genetic and hormonal factors in the person eating the food, all have a part to play. The old adage that it is better to leave the dining table wanting more than to leave it fully satiated is probably still as good advice as any for those genuinely wanting to avoid obesity.
This may be difficult to achieve in an ‘I want it now’ society, but it might be helped by teaching elementary nutrition and the long-term health risks of obesity at an early age rather than resorting to propaganda based on half-truths and unproven ideas. But for many of the morbidly obese, the ones really at risk, it is only advances in the understanding of the pathology of obesity and its specific and appropriate treatment that offer any genuine hope of sustained benefit.
BY STANLEY FELDMAN
THE MYTH: Junk food causes ill health.
THE FACT: There is no such thing as food that is bad and food that is good for you.
The term ‘junk food’ is an oxymoron. Either something is a food, in which case it is not junk, or it has no nutritional value, in which case it cannot be called a food. It cannot be both. Ask most people what they understand by the term and they think of McDonalds’ hamburgers. None of their explanations for why hamburgers are junk food makes any sense; rather, they believe hamburgers are the cause of serious health problems because they have been told it is so. Any food eaten to excess is, as Paracelsus said in 1538, potentially harmful. Morgan Spurlock ate a diet composed solely of McDonalds’ food for a month for his film Super Size Me. At the end of that time, he felt unwell and had put on weight. Had he eaten a similar weight of ‘healthy’ sardines for the same time he would no doubt have felt just as unwell and put on just as much weight! No particular individual component of any mixed diet is harmful. The concept of ‘good foods’ and ‘junk foods’ is nonsense.
Some rather ill-informed individuals have so convinced themselves of the dangers of hamburgers that they have suggested taxing them or giving them a red warning label. Quite why hamburgers should be considered such a threat to our health that they should be singled out for taxation defies reason. Why should mincing a piece of beef turn it from being a ‘good food’ into one that is such dangerous ‘junk’ that it needs to be taxed in order to dissuade people from eating it? What would happen if, instead of mincing the meat, it was chopped into chunks and made into boeuf bourguignon – should it be taxed at only 50 per cent? To try to justify this illogical proposal, these self-appointed food experts tell us that hamburgers contain more fat than a fillet steak. They fail to point out that the ratio of protein to fat in a hamburger is usually higher than in most lamb chops, and that most hamburgers contain less fat than a Sainsbury’s Waldorf salad.
But, that aside, why should the fat be bad? Would these same people like to tax the cheese offered at the end of the meal because, after all, it contains the same basic animal fat as the hamburger? Or perhaps it is the hamburger bun that they feel is unhealthy. But the same self-appointed dietary experts would not object to a helping of food in the form of pasta or a slice or two of wholemeal brown bread (which, by the way, is the bread with the highest level of pesticide). The pasta, the bread and the bun produce a similar carbohydrate load in our food and are absorbed into the bloodstream as the same constituents. As for the tomato ketchup on the hamburger, it is rich in vitamin C and the antioxidant polyphenols that are supposed to keep cell degeneration and cancer at bay.
There is no such thing as junk food. All food is composed of carbohydrate, fat and protein. An intake of a certain amount of each is essential for a healthy life. In addition, a supply of certain minerals, such as iron, calcium and tiny amounts of selenium, and a supply of vitamins, fibre, salt and fluid contribute to health. Once the necessary amounts of carbohydrate, fat and protein have been taken, any long-term surplus is stored as glycogen or fat in the body. Protein is protein whether it comes from an Aberdeen Angus steak or a McDonald’s hamburger. It is broken up in the gut into its amino-acid building blocks, which are identical in both the hamburger and the steak; and although the relative amounts of each particular amino acid may vary slightly, this has no nutritional significance. These broken-down products of protein are absorbed into the bloodstream to be restructured into body proteins in the various cells of the body. Any excess ends up as fat. One source of animal protein is not necessarily of better value to the body than another, nor is it more or less fattening. A diet consisting only of Aberdeen Angus steak would be as ‘junky’ as one composed only of hamburgers. Similarly, animal fat is broken down and absorbed in the same way whether it originated in a hamburger, a lamb chop or the cheese on top of a pasta dish.
We need some fat in our diet, not only because it contains essential fat-soluble vitamins but also because it contributes much of the taste to foods. Very lean meat is tasteless unless enriched by a sauce containing fatty flavouring. No one would suggest that eating hamburgers and chips every day would constitute a good diet, but it would be better than one made up of Waldorf salad. The answer lies in a diet that is both varied and balanced.
The idea has grown up that some foods make you fat and others are slimming. It is true that pound for pound the fat in cheese contains about twice the calories of carbohydrate or protein but one eats much more carbohydrate and probably more protein than fat each day. It is the amount you eat that makes you fat.
One thing that the fast food industry has changed is the cost of food. Some would argue that it is now so readily available and cheap that it is not sufficiently rationed by price. As a result, people eat too much. In a world where some people are starving, this seems to be a perverse reason for objecting to the contribution made by the food industry. Many people of my generation can remember chicken being so expensive it was considered a luxury reserved for high days and holydays. It does suggest that the real cause of the problem of obesity is not the food or the ready availability of certain foods, it is a social phenomenon associated with affluence and the leisure time to enjoy eating. In other words, the ‘junk’ appellation should not be applied to the hamburger but to its consumer and his lifestyle.
We have been so indoctrinated about the evils of junk food, a concept so closely tied up with hamburgers that, if you were to ask the man in the street which was the better meal, lobster mayonnaise salad or a hamburger, he would almost certainly condemn the hamburger. In terms of its contribution to the food requirements of the body, the lobster mayonnaise, with its high cholesterol and fat and low-value protein, approaches the junk-food profile while a hamburger with tomato ketchup is much better value as a mixed food. A tomato, basil and chicken salad from Safeway is presented as ‘healthy food’ although it contains roughly the same amount of fat and calories as a Big Mac and chips (Sunday Times, August 2004). If, instead of eating a Big Mac, people were suddenly to start eating these salads, it is unlikely they would be any healthier or lose any weight.
There is no doubt that snobbery and cost contributes to the perception of what is called ‘junk’. The term is associated with foods originating in the fast-food chains of America rather than those coming from ‘foody’ France, home of the croque monsieur and foie gras; from Belgium, the country of moules et frites; or from Italy with its creamy pastas covered with cheese. For a century, generations of Britons ate fried fish and chips, liberally dosed with salt and vinegar, without becoming dangerously overweight. However, when the fish protein is replaced by the meat of a hamburger or by Kentucky Fried Chicken, it suddenly becomes a national disaster.
The present obsession with obesity has resulted in any food providing a high calorie content being labelled as ‘junk’. It is obvious nonsense: cheese is good food, as are fish and chips and hamburgers. It is not the particular food that makes people fat, it
