Kitcatt Nohr Digitas

‘That doesn’t look very healthy,’ a colleague recently commented, looking at the roast beef sandwich I was eating. I had not asked her opinion. But such is the tyranny of popular prejudice that not only did she feel secure in her views, but also fully justified in airing them. I don’t know why: I hadn’t asked her to eat the (literally) bloody sandwich.

Perhaps she meant well, and was moved by a genuine concern for my health. Or perhaps, like so many others, she was telling me what to do. I believe it was the latter, because when I tried to argue with her, she waved my comments away.

I think food can’t be classified as ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy.’ The evidence is at best contradictory. I think rare roast beef is delicious, but the rocket they insist on adding to it, to mollify the food police, is indigestible, and must be removed before eating the sandwich.

I also believe science would support me, and suggest that the roast beef is nutritionally superior to the rocket. But I’m not going to ram that down your throat. It’s my lunch, after all.

Apparently this view is so outlandish that it doesn’t deserve discussion. My colleague gave me a superior smile, and left me to my doom.

I object to this on two counts. First, her opinion, though widely held, is based on a hodgepodge of ill-digested pseudo-science, gleaned from the obnoxiously titled and insufferably smug ‘lifestyle’ pages of the supposedly quality press. And second, I didn’t ask for it. I was blamelessly eating my lunch. If it kills me, that’s my problem. Well, if I actually choked on it, I wouldn’t mind some help, but otherwise, is there any need for comment?

But so ingrained now is the habit of telling others what to do that it’s assumed to be a duty. For which no qualification is necessary – although if you really want one, especially in the field of nutrition, you can always download a Ph.D. from the internet. Many have.

I know this flies in the face of popular opinion. Which makes it so much more piquant – like the horseradish in my sandwich, and unlike the wretched rocket.