Fat Chance

 The second article in a series examining the contributory factors to obesity in the UK.

So, over here I looked at costs associated with food, including average annual inflationary rates for food and fuel, and pressures on affordability, i.e real incomes, alongside a broad definition of what people were eating and who was eating what from a 'socioeconomic' perspective.

In this article I'm going to look at that last element in more detail, and perhaps find out what's driving those spending habits. I'm also going to look at look at contributory factors to cost - specifically, where is our food coming from?

Before we get started however, I suggest you click here and download the government's Food Pocketbook 2013. It's an invaluable guide, produced by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and one I have pilfered from extensively when looking at the above subjects.

But first I'm going to look at what we're not eating - but are buying. Whilst we are definitely moving towards buying a basket of goods with more preservatives added, as 2013's GVA chart on food manufacturing showed, we are still buying food that enables us to have a rounded diet. Price, and therefore affordability, have a correlative relationship with what ends up in the bin. Evidence from 2010's DEFRA report suggests that 15% of all household food and drink is 'wasted' . From this overall figure, the three items we throw away the most are:

1. Bread
2. Vegetables and potatoes
3. Fruit

The three items we're least likely to throw away are:

1. Alcoholic drinks
2. Soft drinks
3. Dairy and eggs

Best to bear in mind we are not throwing away items that are past their sell by date - there is merely a perception that the food is past it's best. That's an interesting nuance.

The most obvious difference between the two lists is the quality of nutrition in each one. There is next to no nutritional value in alcohol or soft drinks, but they are significantly more expensive than fruit and vegetables; therefore there appears to be a perception we can afford to throw away more. Our appetite seems to be tied to financial cost, and not physical health. This may be a major factor in declining health in many British adults.

It's also important to add there are stabilizers and preservatives in soft drinks and alcohol which don't exist in most fresh produce (although it probably isn't true that there are no preservatives sprayed onto fruit and vegetables - it's just that many regulatory bodies don't ask for it). As a result, we're also less likely to chuck it out because it's 'gone off'.

Not only are we wasting food here, we are wasting vast amounts of money. Although fruit and vegetables remain near the bottom of the cheapest goods on offer to shoppers, a more instructive number can be found when looking at price rises per food group between 2007-2013 - approximately the years when many Britons have seen incomes decrease in real terms.

Every food group has increase in price over the six years. Although some of that is to be expected in line with CPI, the numbers are still quite striking. Fruit has increased in price by 34%. Potatoes and vegetables are up by 31%. Meat has increased by 34%, which illustrates the crushing pressures many British retailers are experiencing in trying to remain competitive in consumer eyes (and also goes some way to explaining the horse meat controversy). Butter, margarine and cooking oil - traditionally staple bases of much of British cooking, particularly those on low incomes - increased the most, by 55%. 

It's tempting to say these figures are misleading when considering the basic price of an apple versus a steak, and relatively speaking, on a ratio of 1.1, there is no major loss in throwing away the apple. But do that hundreds, thousands of times, and it becomes easier to see why weight is becoming an issue.

So what are Britons eating, and how much of it are they eating? The 2013 Food Pocket Book lays out the 'eatwell' plate, with set percentages of foodstuffs to follow for a healthy diet. One third of your diet should, for example, include fruit and vegetables, and another 33% on bread, rice, potatoes, pasta and other starchy foods.

Just 8% of your diet should consist of fatty or sugary foods. But when looking at the diet makeup of the average British person in 2011, 22% of their diet consisted of those things, or almost three times the recommendation.

The most concerning result of all of this is that there appears to have been a long term decline in purchasing of what we'd call 'healthy' food amongst the poorest families - i.e. fruit, vegetables, carcase meat (i.e. not processed/reformed). Within that demographic there's also a long term move away from foodstuffs with short shelf life towards goods with preservatives and long life items - a strong indicator of downward pressures on wages.

