The BBC’s foody programme ‘TheFood Programme’ is what you might typically think of as a perfect example of BBC think, that middle class do-gooding ‘something must be done’ touch of snobby arrogance that doesn’t brook any opposition….at least in this programme ‘First Bite’.
In her new book, First Bite – How We Learn To Eat, Bee Wilson takes a deep and reflective look at how food choices and habits are shaped, and how they can be changed.
Sheila Dillon is joined by Bee Wilson and special guests to discuss the book’s surprising findings, and how to make positive changes where positive change is needed.
Sheila and Bee are joined by Rosie Boycott, who advises the Mayor of London on food and is Chair of the London Food Board, as well as father and son Geoff and Anthony Whitington who star in the just-released film Fixing Dad, which documents Geoff’s struggles with type 2 diabetes and his two sons’ efforts to help him.
The presenter, Sheila Dillon, is ‘wowed’ by Wilson’s book which is ‘remarkable’ and the whole programme doesn’t put up much, if any, fight against Wilson’s thinking…..people are apparently confused about food and why they eat what they eat…they just don’t realise they are all victims of a conspiracy….presumably by that ‘industrial food system’ which Dillon shows so much disdain for and which has apparently destroyed the British food culture.
Geoff Whitington has diabetes, he was 20 stone, a lorry driver who used to stop at fast food outlets 6 or 7 times a day…but you know what? His weight and subsequent diabetes….. not his fault.
He tells us (22 mins 30 secs) that he kept telling himself that it was his own fault, he was the one putting this stuff in his own mouth…but he learnt the truth…he’s a victim, it’s not his fault, he was ‘forced’ to eat in that manner by clever marketing by those nasty fast food outlets.
MacDonalds got the blame for this one…so the usual BBC prejudice against the US corporate….no mention of all those greasy spoon truck stops he must also have graced with his business….just how much clever marketing do they do? Clever buggers at them roadside caffs….. such a magnetic draw…irresistable.
We are told that we live in a dysfunctional food environment, we aren’t clever or educated enough to feed ourselves properly…..the government must do something…it is nothing to do with ‘willpower’ or our own actions.
No voices in opposition, no voices of reason to bring a bit of sense to the discussion, no one to tell the trucker that it was his own damned fault he bulked up.
I imagine there is a reason supermarkets sell fresh fruit and vegetables (so cleverly marketed as the first thing you see when you enter a store…..shocking how they force us to eat our 5 a day!) and fresh meat along with all those wholesome ingredients for homecooking. Somebody must be buying all that good stuff….can there really be so many know-it-all BBC presenters out there buying it all up whilst the rest of us ignorant plebs gorge ourselves on pizza and oven chips?
Yes, no one knows how to, or has the will to, cook anymore. No one is interested in the slightest about food and cooking. Which is why the BBC has so many programmes about…cooking and food.
You forgot the other BBC staple – food is too cheap. A retired BBC presenter should be able to keep six hens, free range of course, which will keep them in the manner that they are accustomed to!
The people? Scum mostly but their children can be fed in the Socialist School System. As for the delightful ‘new Britons’, well they will continue to import ‘food mile-free’ exotics, disproportionately suffer from obesity and diabetes, yet place no burden on the NHS, which would collapse without them, (what through lack of customers?).
John Carey’s “The Intellectuals and the Masses” (1992) had something to say about all this. Looking at the sixty years up to WW II, it details the reactions of the so-called intelligentsia to the growth of popular mass culture, including food. I learnt that orange squash and similar lemon products, which we today think of more as cheap children’s drinks, were once highly fashionable among the upper orders, who dropped them once they became more widely affordable. Another example, which became something of a family joke, was tinned salmon: the book had much to say about the disdain of those who could afford fresh salmon for those who were happy to be able to buy it in tins.
A fat trucker, huh?
Who says Beeboids live in a world of snobby stereotypes?
Funnily enough, I don’t recall the BBC citing truckers as reliable sources on issues closer to home:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3371193/Fear-truckers-Calais-running-gauntlet-migrant-mob-Hauliers-say-driver-die-face-daily-attacks-hammers-baseball-bats-guns.html
The BBC uses the working man like Bill Clinton uses interns – they take what they want then toss them aside when they become inconvenient.
I wonder if the BBC would use this old recycling bin of liberal snobbery to park all their gripes about sugar in fizzy drinks, obesity and the lack of halal meat at the local SCOPE shop.
