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The P-Plan diet
Jun. 22nd, 2011 12:06 pmYears ago now, I was watching the local news up in Yorkshire whilst they were doing a report an a government report which had concluded that Barnsley was the 'Worst place in Britain to live'.
This won't come as much of a surprise to anyone who has ever visited Barnsley*, but the news readers were displaying all the localist indignation you might expect and had taken the cameras out onto the streets of Barnsleyto ask the locals what they thought. I remember particularly one man, upon being told that Barnsley was the worst place in Britain to live and asked what he thought looked cross and said: "No, Brnsley's the best place to live because...because...". And at that point he froze up, unable to think of a single reason why Barnsley might be a good place to live. His jaw worked as he tried to make words come out and eventually he managed: "...because folk are friendly."
Because they aren't anywhere else, you see.
Anyway, this was back in the good old days when life expectancy in Barnsley was over sixty; these days it has been comfortably overtaken as the worst place in Britain to live by Glasgow, a city where the average life expectancy is now under sixy and actually dropping. Heart disease in Glasgow is the highest in Britain, which is the highest in Europe, which is the highest in the world. This should tell you a lot.
One of the major causes of this is diet; poor nutrition and lack of exercise are a killer. I've rattled on about diet before now - my personal favourite is the D-plan diet (eat less food, take more exercise, duh), but after wandering past McDonalds this morning I've finally got to admit defeat and acknowledge it hasn't caught on. However, healthy, nutricious diets abound in the media. The She-David's copies of Girl! magazine (or whatever it's called) have several diets in them every month; the bikini diet, the burkini diet, the macrobiotic sludge diet, the nanobot diet, the fat whisperer diet (I am NOT making that one up) and so on. Then you get even wierder ones like the paleolithic diet, which makes you eat what our caveman ancestors would have lived on on the basis that preserved stone-age bodies rarely show incidence of cancer and several other diseases. The idea is that these diseases are 'diseases of civilisation' and can be avoided by avoiding civilised foods. Some take the paleodiet even further and actually go round on all fours and eat lots of raw meat (I'm not making that up, either).
However, in the spirit of outrageous simplification for the purposes of flippancy, I'd like to suggest another alternative diet. Given that the average life expectancy in some parts of the UK is now less than 60, and diet is a cause of that, the obvious thing to do is look at people who lived longer than that and eat what they did. In this instance, I'm going for The P-Plan Diet, based upon the intake of diarist Samuel Pepys, who lived to be seventy.
So it was yesterday morning I broke my fast in the same manner that Pepys did on September 9th 1661: “I went with Capt. Morrice at his desire into the King’s Privy Kitchin to Mr Sayres the Master-Cooke, and there we had a good slice of beef or two to our breakfast. And from thence he took us into the wine-cellar; where by my troth we were very merry, and I drank too much wine.”
That sounds like a sound, balanced meal to me.
And then this morning I guzzled my way through his petit -dejeunner of January 15th 1662: “This morning Mr Berchenshaw came again; and after he had examined me and taught me something in my work, he and I went to breakfast in my chamber, upon a Collar of brawne.”
And blow me if I'm not already half stuffed, as well as half-cut. I'm already planning ahead for tomorrow morning, you see, when - like Pepys on May 30th 1660 - I plan to wake “with my head in a sad taking through last night’s drink, which I am very sorry for” which I will sooth with a large morning draught, which he did give me in Chocolate to settle my stomach”.
Chocolate. Yum.
It's staggering to think that this appears to be a healthier diet than many people manage today, but hey, at least I'll live longer.
*I sometimes claim to have grown up in Barnsley; not because I actually did, but becauser nobody has ever heard of where I actually did grow up and Barnsley is the nearest place with any name recognition.
This won't come as much of a surprise to anyone who has ever visited Barnsley*, but the news readers were displaying all the localist indignation you might expect and had taken the cameras out onto the streets of Barnsleyto ask the locals what they thought. I remember particularly one man, upon being told that Barnsley was the worst place in Britain to live and asked what he thought looked cross and said: "No, Brnsley's the best place to live because...because...". And at that point he froze up, unable to think of a single reason why Barnsley might be a good place to live. His jaw worked as he tried to make words come out and eventually he managed: "...because folk are friendly."
Because they aren't anywhere else, you see.
Anyway, this was back in the good old days when life expectancy in Barnsley was over sixty; these days it has been comfortably overtaken as the worst place in Britain to live by Glasgow, a city where the average life expectancy is now under sixy and actually dropping. Heart disease in Glasgow is the highest in Britain, which is the highest in Europe, which is the highest in the world. This should tell you a lot.
One of the major causes of this is diet; poor nutrition and lack of exercise are a killer. I've rattled on about diet before now - my personal favourite is the D-plan diet (eat less food, take more exercise, duh), but after wandering past McDonalds this morning I've finally got to admit defeat and acknowledge it hasn't caught on. However, healthy, nutricious diets abound in the media. The She-David's copies of Girl! magazine (or whatever it's called) have several diets in them every month; the bikini diet, the burkini diet, the macrobiotic sludge diet, the nanobot diet, the fat whisperer diet (I am NOT making that one up) and so on. Then you get even wierder ones like the paleolithic diet, which makes you eat what our caveman ancestors would have lived on on the basis that preserved stone-age bodies rarely show incidence of cancer and several other diseases. The idea is that these diseases are 'diseases of civilisation' and can be avoided by avoiding civilised foods. Some take the paleodiet even further and actually go round on all fours and eat lots of raw meat (I'm not making that up, either).
However, in the spirit of outrageous simplification for the purposes of flippancy, I'd like to suggest another alternative diet. Given that the average life expectancy in some parts of the UK is now less than 60, and diet is a cause of that, the obvious thing to do is look at people who lived longer than that and eat what they did. In this instance, I'm going for The P-Plan Diet, based upon the intake of diarist Samuel Pepys, who lived to be seventy.
So it was yesterday morning I broke my fast in the same manner that Pepys did on September 9th 1661: “I went with Capt. Morrice at his desire into the King’s Privy Kitchin to Mr Sayres the Master-Cooke, and there we had a good slice of beef or two to our breakfast. And from thence he took us into the wine-cellar; where by my troth we were very merry, and I drank too much wine.”
That sounds like a sound, balanced meal to me.
And then this morning I guzzled my way through his petit -dejeunner of January 15th 1662: “This morning Mr Berchenshaw came again; and after he had examined me and taught me something in my work, he and I went to breakfast in my chamber, upon a Collar of brawne.”
And blow me if I'm not already half stuffed, as well as half-cut. I'm already planning ahead for tomorrow morning, you see, when - like Pepys on May 30th 1660 - I plan to wake “with my head in a sad taking through last night’s drink, which I am very sorry for” which I will sooth with a large morning draught, which he did give me in Chocolate to settle my stomach”.
Chocolate. Yum.
It's staggering to think that this appears to be a healthier diet than many people manage today, but hey, at least I'll live longer.
*I sometimes claim to have grown up in Barnsley; not because I actually did, but becauser nobody has ever heard of where I actually did grow up and Barnsley is the nearest place with any name recognition.