Between 2007 and 2011 this group of people 20% more flour, 14% more non-carcase meats, 7% more cheese and 5% more confectionary. The obvious correlation between many of these items is price vs life - sweets and flour are long life, cheese is mid-life produce with a typical shelf life of 4 weeks, and non-carcase meat - i.e. processed meats - are consequently considerably cheaper than their carcase alternatives, and therefore can be 'wasted' more often.

So what are the main factors in cost? It's difficult to measure things like marketing budgets and import costs on food. So Defra have helpfully used something called the 'farm-gate' value - i.e. the net value of the item once those things have been subtracted from the gross value - to link a value to each foodstuff, and where it came from.

The first interesting thing to note is that as of 2012 Britain actually produced quite a lot of its own food. This might not be surprising regarding stuff like veg due to our fertile climate and significant farming communities, but it is surprising when once again looking at the horse meat issue. The rationale fr this occurrence was that food pricing in the UK is too high, and as consumer perception does not match real value of food. This drove most high street retailers abroad.

Except it didn't. As of 2012, 83% of all non-processed meat in the UK came from the UK. We actually produce more poultry now than we have ever done previously. The key indicator is our production of red meat - because of the beef export ban linked to things like CJD, there is less impetus for UK farmers to farm cattle.

Therefore the retail market goes into the EU and further to sate the customer demand, and this is where the supply chain breaks down - as people like Jay Rayner have pointed out previously, on multiple occasions, it's very likely supermarkets have painted themselves into a corner that's difficult to get out of when it comes to pricing. HMRC's import/export ratio on meat tells the story with clinical details. We export around £2 billion yet import just over £5 billion each year.

So, although there's a clear economic benefit to importing from within the Eurozone, there are also clear pitfalls to be found when basic foodstuffs increase in price - and the Eurozone doesn't guarantee fixed prices in a global market, as the two examples below show.

The table below is taken from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. As well as more domestic issues like those described above, you can see how, for example, the rapidly expanding Chinese middle class and slowly rebounding Japanese economy have both contributed to the sharp upward turn in meat prices, particularly beef.

This is taken from a World Bank article in 2013 as food costs started to level out. Here's what the global costs look like for customers in graph form since the turn of the century.

 

So global trade has dramatically altered the purchasing power for supermarkets and other grocers, and has unfortunately produced the sort of weird behaviours you'd expect to see with underperforming businesses who are experiencing long term capital and income problems, not behemoths such as Tesco and Aldi.

It's obvious then from all of the above that three key things have changed in diets in British people over the last 6-7 years. The first is that cost, not nutrition, is driving choices in supermarkets. The second, which is linked to the first, denotes a clear shift in attitudes towards 'value' when retaining food - i.e. we are increasingly less likely to eat fruit and veg due to perceptions about cost versus value.

The third is that, after a relatively stable few years in pricing (and coincidentally a relatively stable global financial market), the types of food bought are again following socioeconomic lines - i.e. the less well off you are, the less likely you are to invest your wages in fresh food, instead investing in longer term but less healthy produce. This last element is being driven by global rises in food types essential to a healthy lifestyle.

In the next and final part of these semi-regular articles I'm going to look at consumer attitudes. Specifically, what drives people to buy food that they know is bad for them?

 

Burger Business

for the disgusting picture>

NW

Zadie Smith

I'm listening to a guy called Kanda Bongo Man on Spotify right now and he's made me think. How many people from the DRC are likely to read a book review written by a white British guy on the internet? If everyone had access to the internet, a PC/laptop, tablet or phone, would my review of Zadie Smith's NW make it into their daily lives? If not why not?

 

More generally who reads book reviews? What does this charming branch of arts journalism exist for (I am not doing arts journalism FYI)? Are those readers black or white? Are they educated? Europeans, East Asians, Africans? Who is interested in this stuff? Is it relevant and why?

 

I suggest an amazing paradox is at work here. A medium that is both ignorant of human existence yet created for and by humans to interact with, opening up preserves to all sorts of visitors. To me, arts literature is vital. It informs me when I walk through the Ancient City in Rome or watch a Brecht play with friends in Salford. But, returning to my original point, I'm the sort of guy that I imagine ingesting this stuff. What about Kanda Bongo Man?  

