As a BBC series investigates ‘The Men Who Made Us Fat’, and I continue to read ‘The Headspace Diet’ book, I consider just how powerful an understanding of the history of unhealthy food can be when it comes to my decision to eat it
Thinking as I have recently about eating and food (when do I ever not?!), but more importantly, about why people eat what they do even while knowing just how unhealthy it is, I jumped at the chance to see the first installment in new BBC series The Men Who Made Us Fat, which purports to investigate why the Western world’s collective waistline continues to increase to health-threatening proportions.
The first programme focussed on that all-encompassing ‘bad guy’, high-fructose corn syrup, which, it explains, was introduced to the Western foodstuff from America and is often indicted as one of the key reasons why people in developed countries are fat, and getting fatter.
Having myself just returned from a trip to the States – where even more people are fat and obese than in Britain, and where there seemed to be noticeably more outlets selling fast, convenient, varied and calorific food than in even the UK (it certainly looked that way to me, anyway) ‒ I was very interested to hear more about this ‘high-fructose corn syrup’. Especially since the last smoothie I drunk before leaving New York City (incidentally the ‘small’ size was almost the same size as my head) conspicuously and proudly bore the words ‘Absolutely no high-fructose corn syrup’ stamped onto its huge plastic cup.
Just what was this stuff, and could I blame it for my own demons with keeping my weight down – a problem I clearly share, albeit, my size attests, to a lesser degree than the rest of the Western world’s even more overweight citizens?
Hannah Jane Thompson 