Changing Food culture

Obesity is on the rise and our changing food culture must take some responsibility. Promoting Health charts some of the changes in food consumption and preparation patterns since the days of rationing and underlines that only by changing our food culture and lifestyles can we stem the rising tide of obesity and diet-related disease such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
8 We are what we eat. But what, and how we eat is changing radically. Our relationship with food is central to our culture and wellbeing, and affects our individual lifestyles, health, social routines and body images. 1 Throughout recent times there have undoubtedly been enormous improvements to diet - a key factor in the longer life expectancy we anticipate today. More recently, however, there have been health concerns regarding poor nutrition. Whilst under-nutrition is very rare in the UK, poor diets and over-consumption are the main contributing factors to premature death. Diseases recognised as being linked to diet include cancer, strokes, diabetes and hypertension and figures show that trends of premature death from dietrelated illnesses are set to become even worse. Increasingly, another outcome of our changing food culture is obesity, which is also on the rise, and declining physical activity along with changing diets must take some responsibility.

Changing habits
Our eating habits have changed at such a rate that you do not even have to be very old to notice them. For older generations especially, these changes are most evident. For those who can remember rationing, ending in 1954, everyone had access to wholesome foods, albeit a limited supply; but it was a period that is still held up as when the populations diet was never better. Those who liked sugar in their tea or salt on their food had to go without! Those who can remember such restrictions on diet would therefore be all the more surprised at the pace of more recent changes in food consumption and preparation patterns. Some would point nonetheless to changes such as the incessant food and cookery programmes on TV, to the increasing number of food columns in practically every newspaper and the volumes of cookery books available as if they were evidence of an active food culture. According to Matthew Fort, the truth is they are manifestations of the death throes of British domestic cooking. 2 The roots of this rapid decline go back to a period of full employment in the 1960s which resulted in a steady increase in married women and mothers of young children working outside the home. Women, however, continued to be responsible for organising the shopping and doing the cooking and the combined burden of work inside and outside the home resulted in an easily-identifiable mass market for labour saving devices, especially for the kitchen.3 Traditional domestic skills such as cooking have since started to be lost in the name of progress and today they have all but gone, only to be replaced by our reliance upon microwave ovens, frozen dinners, ready-prepared vegetables, cook-in sauces and convenience foods. Since the first convenience meal, Vesta Chicken Curry, hit the shops in 1962, sales have rocketed to 11 billion in 2001 with projections for these meals to grow by 33% in the next 10 years.2 This is surely the death knell for the tradition of domestic cooking as progressively more food processing, preparation and cooking is taking place in factories rather than the home.

Cooking skills

This loss of traditional cooking skills is apparent for all age groups. A recent Guardian ICM poll (April 2003) reports that three quarters of people asked how long it takes to soft boil an egg got the wrong answer.4 The Good Food Foundation surveyed some children on what they regard as cooking skills - a selection of the surprising answers and statistics is listed below. Similarly, in 1993 a MORI poll quizzed 7-15 year olds in the UK about their skills. When asked Which of these things can you do yourself?, 93% said they could play computer games as opposed to 38% being able to cook a jacket potato in the oven.6

Fast food and takeaways

Increasingly, we are becoming a society reliant upon others cooking and serving the food to us. The growing popularity of fast food outlets is just one of the many cultural changes that have been brought about by globalisation. The obesity epidemic that began in the United States during the late 1970s is now spreading to the rest of the world, with fast food being one of the main causes. By eating like Americans, people all over the world are now beginning to look more like many Americans - overweight or obese. Between 1984 and 1993, the number of fast food restaurants in Great Britain roughly doubled - and so did the obesity rate among adults.7 The British now eat more fast food than any other country in Western Europe and the fast food sector has been projected to rise by 30% over the next 10 years.2 Closer to home, the number of new restaurants and takeaways opened throughout Northern Ireland between 1995 and 2002 was 1695, representing an increase from 5,787 to 7,482 or almost 30%.8 These figures have risen over the years in line with rates of obesity until today almost half of all men and more than one third of women in Northern Ireland are overweight with a further one fifth of men and one quarter of women being classed as obese.9 Looking abroad to Spain and Italy, obesity is much less of a problem where spending on fast food is much less. The relationship between a nations fast food consumption and the rate of obesity has not, however, been the subject of any long-term epidemiological study. Nevertheless, it is quite apparent that wherever the fast food chain goes, waistlines expand accordingly. In China, the number of overweight teenagers has roughly tripled in the last decade and in Japan, where overweight people were once a rarity fed on a healthy diet of rice, fish and vegetables, obesity and overweight are now problems. Unsurprisingly, the arrival of burgers and fries is seen as a major contributory factor.7