If the BBC could be persuaded to confine their nutritional neuroses-ALL of them-into Sheilas satchel every week(and boy, she`s been round the block for as long as Laurie and Libbibluddi) for their thirty minute hate against Big Mac, Big Sugar and Big Booze…then might that not free up some time on the rest of their poxy schedules to give us some…well “news” would be nice…they used to do that once you know!
And-what if they devoted Costing the Earth to climate change bollo…just “focused” on THAT?
AND-all the disability whinging-couldn`t “In Touch” just be THAT sandwich board ?
If they did all this, we who love to hear about these BBC “hot topics that they are loath to tell us about” could then enjoy the “specialised attention” of the liberal arts grads from Oxbridge who SO love to worry about the poor, as they award themselves the Golden Panini for the umpteenth time to-well Borough Market my dears-is there any other?
Reckon if the BBCs suggestion boxes and nodding dogs of liberal hideous white privilege were decontaminating their “News and analysis”…the they night be able to bring us some news…not a post it note in the lunch box to tell us we don`t care enough…sick of `em!
Has Wor Sheila looked at the Golden Cleaver Award for best-obtained halal yet?…and could we see it on telly please to see if she chose wisely?
Or have they run out of time?…ironic if so, that lollard has hung on the BBCs money tree like a fat sloth since the Patchouli Age…
As a lorry driver I have a bad diet . My choice , my risk because with more effort I could take healthier options in the truck stops .
There is always a but , and here is one .
But my choices are being diminished .
The truck stops , like pubs , are squeezed out . There are more motorway services but they are , happily for the Transport department of government , monopolies that give taxsploitation ( ht Rodney Atkinson ) revenue to the exchequer . I.E their prices are high .
I’ve been posting about Dillon and her atrocious Food Programme on this site for over five years. As I remarked just a week or so back, I got into a fight with the late, unlamented, Reith, who pretended he believed the programme was still presented by the ‘old buffer’ Derek Cooper and was about cheese producers and fine wines. Of course, as a BBC insider, he was lying.
In fact the Food Programme is a deeply subversive enterprise. Dillon’s hatred of ‘multinational food conglomerates’ is a thin veil to cover her real gripe – which is capitalism and modern life. In her New Stone Age fantasy, we would live off organic sheeps’ milk cheeses and artisan bread made from wheat grown in our own back gardens. Which might, if you live in the Yorkshire Dales, or rural Suffolk, be an option. It is less so if you live in Croydon or Liverpool and actually have to work for a living.
Underpinning the entire conceit, though, is that it is absurdly unscientific. Most dietary fads are just that – fads. For decades we were told to eat a low fat diet for decades, with disastrous results on human health. As a policy, it probably killed millions. Only recently has it been admitted that it was a lie – a scientific fraud.
Meanwhile, meat, eggs, fish, potatoes, bread, citrus fruits – there is barely a food that has not been in and out of fashion as many times as the mini skirt. And that, fashion, is what this is about – that and snobbery which allows one group of people to look down on what another group of people eat by deeming it ‘unhealthy’ just because they can.
TFP and Dillon indulge in highly effective agitprop. They peddle a deeply Green/Socialist/Millinarianist message which they wrap-up in nutritional pseudo-science. It is particularly appealing to women (R4’s target audience) and can be swallowed whole and easily digested under the mistaken assumption that it is nutritious and harmless.
It is neither.
Fully agree with your comments on the so called “Food Programme” but if you want true liberal left drivel have a listen to “Thinking Allowed” … Last’s weeks classic episode was pushing for our museums to change reflect our diverse (and vibrant obviously) society. I mean, as one of the guests said, “why would anyone want to celebrate one’s embarrassing (western) society”.
Yes, Thinking Allowed is another perfect example of the monumental arrogance of the Left. The very title suggests that only within the confines of this programme does rational thought take place whereas, of course, it is nothing more than the smug twittering of students of the prince of pseudo-sciences, sociology.
As for museums, they have been under enormous pressure for some years as the entryists made their way through all aspects of government and can now dictate their mad ideas at will. Small rural museums in traditional communities where ‘diversity’ means one farmer preferring to rear sheep than goats are being nagged and cajoled to ‘reflect’ a ‘diversity’ which only on exists in the tortured imaginations of crazed Left win civil servants. No wonder that this tawdry programme was cheering!
Apologies for the rushed comment there. Appalling typing and grammar!
I cannot stand Sheila Dillon, the smuggest person on the whole of the BBC (and that is saying something!). I carefully switch off before I even hear her voice.
I agree about Thinking Allowed, Laurie Taylor is just a Marxist twit who likes his own voice, & his son is an idiot.