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AS one of the diminishing band of
Britons who, in 1940, stood alone, bit the bullet and tackled Spam and
dried egg to sustain our strength in licking Hitler, and who is generally
as impassive as an Easter Island statue, I now display the occasional
flinch.
The reason is that health scares are giving me
distinct feelings of vague malaise. If you believe the latest one,
millions of people could be doomed because of possible whims of some
viruses.
I don’t want to be too explicit in a family column,
but if a bird flu virus shacks up with an ordinary flu specimen, the
resultant mutation could result in a new virus that could act on humans
like microscopic Godzillas and the new bugs would make, according to a
cheery newspaper headline, Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) look
like the common cold, although last year it infected about 8,000 people
and killed about 800, almost half in China.
That news has put my vitamin C,
cod liver oil tablets and medicated chest rub precautions into perspective
and has given me a psychosomatic tickly throat, but I am not panicking -
yet. After all, I remained rock-steady in the face of Asian flu, mad cow
disease, salmonella and listeria scares, and scores of other warnings
about certain foodstuffs and drinks that, once considered harmless, were
later found capable of felling people like a mace, bringing them out in
spots or gumming up their arteries.
When I venture out of doors
nowadays, with the caution and suspicion of a veteran turtle, ready to
retreat at the first sign of shock, I wonder whether anything is safe -
the air I breathe, the water I drink and the exhaust-filled and
mobile-phone masted, traffic-congested streets. We are warned that the
ozone-layer is thinning and global warning is likely to leave those parts
of the planet not under water sizzling in record temperatures, and I am
brooding on whether crisps, I recklessly consumed at a reception,
contained anti-oxidants, free radicals or other substances that, when it
comes to the crunch, might bring on dandruff or turn me temporarily bright
blue all over.
I am still uncertain whether coffee, tea, milk and
my muesli are safe. My doubts apply not only to meat and fish but also to
fruit and sweets, including acid drops and Granny Veitch’s soor plooms. A
friend tried the so-called Tarzan Diet, purchased from a health food
branch. After eating bananas, coconuts and palm oil he didn’t feel better,
but his tree-climbing improved.
Once, when the British
population had few food fads and thought nothing of having a big
breakfast, three-course lunch, cooked tea, a bite of supper and maybe a
bedside plate of biscuits to ward off night starvation, you knew people
had good stuff in them. Now, we cannot be sure.
The French
gourmet, Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), said: "Tell me what you eat
and I will tell you what you are." I can tell you what I am - a
masticating maelstrom of hydrolysed vegetable protein, tetrasodium
disphosphate, tricalcium phosphate, permitted colour, moisteners,
thickeners, thinners, sodium ascorbate, bleaches, anti-caking agents,
non-nutritive sweeteners and who knows what else.
That’s the
sort of stuff millions of us are shovelling into ourselves with
consequences that, one dire day, may figure in yet more health warnings
which, by their frank nature, may have us reaching for what a Sunday
newspaper columnist once called "the sick bag".
I remember
feeling distinctly fragile after reading that Swedish scientists had bound
"significant levels of acrylamide - a probably cancer-causing chemical -
in many cooked and processed foods such as potatoes, crisp-breads,
oven-baked and deep-fried potatoes and roasted, grilled and barbecued
food.
That scare spluttered and died, but I felt queasy
again when a sadistic expert revealed that some 2,000 permitted additives
can be used to sweeten burger buns or colour ketchup.
Fed to the
teeth with health warnings - including one about a new virus called "My
doom" that can menace the well-being of computers - and revelations about
what is in the witches’ cauldron of modern food production, I ordered, in
a restaurant yesterday, a succulent slice of Scottish salmon and felt the
better for it.
I refused the tutti-frutti ice cream with the
pineapple slice on top. At my age, one should have a concern for one’s
health. |
