19

Tales From the Mall

TODAY I STAND defeated at the counter of a McDonald’s, where I appear to be ordering food against my will. I’m now entering my third week of eating junk food, having previously managed to lose ten pounds during a period of abstinence. This success makes my regression into emotional eating more difficult to stomach. I know this feeling well. After all, it’s not the first time I’ve relapsed.

I take the food to my table, mortified that I might be seen by someone I know. I tell myself, this is the last time. In my head, I continually perform calculations that involve calories, kilograms, litres, pounds. Running parallel to these estimations I tally up miles, kilometres and steps. My apps track everything I eat and drink, every act of physical exertion. Throughout the day I receive a constant stream of data. But if knowledge is power, why do I feel so pathetic and weak? So overweight?

All bad habits involve a routine, any deviation from which creates anxiety and agitation. This stress triggers the urge to resume the habitual behaviour, a powerful impulse that can override all other considerations.

In other words, when my brain wants a McDonald’s and I’m tired or stressed, then the urge is very hard to disobey. I open the box containing the chicken burger and empty a portion of fries into the lid, laid out flat like a little cardboard bowl. I start with a couple of stray fries that have fallen onto the table and then turn my attention to the straw, tearing the wrapper and unsheathing it with my teeth. The straw is then placed in the large plastic cup and I take my first sip of Coca Cola.

The ice-cold fizzy drink rejuvenates me and I am filled with a wave of optimism bordering on elation. The shame is banished from my mind. But I immediately squander this wave of positivity by fantasising about a life where I never visit McDonald’s again.

I return to the fries. This time a bigger handful is required, followed by a swig of Coke. The process of eating and drinking accelerates and my appetite gets more ferocious as more food enters my system. Which is why I have taken my usual precaution of ordering an extra portion of fries. It’s always comforting to know it’s there, almost like the company of another person, but without the social anxiety.

The quantity of food I can consume in this gluttonous trance is obscene. Scrolling through my phone, reading people’s accounts of falling off their diets, I grow increasingly disgusted at myself. It’s like my brain forgets that I’m full and goes into autopilot. The rush of elation soon passes and melancholy descends. I look around. Most of the people in the restaurant are also overweight and alone. I wonder if, for them, too, the temporary high of those first delectable mouthfuls is a curtain raiser to the deep feelings of shame and powerlessness that push us through the door in the first place.

I don’t think it’s possible to be overweight and enjoy this food. Some people might be able to kid themselves, but I see them struggling to fit into their cars when they leave. I see them staring into space across the road from the chip shop, debating whether to put the health kick on hold. The thought of those first few bites, the emotional relief and instant fulfilment they induce, possesses such an allure that resistance is futile; an allure so intoxicating that you forget things you swore you would always remember. Like how deeply it depresses you to obsess about this sort of food and gorge on it.

Only days ago, I was hiding sweet and chocolate wrappers in a jacket pocket because I didn’t want my partner to know I had been bingeing again. Yes, there are millions of people who enjoy McDonald’s in moderation. But for people of my disposition, with serious impulse control problems, emotional eating is not only dangerous but also soul-destroying. The thought at the end of the meal is always the same: I don’t know why I did that. This cycle of emotional discomfort and self-defeating behaviour extends to many other areas of my life. For many years, I believed my lifestyle and associated health problems – fatigue, depression, anxiety, gum disease, insomnia, toothache, obesity, sexual dysfunction, alcoholism and substance misuse – were by-products of capitalism. In many ways they are. But that’s not the whole story.

Like many people my age, my terrible eating habits can be traced directly to my grandmother. She was born in the early ’30s and grew up in a time when the food products we now associate with poor lifestyle either hadn’t been invented or were very hard to come by. This was a time before mass public transport, mechanisation and telecommunications, which meant that people were likely to be engaged in physical work every day, probably walking to and from their jobs. Physical exercise was a constituent part of everyday life. It was in the early ’30s that the first American drive-in restaurants started popping up, signalling the dawn of a new age of tasty and affordable fast food. This phenomenon, and the problems that came to be associated with it, would likely have arrived in the UK a lot sooner. We temporarily dodged that bullet by becoming engulfed in the Second World War.

By the time my grandparents met in the mid-’50s consumerism began to take hold and the processed foods of today made their appearance in local grocery shops. Imagine what this must have been like for people who had lived through wartime rationing. The impact was felt both in terms of how consumers perceived and related to food and how producers, hungry for market share, produced and packaged it. Eating was no longer simply about fuelling and nurturing your body. It was about expressing yourself and exploring new realms of personal pleasure.

By the time the UK started integrating with Europe in the ’70s, the food revolution was well under way. Consumers became spoiled for choice as companies competed fiercely for their custom. Links were identified between processed foods and health problems such as high cholesterol. With growing public awareness of these risks, a sub-industry grew offering low-fat, seemingly healthy, alternatives. Before long, healthy eating became bamboozling and counterintuitive, a minefield to traverse.

The concept of food, how it should be sourced, produced and eaten, changed more in my grandparents’ lifetime than at any other period in human history. Yet, our understanding of what was really going on in our food and, indeed, nutrition generally remained dangerously unevolved. And by the time we had educated ourselves, it was already too late – we were a family of sugar addicts.

