I Imperative cooking: pleasure L not potatoes
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plan to make every citizen eat 1,095 egg- sized potatoes every year has been mixed. The Guardian's was the most irrelevant. That is not as predictable as you might think. When the Great Potato Plan was leaked in August, the paper's food colum- nist, Matthew Fort, was as scathing as the rest of the media about it 'the Govern- ment's plans for controlling the nation's health through the diet takes some swal- lowing'. This time the consumer affairs correspondent, James Erlichman, wrote about it less than critically (there is much to criticise in a supposedly scientific report which admits its recommendations `are to some extent arbitrary'). In his ver- sion, it was not the dining public but `industry [that] finds fatty hit-list hard to swallow'. Someone should introduce Messrs Fort and Erlichman.
The difference was reproduced else- where. Chefs, food columnists, people who thought the Plan nonsense. Consumer and health people, who live in a world of pres- sure groups and lifespan-worship, and tend to judge food by its bowel output or the extent to which it contributes to Mrs Bot- tomley's coercive and manifestly socialist ambitions, were sympathetic. What is irrel- evant about Mr Erlichman's headline was made quite clear in other papers and even in a column next to his own. They asked ordinary eaters how they would react to the injunction to eat 1,095 potatoes a year and half a boiled sweet a day (none on Sun- days). What they made clear is that it is not so much the industry that is going to scup- per the Plan, not a sinister vested interest, but the preferences of the ordinary con- sumer. 'No one's going to stop eating cakes round here,' said one. 'Not easy to carry out,' said another. At Rules, the manager pointed out that 'people have stopped tak- ing notice'. The Times headline neatly cap-
'Roast for two days or six hours on a microwave.'
tured the truth, which is that 'diners are in no mood to stomach nanny's eating code'. This diet battle has been going on for over ten years now, and the health activists and some consumerists persist in trying to represent it as one between industry and the healthists, representing the interests of the consumers. It's a sort of replacement to the capitalist-worker struggle. But the con- sumers, like the workers, won't play the allotted part. Of course industry dislikes the diet, but it could adjust. The consumers hate it and won't. The truth is that the bat- tle is between a small group of dietary enthusaists and everyone else, consumers and industry. The activists represent next to no one. The fact that, after a decade of hec- toring from dietary enthusiasts, no one out- side north London or for more than a week has signed up to Dietary Correctness is not because they have been hoodwinked by the evil advertising industry. It is not because they are unaware of what they 'should' be eating. It is because they prefer what they eat at present.
I do not know what pleasure the health activists have ever brought anyone, but every day the food industry gives pleasure to mil- lions. Fair enough, it's not the sort of grub readers of this column would care to eat. You might say it's a fairly low sort of plea- sure that it gives. But 'they' like it. They get pleasure from it every day. There are a lot of `them' and a lot of days, and that makes a lot of enjoyment. Indeed, only one industry does better than the food industry in giving plea- sure, 'welfare', in its pre-corrupted sense, and that is the drinks industry. Do the health fanatics feel any humility when faced with this torrent of pleasure? On the contrary. The Plan's most arrogant section is par. S1.4- This tells the recalcitrant populace not only that they should do as they are told but that they will 'enjoy' the new regime. The correct diet is 'enjoyable' they say. But what of us, Imperative Cooks? This column has always claimed that really good cooks largely ignore the mass food industry. But it doesn't do us much harm. On the other hand, the regulations fostered by the health activists have closed slaughter yards, street markets and grubby but excellent restaurants. The reason we cannot buy, properly fattened beef or pork, calves brains and sweetbreads, good cockles and a host of other things we need is due to these meddling healthists. Now their dietary obsessions are going to make the masses restive by interfering with their chips and cakes. The Government is not up to discharging its most basic duties, as the crime epidemic shows. What on earth is it doing wasting its time and our money trying to engineer potato consump- tion targets? If Mr Major wants to cut pub- lic expenditure, he should cut this bossy committee and the particular civil servants in the Department of Health who so fanati- cally promote it. I have their names.
Digby Anderson
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