Will Caithness food fight bring better nutrition?

Published: 04 August, 2006
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier

A JULY break abroad, in my case in Brittany, returns me reinvigorated, and some holiday reading also added zest.

Zorro by Isabel Allende tracks the “origins” of the foxy swordsman who was, of course, a Spanish Californian fighting for freedom and justice long, long before the USA got its hands on the place or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s great-great-grandfather was conceived in far away Austria.

My other gripping read was our own Joanna Blythman in Bad Food Britain.

It graphically details how a nation ruined its appetite. As a family the Blythmans have contributed much to Scotland since the late Morris Blythman penned radical songs in the 1950s such as “Sky-high Joe”, “Scottish Breakaway”, “Ye’ll no Sit Here”, and “Bonny Wee Prince Chairlie”. His wife, Marion, was a distinguished innovator in the teaching of the deaf who turned down an honour from the Queen in the Thatcher era in protest against nuclear weapons expansion. Now Joanna carries on the family traditions as an investigative journalist, whose exposé of supermarket practices in Shopped won her the Glenfiddich Food Book of the Year Award for 2005.

It was a useful reference when our Scottish Parliament committee called for an independent review of supermarket monopoly. I’m glad to say that the Blair government has allowed the Competition Commission to undertake this after huge pressure across the whole UK.

Did you know that one in every four households no longer has a table that everyone can eat around, or that one in every three Britons says they do not eat vegetables because they require too much effort to prepare? Also, only 50 per cent of Britons really enjoy eating and 40 per cent of food bought in the UK is never used! The downfall of the British diet led in 2003 to us consuming more ready meals than the rest of Europe put together. Far too many think almost everything other than food is more important.

Returning home to the great supermarket battles here in Caithness, Tesco hopes to see off the Co-op and Asda wants to dominate the other side of the county. I can understand the popular demands for the range of produce the big four sell under one roof. But I seriously question the groaning shelves full of convenience food that is now standard fare. Microwavability seems to be essential. That’s why I had hoped our councillors would be trying to make conditions on Tesco, such as stocking a wide range of local produce. They could also insist that supermarkets use the railway to carry in goods. But even better they could raise a health warning on the public’s belief that cheap, processed food and nutrition are not the same thing.

Local producers with stalls at Highland gatherings and agricultural shows are offering healthy local food. I also know the Highland Council tries to buy local and organic produce for our schools and old peoples’ homes.

But the vast bulk of us still seem to want cheap, processed food that has little connection with healthy children or sustaining families, whose waistlines spread on the diet of bad food that Joanna Blythman highlights in her chapter “Britain makes you fat”. I welcome John O’Groat Journal headlines on the Mey Selections as a great way to boost high-quality food exports from the county, but what are people eating here and what should we demand of incoming supermarkets?

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ON holiday, the local Breton newspaper Ouest France, the equivalent of the Press and Journal, led with carnage and devastation in Lebanon, Gaza and Israel. Now back home it seems the USA and UK leaders are in no hurry to restrain the combat and give every impression that Arab lives are cheap. Clearly their morality has been dulled by believing that their destruction and destabilisation of Iraq was a just war. Everyone knows that Israel and the Palestinians will have to live side by side. Eventually the US military and financial backing for Israel has to be turned off and the parties brought to the table.

It’s just as a big concern in this peaceful corner of northern Europe because the use of Prestwick airport for US aircraft to refuel bears no comparison to World War Two when our remarkably fog-free Ayrshire airfield was a key transatlantic staging post. Yes, the Americans eventually came into the war after the Japanese attacked their Pacific bases and Germany declared war on the USA three days later, on December 10, 1941.

On the way home from holidays we stopped off at St Valery en Caux in Normandy where the Highland Division were forced to surrender to Hitler’s forces in June 1940. Today it is a beautiful, small port tucked between huge chalk cliffs, just like those at Dover. Yachts fill the harbour. But the Highland Division monument in the eastern cliff top reminds us how our men were abandoned to years as prisoners of war at the behest of Winston Churchill and the British war cabinet who managed, with great luck, to evacuate so many from Dunkirk while the Scots and French acted as a diversion.

Thankfully the Allies, with the help of Scots servicemen and women, defeated Nazi Germany and fascist Japan in that just war and the United Nations Organisation was founded. But will its founders, the USA and UK, now revitalise the UN as a peacemaker and the sole peace keeper in this turbulent world? When will they stop including Scotland in their unjust wars? Even the Labour Secretary of State for Scotland is worried about Scottish opinion as we do not accept the unasked-for role in arming one side in the Middle East conflict.

Scottish membership of the UN would come with independence. In a much stronger UN we would be a clear voice to help end Anglo-American indifference to the future of so many vulnerable peoples for the sake of dwindling oil and American arrogance.