Food is for losers with normal disgetive tracks - TV is for everyone

Food is not my number one best friend at the moment and I'm not going to be spending loads of time in the kitchen cooking nice things. I will be eating plain and boring things and I will be grumpy about it. I will also be watching television and without a doubt, I will be watching a programme about the dangerous state of the British diet. There's no way to avoid it. When I first moved here every television show seemed to be about renovating your new holiday home in Spain. Now everything is about the crap you put in your mouth. British television does little by half measures.

With that in mind, here's an article that Zoe Williams wrote a couple of weeks ago. I think there are a couple of good points in it. Hugh and Jamie were being pretty patronizing and seemed to be avoiding some points that would have made their arguments a lot more interesting. If Hugh had emphasized the taste, health and environmental advantages of free range chicken, and not just their less-bleak lives, maybe he would have been more convincing. I assume that these benefits exist, but the fact that he never seemed to raise them made me suspicious that the birds were perhaps more similar to the intensively reared ones than I thought. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2241274,00.html

Two notes:

1) I didn't watch Jamie Oliver's show because it was on a Friday night and I was too busy being fabulous away from my television. I did see a couple of minutes of his Eat to Save Your Life show where he poured oil over a lady sitting in a tub to show her how much fat she eats in a five-year period (I'm sorry - even for an anorexic that would be a gross amount) and then the next night I noticed that he was back to his "Jamie at Home" series cooking fried bread crumb and bacon pasta. It looked delicious, but the contrast was ridiculous.

2) Tonight Gillian McKeith is going to be continuing her efforts to Ban Big Bums. I am taking personal offence to this. She is a hateful wee woman and when I am strong enough, I will tear a strip off her mean little frame.

Comments

[MBT Shoes]

It's so nice to have you do all of the research for us. It makes our decision making so much easier!! Thanks.

[katie]

I think that would be a Scottish delicacy were the sun over out long enough to make it possible!

Maybe in Dundee; isn't it supposed to be the sunniest place in Scotland? I've never seen very much evidence of that.

Come down for a post-MFA party soon, Louise!x

[Louise Gray]

I mean they meant tomatoes! Oh dear this will teach me to be high and mighty...

[Louise Gray]

Hi Katie,

My sister Anna put me onto your website: good stuff! I am staying at my Dad's at the moment just north of Arbroath so having some interesting culinary experiences. The other day we went to a restaurant in Dundee where they had "chicken stuffed with sun dried potatoes". Of course they meant sun dried potatoes otherwise that would be crisps.... Though that probably is a Scottish delicacy. x

[katie]

Honestly, I tried to watch Supersize vs. Superskinny (the food tv show of the moment over here)for research purposes (seriously), but it was so blatantly ridiculous that I couldn't bare it. And I can bare a lot of bad television. I think you're right Jeremy, oh Jeremy, there's nothing educational and little entertaining about this onslaught. Throw out the tvs. Plan a dinner party.

p.s. so weird to 'talk' to you when I'm sober and we aren't on a dance floor. x

[JEREMY McCormick]

yea i dunno katie!!!! ive thrown my tv out because all this food on tv stuff is driving me insane(i find ive become more competitive, with all of these food competition of sorts)...

dear tvland:

stop talking about my food, making me anxious to consume, and making me analyze every last detail of everything that makes things enjoyable... id rather be at a big table with my friends eating then beside a box watching people talk about food.

or at mcdonalds! (NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!)

ps i read a really good book called the omnivore's dilemma... you should check it out.