 

I'd be fascinated to see the average hour on the internet from a guy working in a souk in Algiers for example. Equally, I'd be curious to see if the 30 year old Sydney businesswoman looks at the pages I think she'll look at when she gets back from her day at work. Guess there's interesting cultural perks for those guys checking your emails at GCHQ after all.

     

Humans, like every other species with a brain, are after all creatures of habit, and there is a natural and easy tendency to go for what we know, as long as that does not cause us emotional or physical pain. I'm still not sure that advances in technology will ultimately broaden many worldviews; instead, they will only give us easier access to the things we love already.

 

And that's why I loved reading NW. I've been a fan of Zadie Smith's style for some time now since reading her first novel White Teeth, and that's mainly down to her, in my eyes, exceptional skill at prying open complex cultural habits and transactions with the delicacy of a pearl fisherman, and documenting what's to be found inside. Information is Smith's stock and trade, and she wields it with a precision that I haven't found in many other writers.

 

It's present in her ear for her fellow Londoners dialects, so ripe that its pungency assails your nostrils, and in her topographical mastery of her city, tugging your sleeve as you navigate a place you (I) have never been to or seen. It's there in her cultural bookmarks; the trick is helping you understand an alien gesture, like buying a tabloid and broadsheet, and then revealing the thought processes deftly, like a street magician plying all of his best tricks before your eyes. 

 

That escape from a culture, a series of habits, is also present in much of Smith's work, and in Natalie/ Keisha Blake she finds the best foil yet to tease out the darkest desires of a historical people. I liked her handling of On Beauty's Howard Belsey - his innate fallibility was revealed with a chastening lack of respect for its subject, and it's easy to feel Smith is closer, although ultimately no less clinical, with her subjects here. 

 

Blake's arc starts in the Eighties in a high-rise in NW London, goes on a brief sojourn to Manchester for her formative years, and returns to the nest for the beginning of her professional career, her marriage and the birth of her children. Throughout a spiritual unrest pervades the post-it note chapters; their brevity and layering of detail upon detail lends a restless, anxious air that Leah's story, Keisha's best friend, does not have. 

 

And as the tower of details becomes ever higher, some inevitably fall off, floating past their antecedents, and a connective loop is established between the actions of a woman apparently rent in two by career, family (her son and daughter, and then her mother, sisters and brothers) and locale. And all of it delivered in a hovering indirect third person that observes its subjects anguishes and desires with a delicacy that saw her compared to Dickens. It's a 'performance' in the theatrical sense, and I think it deserved all the plaudits it received.

 

Suffice to say I was equally taken with Smith's rendition of skinny white girl Leah and the unfortunates Nathan and Felix - although unfortunate in different ways. But this is getting pretty long. The source of my admiration for this book, though, is ever-present in small details; in the bus stop outside Felix's dad's house, in Nathan selling a Tube ticket outside his local station, and in the herky-jerky opening chapters of Leah's encounter with Shar. 

 

There's a sense of being there. Of touching and dealing with things that exist, and an invitation to observe the things described from your own home and background. This book stands up to every perspective, regardless of background or set of interests. It exudes so much confidence that it could only have been written by someone at the peak of their abilities, which is exactly where I believe Zadie Smith can be located right now.

 

Thanks for the book London Fictions

 

Bridesmaids

(A Few Words)

Here's a fact: last year, Universal Studios, responsible for distributing Bridesmaids, had its best ever year, raking in nearly $1.4 billion in revenue.

Here's another 'fact': I've never seen Girls, I despised the whole concept of SatC and I quite fancied New Girl but didn't watch any in the end.

Here's a (rhetorical) question based on the two statements above: am I contributing to the continuing fusion of capitalism and conservative patriarchy?

 

TV and film matters. Maybe not as much as literature, or at a push music. History and technology are continually playing a large part here. But it is influential, it's trendsetting, and it's become a stimulator for conversation between dozens of interlinking social groups.

