Hard to swallow

In his Road to Wigan Pier, which touches often on the miserable diets of the poor in that unfortunate town, George Orwell reserved a special contempt “the food crank” who is

…by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in the hopes of adding five years onto the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity.

Such sorts were attracted, he said, by

… the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ [which] draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

Those words were published in 1937, when the Left’s ratbag fringe was the chief sanctuary of those given to lecturing a population recently reminded of what they were missing by the empty bellies of the Great Depression and, according to the food fanatics, shouldn’t be eating anyway. In one word: meat to build bones and bodies.

That was then. Today the commissars of cuisine no longer need hector and lecture from the outer edges of rational discourse. Indeed, the local variety now get to deliver their sermons from the pulpit of Their ABC’s news pages, where authors Rosemary Stanton and Kris Barnden today prescribe the diet we must embrace to stymie “the ongoing devastation of our planet.”

Blessed with the authoritative tag line “analysis”, rather than the more appropriate “opinion”, they detail a menu that, while it might not help you live longer, will certainly make it seem that way (emphasis added).

Breakfast: Homemade or good-quality muesli with fruit and yoghurt or, in cooler weather, cold-cooked oats with dried fruit and pepitas. An occasional meal of egg, mushrooms, tomatoes or beans or a Middle Eastern shakshuka (spiced eggs) for a weekend special.

Lunch: Wholegrain and seeded sandwiches with avocado, salad or vegies, plus falafel or a portion of cheese (there are daily limits of 500ml of milk or the equivalent in yoghurt or cheese). Hot or cold soups, or salads with legumes such as delicious blue-green lentils.

Dinner: The weekly limit for red meat is just under 100g for beef and lamb, and the same for pork, but either can be substituted for the other. That’s two dinners with modest servings of meat suitable for a stir-fry, or as part of a winter casserole bolstered with plenty of the highly-recommended legumes and vegetables.

One hundred grams is approximately the weight of  two McDonald’s patties. Chew slowly, proles, because that’s your ration for the week.

Orwell went to his grave still considering himself a man of the Left, despite enduring his nominal comrades’ scorn for reporting unfiltered truth in Homage to Catalonia, Wigan Pier and the many essays lamenting bourgeois bolsheviks’ passion for imposing their picayune preoccupations on lesser mortals.

The ABC’s foray into advocacy for dietary crankdom would most likely have disabused him, finally and at last, that the Left harbours anything resembling a mere shred of respect for individual liberty, right down to what less enlightened mortals should be allowed to put in their mouths.

— roger franklin