A faulty digestive tract
Digby Anderson
THE POLITICS OF FOOD: THE SECRET WORLD OF WHITEHALL AND THE FOOD GIANTS WHICH THREATEN YOUR HEALTH by Geoffrey Cannon Century Hutchinson, £14.95 Mr Cannon is a journalist who thinks the British eat badly. It is not quite clear who the British are — he refers to 'the average British diet' and elsewhere seems to suggest we are all in alarming danger. Then again he knows, in advance, that anyone who reads the book is in danger: the cover warns 'Your health' is threatened. More of this casual disregard for social distinctions later.
By bad eating, he does not mean that we are careless of food, lazy and incompetent at preparing it or have a national cuisine worse than the French and Chinese. He has little interest in matters so crucial to those who are interested in eating. He has produced a tract of 565 pages without any apparent awareness that people find eating food enjoyable. In fact, he has not taken much notice of what 'we' like and want, because he is obsessed with his message for us. He thinks what we eat is bad for our health. He is sure, though he has no formal scientific or medical qualifications, that there are good and bad food categories and that he knows exactly which foods fall into each. He wants to recruit us to his cam- paign to make the state ensure we eat properly, i.e. according to his judgments. There must be 'a national policy', five year plans, government interference in agricul- ture, food processing, distribution and retailing,. with handouts for all who pro- duce 'good foods', and fines — discrimin- ate taxes — on those who produce food which the politicians decree is not good, presumably even if 'we' the silly customers want it. Foods we don't want or buy much of will be subsidised so they are more attractive.
He wants this because he is sure, just as sure as he is about what is good for us, that the reason we eat 'bad' food is because we have been hoodwinked by a conspiracy of food producers, politicians and scientists in their pay and thrall. Receiving funds is, in Mr Cannon's sort of journalism, generally good for an insinuation of the possibility of undue influence. He favours such devices as lists of MPs who have 'direct or indirect links' with the food industry, carefully prefaced by `to point a link . . is not in itself to suggest anything disreputable'. Hmmn.
He ignores 'the possibility' that scientists and others in the state's pay might be subject to undue influence especially in the expanded political Food Ministry, which he urges should have extensive funds. He does not consider that scientists funded by companies producing foods he approves of are, presumably, as liable or not to such influence as those funded by companies he dislikes. In this sense, his inquiry is not political enough. Why does he not tell us, for example, the political opinions of several close to his cause? Food can be exploited for profit, but also for political advantage, in pursuit of political power, or by those keen to attack private enterprise for ideological reasons. His political in- terest is selective. This is, albeit with a lower case `p', the party politics of food.
And, anyway, why does he prefer to judge scientific sources he disapproves of by their possible associations rather than the worth of their evidence or a controlled review of their peer's opinions of their work in the scientific journals? If this were an old-style Sunday Times article, it might be judged provocative or controversial, but it claims to be much more, to be 'meticu- lous' and 'definitive'. So the crucial ques- tions are not about whether this or that fact or opinion is interesting but about whether this is what it purports to be, a systematic inquiry. Nothing less than a systematic inquiry would justify the huge claims for the political direction of eating.
I am not a scientist either but you do not have to be to find the author's use of evidence highly eccentric. It is not so much that he chooses that which suits his case but that he chooses from a range whose bound- aries are never declared. Scientific reports, newspaper stories and anecdotes are brought in to fuel the argument. There is no search through the literature, as one would expect, still less a sample of pub- lished scientific opinions. There is not the slightest reason to suppose he has, as he ought to have done, looked for the strongest case or cases against him. Yet the effect of food on health is an issue which divides reputable scientists, at least when it comes to the sort of details which would be necessary for state intervention.
It is poor social science too. The level of aggregation is much too high: 'The British diet' indeed! Diet varies with class, region, sex, age, and a host of other variables which are themselves only factors, indi- viduals eating according to choices they make under such influences. Eating occurs in social groups, families, peer groups, canteens, according to traditions, values, rituals and the rest. Anyone setting out systematically to learn why we eat the tad' or good food we do, would be bound at least to consider such candidate causes. Has the increase in working women affected family diet? Has permissive child- rearing extended to eating discipline? What has been the effect of affluence, immigration, mobility? Mr Cannon ignores it all. There's hardly a word on society at all and next to none on individuals as consumers. 'We' scarcely appear in all those pages. For consumers don't really count. Society doesn't count. His explan- ation is automatically the suppliers, as if they were autonomous of demand and the wider culture.
And his,answer: what evidence does he give that the political solution, state direc- tion of eating would work? None. After all the arguments of the past decade, the advocates of state intervention are still arrogant enough to press for a massive new departure in it with no evidence at all that it would work or not be counter- productive. Whether judged as science, social policy or even political exposure, this book is not systematic. It is, indeed revelation-journalism writ tediously large.
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