first?

May I suggest, particularly with an elec- tion coming, Mr William Waldegrave? The Conservative Government, in general, has behaved treacherously over food matters. Would anyone have believed that such a government could bring the weight of the state and law down on ladies who wish to sell home-made cakes and pies in a church hall?

Yet that is but the latest lunacy resulting from the Government's support for those former rat-catchers now known as environ- mental health officers. The transformation of cockles into wizened, shrivelled imita- tions of their former selves, due to enforced 'double-boiling', the hounding of fishmongers with street slabs, the policy of closing small slaughter yards and hence depriving cooks of blood for black pudding, chitterlings and tripes, and many other invasions into the crevices of shopping life which I have documented in these pages over the years, have taken place or contin- ued under 'Conservative' rule.

The Government's wet attitude to Euro- regulation ensures that there will be a vast increase in threats. Prohibitions and bans 'He only thinks that he's dead — he took an overdose of placebos.' have been accompanied by tax-funded exhortations to 'healthy living' and ever- increasing state support for the Health Education Authority — an organisation which long ago replaced education with crude healthist propaganda.

It was this Government which threw countless small egg producers out of busi- ness and stopped their customers buying the eggs they wanted. It is part of a general move to turn the buying and selling of food from a private agreement between cus- tomer and provider into a public and politi- cal matter. Nothing could be further from a conservative attitude than this politicising of the private acts of daily life.

Mr Gummer must take some blame. But it is Mr Waldegrave who has espoused the politicisation ideology most comprehen- sively and fully. He actually appears proud of his proposed 10-year State Plan, The Nation's Health', currently a Green paper. Remember that 'health' here is no vague well-being. The State Plan sets out Soviet- style health production targets to be met with percentage reduced consumption of this and that 'unhealthy food'. Now ask, what is a Conservative minister doing talk- ing about the nation's health in this collec- tivist way?

The Plan talks of health aims and deci- sions not as the accumulated and varying freely undertaken acts of individuals and families but as mass trends for politicians to engineer. This Government does not pro- vide information and leave it to individuals to decide. The role of government in the Plan is to set the aims, in consultation with not noticeably representative lobby groups, and then to exhort and possibly coerce the people into meeting the targets.

The term 'health' or 'food fascism' has competed with others such as 'food-Lenin- ist' (one of my own) and 'the new Puri- tanism'. 'Puritanism' was always the wrong term. The Puritans were very much for indi- vidual and personal responsibility. The healthists are against it. In the United States, they blame all health misfortunes not on the individual or bad luck but on the company which sold him the cigarette, the beer or the swimming pool with insufficient

life-belts. In Britain, according to the healthists, the fault and hence responsibili- ty is the Government's. It must regulate, propagandise, ban and generally bully the population into the behaviour of which the healthists approve.

Mr Waldegrave is said to be an intelli- gent and gentle man. That makes it worse.

He should have known better than to get mixed 'up in something so stupid, ungentle and unconservative. There will come a time to wreak revenge on all the people who have been involved in this business. But first, whatever the results of the election, Imperative cooks will wish to see Mr Waldegrave kicked out of his Ministry, and, above all, out of our kitchens.

Digby Anderson