A small exercise: try to remember the last time you started a conversation with 'Have you seen' or 'Did you see'. Pretty easy isn't it? No surprise then, based on all of the above, that film makes a massive, massive amount of money through its central position in our daily existences. We don't need a number to tell us that's undeniably true.

It's not a small jump to suggest that an industry with that much traction gets a say in shaping what others think of each other. That's also a given - and that's mainly why I felt a bit guilty about Bridesmaids. I loved it - and then realised why. I'd never seen anything else like it.

Watching a film is supposed to be fun, so no one considers the implications when they buy  their ticket for whatever they're watching. And why should they? I don't want someone scrutinising my viewing choices (unless it's on here of course).

But going back to that last question: am  I, alongside a broad percentage of the male population, reinforcing a certain 'oeuvre', thereby eschewing a different set of films entirely, by 'opting out'? The $64,000 dollar question here, however, is of a chicken-egg nature: does audience influence output, or visa versa?

 

Take directors - the executors of 'Hollywood's' creations. A 2013 Neilson report highlighted the more or less even gender split in moviegoers in the US over three years. But the top ten highest grossing films in 2013 were all made by men. In 2012, only Kathryn Bigelow made the financial cut.

 

Whilst I'm not suggesting directors like David O. Russell or Steve McQueen are perpetuating a male capitalist hegemony (first and last outing for that phrase) it is coming from somewhere. Women are watching as many movies as men - so what are the reasons for the dramatic imbalance?

 

It could be something to do with genre. Neilson also notes that the most popular genre of film in 2012 was action/adventure, with 61% of moviegoers seeing at least one within the year. Discounting arthouse, musical and re-releases, the three genres least viewed by moviegoers was romances, kids/family films and romantic comedies with less than 25% people watching in each case. It's not unreasonable to suggest two out of three of these genres appeal to women more than men, although it is mighty difficult to prove.

 

Nonetheless there seems to be a correlative relationship there of sorts. Of course it's ridiculous to suggest women don't enjoy action films or comedies and there's obvious perils when matching men and women to film genres. So here's the part that can't be measured - at least accurately, or with any degree of impartiality: is there a top-down assumption on what men and women find funny?

I don't believe that marketing bods in Universal et al are out to reverse women's suffrage through the form of cinema. That was a joke. But budgets and spending constitute risk by necessity - and there are some huge budgets for films out there. And risk is only really assessed based on two composites. The first is unassailable knowledge - that is, empirical fact. Not even 'it is raining'. That's ultimately subjective, based on language, geography. I mean granular, like 'water is wet'. 

The other is effectively educated guesswork, increasingly done through algorithms, increasingly placed in the hands of the customer. That's obvious and everywhere. And that's where the really knotty question lies. We have almost no empirical truths left, beyond those that are irrelevant due to their mundane nature. Another day of existence invariably means progress of some sort in a particular field on inquiry.

So when people watch a film like Bridesmaids and argue over the reasons for its success, much of it does boil down to the fact it is an apparently honest appraisal of women in the real world, behaving normally. But how did Universal reach the decision that that was all it took for an economically successful film?

Tick a couple of obvious questions off: how many films are there like Bridesmaids? Of that pretty small pot, how many were successful and translated well culturally? How many of the actresses have a big following in media? Who was the director? Do they have cultural traction? Are you any closer to a definitive answer? Speaking objectively, it's a miracle this film actually got made, because none of those questions are definitive in any sense.  

The question is pretty obvious: how do you change a setup that's almost entirely based on perspective? Here's a more provocative question: when your best, most accurate consumer research is completed for you every day by consumers, with the author as such making almost no autonomous decisions based on the above, is the industry really the issue here? In a nutshell: is your audience unconsciously preserving a male-dominated industry through its economic decisions?

 

Of course that's all pretty obvious. So here's my solution: formative years are the most important. We should get as many kids watching women screaming about bleaching private orifices as they can. Want to see more films like Bridesmaids? Get films like Bridesmaids into schools. I'm only being a tiny bit flippant.

 

Thanks to artsclash for that awesome comic pic