Calorie counts on menus? Proof we’re not allowed to think for ourselves any more
A couple of years ago, I went on a little trip with a friend to Palm Springs. She persuaded me to go the Aerial Tramway, which I thought sounded fun. The reality was quite different.
The world’s largest rotating tram car, it was full of tourists, and offered what turned out to be a thoroughly nightmarish take on a ski gondola.
As if being dangled thousands of feet over a valley wasn’t bad enough, the car spun as it ascended an eye-wateringly steep crevasse between two mountains, offering terrifying (not “picturesque”…) views as I wondered why I had gone for the extra large stack of blueberry pancakes earlier that day.
By the time we got to the top, I was mid-panic attack, feeling trapped and terrified that the vertigo I hadn’t realised I suffered would lead to me being ill in the crowded car. So when the driver failed to dock after an agonising attempt, and began descending again without any apology or explanation, I nearly lost it.
Later, once I’d recovered (a sighting of Glenn Close helped), I reflected on why the whole thing had been an Aerial Nightmare for me and came to an interesting conclusion.
The problem wasn’t vertigo or claustrophobia, but Britain, which – with its endless nannying warnings and notices – had left me utterly unable to cope with the unexpected.
In the absence of stern signs asking if I was prone to motion sickness, scared of heights, claustrophobic, agoraphobic, or phobic of being spun around in a crowded glass box with absolutely no escape route, I simply went into autopilot. The result was my traumatically rude awakening on finding myself trapped and nauseous thousands of feet above a desert valley.
I recovered from my tramway experience, of course. But the British problem of nannying-induced helplessness isn’t going to be resolved so easily and seems, in fact, only to be getting worse.
Last week, a critical point was reached when the Department of Health announced plans to make all restaurants and cafés in the land list full calorie counts on their menus.
At first, I thought it was a joke. Then I realised it wasn’t. After all, harrangued by the nannies that monitor everything from complex, colour-coded rubbish disposal systems to washing my hands after using the office loo, to standing behind the yellow line on a station platform, to travelling with a bottle of water in hot weather, this seemed a natural – if ghoulish – next step.
Can you imagine going out for a romantic slap-up meal with your loved one at your favourite French bistro, only to open the menu and – next to your favourite dish of steak-frites – see the massive downer that is the calorie count?
Hubby then suggests a bottle of red. You see that’s going to clock in at around 600 calories each, minimum. The total for the meal is horribly high, and triggers images of BMI charts and health warnings about diabetes and cancer caused by being overweight. Suddenly, that glass of champagne you were looking forward to seems fraught with difficulty – cancer in a glass.
This approach may have been proper for smoking, which actually is cancer in a packet. But when it comes to the much more complex issues of fat, food and diet, so integrated into pleasure, leisure and family, the government has lost the plot, the compulsion to nanny and lecture gone into counterproductive overdrive.
What will this new idea achieve? Three possible outcomes. One: your night has been successfully ruined by out-of-context facts, turned from a special and warming spot of indulgence into a dreary damp squib, with an aftertaste of anxiety and guilt.
Suddenly, that glass of champagne you were looking forward to seems fraught with difficulty – cancer in a glass
Two: it works, and the nation become ever less able to think for itself, dependent on the state to warn us off unhealthy choices, rather than working it out for ourselves.
Or three: the nannying has the reverse effect, creating a national fetish for verboten high-calorie food, with over-indulgence as a gleeful form of subversion. Prepare for a spike in actual food porn…
Will our state and regulatory bodies stop before our society has been completely cleansed of pleasure?
Following complaints, last week the Scottish Gin Society had ten of its adverts banned by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA), for seeming to promote excessive drinking and implying drinking could lead to sexual success.
The ads, which appeared on the Society’s Facebook page, were blatantly light-hearted, and included such lines as: “This gin and tonic has 91 calories. A banana has 105 calories. My doctor told me to make the healthy choice. I love my doctor.”
The ASA was acting within its remit, of course – but the fact that it worried that adults might see these quips, erase all they know about alcohol, and start drinking gin morning, noon and night is a sign of how deep the rot has already gone.
And the way things are going, we won’t be able to tie our own shoelaces, mow the lawn or book holidays without the interference of some nannying body or other.
I’d take another terrifying ride on the Aerial Tramway any day if it meant avoiding this dreary, debilitating outcome.