Advertising culture versus obesity

Health officials have long concluded that prevention, not treatment, is the best solution to stopping the rising tide of obesity. In todays consumer culture what better place to start looking than at advertising and how the numerous images we are being bombarded with every day influence our food choices. Professor Tim Lang has done extensive work on this very subject and points out that most of the 600m spent on advertising food in the UK each year promotes snacks, sweets and fatty foods.10 In 2002, according to Nielsen Media Research, food and drink companies spent a massive 686m on advertising. Of the top 20 British advertisers, five are food companies and McDonalds alone spent 42m, more than Nike or British Airways. Less than 1% was spent on ads for fresh fruit and vegetables.11

European consumer groups are nonetheless fighting for a complete ban on all television advertising directed at children. In 1991, Sweden banned all TV advertising aimed at children under 12 and restrictions on ads during childrens programmes have been imposed in Greece, Norway, Denmark, Austria and the Netherlands. In the UK, the advertising industry is vigorously defending the right to advertise during childrens programming, against growing pressure, and the government appears to be backing them with culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, telling a meeting of food manufacturers and advertisers last year that there were no plans to outlaw adverts during childrens TV as this could lead to a fall in the quality of programming.11

The modern food culture dilemma

The dilemma that we all face now is how we try and modify our unhealthy food habits so as to avoid a major public health problem. According to Professor Sue Southon of the Institute of Food Research, there are several things that can be done relatively easily to change both consumer behaviour and industry-led initiatives in addition to putting the usual increased effort into encouraging people to eat more healthily. June 2003 Promoting Health Promoting Health June 2003 9 limit pack sizes, ban Jumbo packs stop buy one get one free offers on unhealthy foods provide accurate and relevant information bring cooking back onto the national curriculum sort out labelling if we are serious about tackling obesity and diabetes increase the size of the information on energy content and put it on the front of foods. She recognises that several parallel approaches are required since relying on the hope that the consumer will ...see the light and substantially change their behaviour is unrealistic. 12 People can, however, change things if they really want to. If there is sufficient collective will anything is possible, such as the government back-track on the introduction of genetically modified foods. Many authors also argue that government initiatives must involve encouraging a return to the local as food supply chains are becoming more and more mechanical. Initiatives such as farmers markets, community farms and food cooperatives are being encouraged to produce and promote local produce and to educate local communities about good and healthy eating practice. By looking at examples of good practice overseas we can see France and Italy among others who have been extremely active in protecting their indigenous and healthy food cultures. In France, the government actively supports la semaine du got, a week of food and culinary activity designed to stimulate cooking and eating in children and in Italy it is still the norm for the family to gather at least once a day to eat food prepared at home. As a result their children are gastronomically literate. However, it is not all doom and gloom in the UK - some progress is being made, albeit at a slow pace. One positive step soon to be seen concerns the fat content of meat products. A new legal definition of meat based on a new European Commission definition is to be introduced in the UK in early summer. The new definition will not allow offal or mechanically recovered meat to count as meat for the purposes of meat content declarations in a wide variety of meat products and strict limits will also be placed on fat levels. This will have the effect of encouraging producers to use better quality meat in meat products.8 Long may positive change continue.

Conclusion
This overview of some of the major shifts in food production, preparation and consumption over the last 50 years or so outlines the need for consumers to know more and understand more about the foods they are eating and the harm that a poor diet can do to long-term health. We, as consumers, all have a collective responsibility to insist upon having relevant information readily available at point of sale, on packaging, from clear, concise and uniform messages from government and from all levels of the food production chain. Such disclosure of information may not come about easily and may encounter stiff opposition from producer interest groups and retailers, but only by changing our food culture and recognising that food is not simply a pitstop to refuel to get on with more important matters can we reduce our already high rates of obesity, cancer and heart disease.

References
1. Holden J, Howland J, Stedman Jones, D. Foodstuff: Living in an age of feast and famine. London: Demos, 2002. 2. Fort M. The death of cooking. In: Food - the way we eat now. The Guardian 2003 May 10; Supplement Issue 1: 11. 3. Murcott A. Food culture in Britain. www.open2.net/everwondered_food/culture/culture_index0 2.htm 4. Lawrence F, Millar S (Editors). Food - the way we eat now. The Guardian 2003 May 10; Supplement Issue 1: 3. 5. Lang T. Is there any way out of here? National Audit Office conference, 2002; London. 6. Lang T. A food policy for the next 10 years: some pointers. Parliamentary Food and Health Forum conference, 2002; London. 7. Schlosser E. Fast Food Nation - What the all-American meal is doing to the world. London: Penguin, 2002. 8. Personal communication from Eastern Group Environmental Health Committee. 9. Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. Health and Wellbeing Survey 1997. Belfast: Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, Central Survey Unit, 1997. 10. Lang T. The challenge of food culture: healing the madness. Schumacher Lectures. Bristol: 1996. 11. Cozens C. After the break. In: Food - the way we eat now. The Guardian 2003 May 10; Supplement Issue 1: 30. 12. Associate Parliamentary Food Health Forum. Industrial Support for Public Health, Tuesday 11 March 2003, Committee Room 10, House of Commons.