Lying about what you eat? Probably
A recipe for meringues
With her regretful listings of just how many units of alcohol she had drunk the previous day, and how many cigarettes she had smoked in defiance of her New Year’s resolution to get into shape, Bridget Jones is probably the only person (of course she is a real person! She is recognizably one of us), repeat the only person to tell the truth about what she consumes.
Almost one-fifth of people now claim to be eating sustainably and healthily, citing the environment as their main motivation.
Studies show they are lying through their teeth.
Top in the category of outright fibbers are the British. They’re noshing the equivalent of three extra McDonald’s cheeseburgers a day than they admit to. How is that possible?! Surely more than one cheeseburger a week is already going at it with impressive enthusiasm. But three extra — a day?
You find this hard to swallow? (Sorry…) In one study, 221 people of different ages and body shapes were asked to keep a food diary. By measuring how much energy in calories they had in reality consumed, researchers concluded everyone had lied.
Generally, the recommended daily calorie intake for women is 2,000 calories and 2,500 for men. Participants all claimed they ate an average of 1,800 calories. Those who were listed as obese under-reported their food consumption by an average of an extra 1,200 calories. Even standard weight subjects underestimated what they had eaten by an average of 800. Bridget Jones would be shocked.
Of people already overweight, study lead Professor Gavin Sandercock from the School of Sport, Rehabilitation, and Exercise Sciences at the University of Essex, said, “The idea that obese people lie about their food intake is wrong - it’s simply that as energy requirements increase with a larger body size there is more error between what people report and what they actually eat.”
But the study did find all consumers of every body type lied about an extra 900 calories a day. If a cheeseburger measure is not illuminating because you can take them or leave them, 900 calories is also the equivalent of 7 packets of ready-salted chips/crisps (my personal Achilles heel), 5 pints of lager, or 18 apples. Who wants 18 apples?
Some diners at least are going for more responsible food choices — but only when they’re being watched by friends. This emerged in a separate study from City University London involving 1000 university students and other adults in the UK and the US. It found participants chose healthier food when eating with friends or outsiders, for fear of being negatively judged. ‘Outsiders’ were categorised as people from a different university or a different race.
Among 180 students offered a choice between raisins and M&Ms, 12 percent of them picked the raisins. But in the presence of students from other universities, that figure rose almost three times to 31 percent. Apparently, they were more inclined to feel exposed to judgement by ‘outsiders’ and wanted make a positive impression. Carrots beat cookies as the go-to snack in company viewed as less tolerant.
Dairy milk is also vulnerable to disapproval. Generation Z-ers, just over half of whom revealed they use social media to help them make dietary decisions, said they felt ashamed to order dairy in public in front of their peers. In public, 29 percent order plant alternatives; but at home they drink conventional milk. 70 percent of them also admitted they would always prefer to drink dairy milk over plant-based alternatives.
When people were asked what makes food ‘sustainable’, 41 percent said replacing animal protein with plant-based alternatives was the sustainable choice. 27 percent said getting rid of animal products altogether from the diet was “the right thing to do”. 65 percent said they felt pressured to do so — but they really would rather they didn’t have to.
It looks like encouraging sustainable and healthy eating through switching to plant-based alternatives is even more of an uphill battle than anyone thought. As with its intervention in so many other aspects of our lives, it seems our eating habits are influenced more by social media pressure and opinion than by actual facts. If social media is the food-education platform and we are to eat sustainably and healthily, then sustainable food providers and producers need to use it, too. And alt-food manufacturers to use fewer ploys ostensibly promoting fear for the future of the planet but whose real goal is to sell their product.
We surely don't want to see the return to the ‘Big Brother is watching you’ posters from George Orwell’s ‘1984’ pasted about the place to curb our natural behaviour. We've already absorbed CCTV cameras in our daily lives with little complaint.
Here’s a delicious summer recipe to go with berries - meringues. If you're in the business of deception, it’s sugar-free, vegan and contains zero calories. Just don't check the ingredients list.
Meringues have the undeserved reputation of souffles of being hard to pull off. It’s all about fear-of-egg-whites. All you need to do is whip them to soft peaks, beat in sugar, spoonful by spoonful and cook them.
3 large fresh eggs, separated (use the yolks to make Creme Anglaise)
150-175g/5¼ oz-6oz + 1 tablespoon caster sugar (it depends on just how large your eggs are - both measures work)
150-300ml/5-10 fl oz double/heavy cream - how luxurious you want your meringues?
Preheat oven to 150C/300F.
Grease and lightly flour a baking sheet or parchment paper.
Whisk the whites on low speed with an electric beater till the whites froth, about 2 minutes. At medium speed, beat them a further minute, then at high speed whisk until the whites reach stiff peaks. Now, one tablespoon at a time, scatter over the sugar and whisk it in, still at high speed, till the foam becomes glossy.
Using a large serving spoon, scoop up a mound of fluff and with another spoon, push it lightly onto the baking sheet. Set in the centre of the oven and turn the heat down at once to 140C/285F and bake until the meringues are a light gold, 60 minutes. Turn the oven off and leave the meringues inside without opening the door until the oven is cold.
Beat a quantity of double/heavy cream until thick and spread a generous quantity on one meringue then sandwich a second meringue on top.
Guilty. But jeez . . . three cheeseburgers a day?