Song, by Toad

Apparently, according to my little book of annoyingly folksy cliches, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.  It’s only half-right, I think.  Surely the way to anyone’s heart is through their stomach – or at least, it should be.

Mrs. Toad and I are both totally disasters, in terms of domesticity, but we both love to cook.  In fact, I remember one of the best things my Mum ever did for me and my little brother as kids, and that was make damn sure we knew how to cook before we left the house.  If you want to pull – either sex – cook for them.  It’ll tell you a lot.  As my Mum (she’s a smutty old bag, really she is) always said: cooking and eating are very important because they involve all the senses, and the only other thing which really does that is sex, so if someone can’t enjoy one then what are the odds that they’re going to be any good at the other?

It’s such a great pulling tool, it really is, if I could recommend any young man or woman learn any one skill (apart from becoming a black belt in oral sex of course) then it would be excellent culinary skills.  Particularly if you can make it seem effortless and do not turn into the gastronomic version of a wine snob.  In fact, best just not use the word gastronomy at all, really, it’s probably a step too far for any right-thinking person.

In a less vulgar sense, of course, it’s a good test of personality.  Anyone who picks their way through things and won’t eat this and won’t eat that is surely not worth bothering with.  I am not talking about shunning people with potentially fatal food allergies (but real ones, not imagined ones, please) but people who are picky eaters are to be avoided.  Why, let’s face it, would you fucking bother.

As for anyone who ruins meals by obsessively watches their weight, well, we don’t even need to discuss that, do we.  Flush them down the toilet with the semi-digested remains of their last meal.  Obsessive gym bunnies (male and female), manorexics (what?) or anyone so obsessed with their appearance that they don’t know how to just fucking relax and indulge a bit… well, fuck ‘em, frankly.  Or, more literally, don’t.

And as for people who have their steaks or their tuna cooked any more than medium rare (and even that’s going a bit far)…

The Divine Comedy – Seafood Song

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

James Yorkston – Midnight Feast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I barely know how to react when I read articles like this one. A large part of me is on the verge of launching into a massive rant about self-obsessed fuckwits who manage to turn something as incredibly simple as diet into the carnival of self-loathing naval gazing that it has become.  And another part of me is just sad.

Funnily enough, I think I went to school with Michael Pollan, who wrote the article. Not as mates, but I think he was a few years ahead of myself and Mrs. Toad at Vienna International School. Maybe it’s a different Michael Pollan.

Anyhow, yes, food. Well his first three sentences read thus: Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly Plants.  A masterpiece of economical, impactful writing. Michael (or Mr. Pollan I suppose, if it’s not the fellow from Vienna) goes on to explain that food does not mean Food Products, it means actual, fresh, raw ingredients. But honestly, is any of this news to anyone? I read the article, and beyond the interesting explanations of the politics of the food industry and their lobbyists, and a little about the biology that means sugars are no longer slowly digested by our systems when we ingest them and instead flood into us unchecked, there’s not much there that isn’t amazingly fucking obvious.

Does anyone, anyone out there really think that when they eat things from containers labelled Really Incredibly Healthy and Organic and Pure and, erm, Cuts Carbon Too! that they are eating anything more than the same old processed shit that they are in the other boxes? People fiddle with certain quantities of trivial levels of particularly buzz-worthy ingredients (No Transfats! Bursting with Omega 3*!) and peddle it to us like the idiots that we are.

Eat fresh food all the time and cut down on the meat. Not too much booze either. It’s fucking obvious. I know when I am straying from this advice, and I know I have to accept the consequences. What’s the fucking problem? Are we that desperate to excuse our lack of self-control? Our greed? Or are we just really, really stupid as a species? Eat less, get some exercise, don’t eat shit. How many millions have been spent pimping hugely over-elaborate versions of that really simple and really obvious statement?

I really should start Mr. Toad’s Stop Fucking Moaning Life Coaching, shouldn’t I. I might have a slightly higher than usual suicide rate, but a few weeks of being told to shut the fuck up, stop whining and just get the fuck over yourself would do most patients a lot of good. And dishing out a good beating to those exploitative charlatans like Patrick fucking Holford and that witch-faced coprophiliac Gillian McKeith wouldn’t do anyone any harm either.

The sad part is that it is in absolutely no-one’s interests to point out that this just isn’t that complicated an issue.  Two hugely parasitical industries – the big pharma companies and the alternative medicine quacks – make millions from fuelling the prevaricating and the self-indulgent hand-wringing.  The shrinks profit from all the neuroses and the marketing whores and the manufacturers benefit from peddling us all this tosh.

Even the NHS, who actually would benefit from people following the simplest and most effective advice, can’t be that blunt because it quite simply is neither self-obsessed enough for most people, nor does it place the blame anywhere other than our own doorsteps.  We all know we should eat fresh food, presumably, so if we are not doing it then who else can possibly be to blame but ourselves?  Unfortunately that is not a very 21st Century answer.

The Fall – Eat Y’rself Fitter
Great Lake Swimmers – Put There by the Land
Belle & Sebastian – Meat & Potatoes
Eels – Hospital Food (Live at the BBC)
Willy Mason – Where the Humans Eat

* Omega 3? Fucking pointless.
**Incidentally, these antioxidant supplement pills have been comprehensively shown to do you no fucking good whatsoever. Eat your greens instead.