the times | Saturday April 9 2022 29
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Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk or call 020 7711 7826Calorie counting can be a lifetime’s curse
Putting values on menus may lead to smaller portions of healthier food but could alarm those with eating disorders
how many calories are in a
hamburger.” Indeed “pro-ana”
websites are full of tips such as “eat
mustard, only 3 calories a sachet”.
As the excellent National Food
Strategy report notes, today’s dietary
patterns have formed over at least 70
years and will take generations to
change. Humans are programmed to
gorge on ultra-high-calorie
processed foods, just as birds like
fat-balls. So companies market these
foods harder, we buy more, expand
the market, get fatter still, in a never-
ending cycle. Calories alone are
meaningless: 200-worth of fruit or
cake is not of equal merit.
The truth is we have lost touch
with our natural appetite. I’ve
interviewed Susie Orbach too,
author of Fat Is A Feminist Issue, and
asked what she’d say to a child who
over-ate. She said: “Do you really
want this? You can have it if you like,
but are you still hungry?” I’ve found
that question useful myself in
silencing my inner calorie counter.
Am I eating as a reward, because I’m
miserable, or because the fridge is
full of cheese, so why the hell not?
Now I visit my mother and
take her chocolate biscuits, custard
tarts, cream cake. Now she’s
bed-bound and can barely speak: all
she can do is eat. “Mmm,” she says at
every mouthful, at last free from
calorie tyranny, and lifelong female
guilt about food.know. Just the massive masses in
McDonald’s who can’t be trusted to
eat right. Food, as always, being a
class issue.
At my birthday lunch on Sunday I
might enjoy wiener schnitzel with ice
cream sundae to follow. Caring about
calories on feast days reminds me of
interviewing Rosemary “hip and
thigh” Conley years ago about her
Christmas diet plan. Listening to this
trim, determined woman note the
content of non-alcoholic brandybutter I both marvelled at her
steeliness and wanted to scream at
the tedium she was inflicting on
womankind. Can’t we have one day
off? No, agonise over that second
pig in blanket.
Those who have gone beyond
“ordinary” obsession into food
disorder have greeted the new
menus with dismay. Parents wonder
how they’ll get anorexic teenagers to
eat out at all. Wagamama has
promised calorie-free menus too, but
imagine the tussle to read over
someone’s shoulder. Although a
friend hospitalised for years with a
food disorder remarks: “It sounds
cold, but anorexics already knowMen, who are likely to have less
complex relationships with food and
who tuck in with the enviable
heartiness of Tudor banqueters,
may be surprised that a 12-inch
pepperoni pizza (approx 1,000) plus a
few pints is more than their daily
calorie requirement. But most
people ordering a Five Guys
cheeseburger (840) know it’s not
going to loosen their trousers. Like
those who every morning chug a
Starbucks White Chocolate Mocha
Frappuccino: 381 calories just for
coffee! Yes, they could drink
Americano with semi-skimmed. But
the Frap is both delicious and
comforting since it has a similar
sweet-fat composition to breastmilk,
and if you’re obese already, why not
bung in a muffin too.
Earlier government research found
that restaurants with calorie counts
served healthier food. Perhaps they
had an existing salad-munching
clientele or, over time, notice that
customers when faced with big
numbers order lighter options. This
might cause the chains to improve
their recipes or, more cynically, just
cut portion size.
But for most of us, eating out is a
treat: an occasion for pleasure not
self-loathing. And richer people
won’t be nagged by the calorie count
on their risotto alla pescatora since
small, exclusive restaurants can lob
in a pound of butter and no one needM
y mother saved little
booklets pulled out of
women’s magazines
listing the calorie count
of everything. I’d find
her scribbled daily records: boiled
egg (60), 1 slice toast (75), 1/2
grapefruit (42). Although not
overweight at all by modern
standards, she would sporadically
feel overwhelming pressure “to take
myself in hand”.
Then she would stock up on
Slimcea and Ryvita so the dreary
tallying could resume: small apple
(55), 4oz cottage cheese (110)...
Calorific values are passed down
mother to daughter, as unquestioned
female lore. I’d bet most women, but
maybe fewer men, know what a
small banana contains (72).
Sometimes I feel relief that I have
boys not girls.
Even now, the involuntarily daily
calculation fills my head. I can tell
you foods which are calorie bargains
(Jaffa Cakes, only 46 each!) or calorie
traps (“luxury” granola: 4 billion per
bowl). That inner ticker tape of
denial v indulgence, good v bad
foods, is both joyless and pointless. I
don’t remember my mother ever
getting much thinner, just losing her
self-control by teatime and miserably
eating a scone.
This weekend, diners will for the
first time find calories on menus at
larger restaurant chains. Given that
63 per cent of us are overweight, that
obesity costs the NHS £18 billion a
year and has hastened thousands of
Covid deaths and that the
government feels obliged to issue
guidance that people shouldn’t be
spherical, only half as round as we
are tall, every calorie counts.
But will it change our behaviour in
Nando’s to know the halloumi sticks
starter is 452 before you’ve evenreached the lowest-cal main course
of boneless chicken thighs (706)? I
guess human calculators like me will
think twice. Already, picking a
sandwich in M&S I check the packet
and put back the one I’d rather eat
for the one I think I should. So I’d
certainly reconsider the Nando’s
Choc-A-Lot Cake (666).
Yet for some diners, restaurant
calorie counts will come as a shock.For most of us eating
out is a treat, not a
time for self-loathing
The truth is that we
have lost touch with
our natural appetite
Janice
Turner@victoriapeckham