My journey into eating poorly started early in life, hastened by the fact that we were unaware of the dangers. As kids, we’d queue up outside the dinner hall in school, talking about what we were going to have for lunch that day. To call it a preoccupation would be an understatement. Salty soup, pies, pastries, chips, roast potatoes, battered fish, sausages and breaded chicken, covered in baked beans, mushy peas and fatty gravy. Desserts were obligatory, consisting of caramel cakes, empire biscuits, Angel Delight, jelly or a choc-ice – all available with custard. Before lunchtime a tuck-trolley would roll through our classrooms, interrupting lessons for up to 15 minutes, filled to the brim with chocolate bars, chewy sweets, fizzy drinks, fruit juices and crisps.

Obtaining and consuming these ‘treats’ became a central occupation that made playtime as much about sweets as it was about play. I began making emotional associations with certain kinds of food, which soon evolved into an expectation of entitlement to sweets at specific times. If this expectation was not met or there was an interruption to the flow of sugar, then I’d experience anger, frustration and disappointment. This preoccupation led to dips in energy throughout the day and affected my ability to concentrate. If I found myself without tuck because I didn’t get any pocket money, playtime was tinged with melancholy. Days were longer if I didn’t have treats to look forward. My love for sweets was so deep that threatening to withhold them from me was – excluding violence – about the only way to control my behaviour.

Luckily, at my grandparents’ there was rarely a disruption in supply.

Much of my childhood was spent on the other side of Pollok, with my granny. She performed the dual role of mother and grandmother. We spent a lot of time ‘going for a loaf’, as she called it. ‘Going for a loaf’ was code for a day trip. Codes were important because they helped us communicate without drawing the suspicion or interference of my grandfather.

My granny and I spent quite a lot of time in classic Scottish cafés. The main ingredients of those Scottish cafés were Italian proprietors, some frying pans and copious amounts of American and English food. The thing that made them ‘Scottish’ was the fact that you could have ice cream, Turkish Delight and cigarettes between courses.

The first thing you are likely to see when you enter one of these cafés today is a fridge full of brightly coloured fizzy drinks, cans and bottles. You will often experience a cramped sensation, as too many objects are occupying too little space. Despite that, the café retains its frothy charm, though upon closer inspection its allure gets harder to put your finger on. As you squeeze through the clutter towards the only seat available, you might become aware that the place is quite dirty. The red leather seats are not particularly comfortable either. The wooden tables, normally fixed to the floor, impose on your already receding space. More so if you have a belly – which everyone in here does.

The menu, usually wedged in a plastic holder between some weathered looking condiments, is very basic, consisting mainly of different combinations of chips, sausages, eggs and beans. Scottish working class cuisine is, essentially, a children’s menu, but served in adult portions. Then, when the food is served, usually a little too quickly, it suddenly dawns on you why you remained here, despite all the signs that you might be safer eating somewhere else: the room is encased within four walls of pure sugar. Jars of brightly coloured sweets, chocolate and chews, coming in every shape and size, adorn the walls around you.

As you horse down your deep-fried dinner, you ponder your surroundings.

Is this a sweet shop? Is it a restaurant? Is it a newsagent or perhaps an ice cream van stuck in a thicket?

Nobody knows. And in Scotland, nobody cares. Even the middle class is in on it, just so long as the food is served with a dollop of irony.

At my gran’s, if eating out wasn’t on the menu, there was plenty of food in the house. We usually started the day with a heaped bowl of Sugar Puffs or cornflakes, glazed with a tablespoon or two of sugar, drowned in ice-cold ‘blue milk’ – full fat milk, signified by a blue lid. My gran did not believe in low fat products and thought them tasteless and packed full of junk. Nothing drew her formidable ire more than a margarine enthusiast or someone lecturing her about the danger of cheese. Throughout the afternoon, we would snack on white bread caked in thick butter and large mugs of tea with two or three sugars, nibbling on biscuits intermittently. We would even drink Carnation milk directly from the tin if conventional treats were in short supply. I remember placing a teaspoon on top of an open can of condensed milk and counting how long it took to fully submerge in the thick yellow liquid, before dribbling it slowly down my throat.

The ubiquity of sugar in my childhood is typified by my first Halloween. I went from door-to-door, dressed as can of Coca-Cola, begging neighbours for chocolate.

Evidently, while the system plays a significant role in how we choose to live our lives, we cannot underestimate the role our choices also play. And never before have we had so many things to choose from.

Clearly, capitalism is a major factor in determining matters of lifestyle, health and self-image. It can be hard to see how best to lead an ethical, environmentally friendly life while setting a good example for our children. Many of us see capitalism as the impediment to these aspirations – and with good reason.

But what about all the cheap 24-hour gyms in my area?

Or the fresh, organic, locally sourced produce I can get delivered to my door?

Then there are resources like YouTube, where I can literally learn anything I desire about food, whether it be tips on how to lose weight or advice on how to prepare healthy meals cheaply in as little time as possible.

Aren’t these things also available because of capitalism?

And as a leftie, is it taboo to acknowledge this?