Ban the fridge
I remember (just) the day that my parents bought their first fridge. We were the last people we knew (apart from my grandparents) to get one.
Before we got a fridge, we had to buy fresh food pretty much every day. I suppose we had some tinned stuff, but I seem to remember my mother walking into the village in which we lived to buy that day’s food most days.
So she got some exercise. I did too, as a child. We knew most of the shopkeepers and had a chat. So there was lots of social cohesion, shopkeepers made a living and we were fitter.
The milkman came every day, of course, in those days. If any old dear hadn’t picked up her milk the day before, he’d have alerted the authorities.
The food was fresh too. It had to be. And, to eat it before it went off, we had to eat it that day.
If ready meals had been invented, we were strangers to them.
I doubt “transfats” passed our lips in the early 70s. Mum had to cook stuff from scratch pretty much all the time. So her cooking skills were far superior to mine.
Unlike the pre-prepared stuff we get today, there was no creamy sauce as part of the dish. All the salt was added at her behest of mother, not added with sugar to get us craving more.
Additives and preservatives were not part of our daily diet.
Contrast that with today. We drive to the supermarket and get served by surly strangers. Milk rounds have become uneconomic in some places.
We stuff our fridges and freezers with ready or frozen meals. One big shop will last a week, if not longer.
Now we’re all much fatter. I read a while ago that the average British man is one inch taller and 17 pounds heavier than he was in 1980.
Home refrigeration has made that possible.
But it goes further than that.
In my childhood, it was a full-time job to shop and cook. Mum couldn’t go to work. From a sexism point of view, I suppose that the fridge freed women (and it was mostly women who did those chores. It didn’t have to be, of course, but let’s not kid ourselves).
So the fridge has changed the shape of the economy. But how much of that new-found prosperity is a mirage? Has it really led to freedom or just made more of us mortgage slaves?
The fridge meant it was possible for more women to work. And one of the main results of that has been that we have double incomes chasing houses. Result: Property price inflation. We all work much harder and longer to buy exactly the same homes.
The fact that more people go to work – because of the fridge – means that more people drive. So we get more congestion and squander more of our precious lives in traffic jams, spewing out exhaust fumes into the atmosphere, damaging the planet.
And when we get home, we just cannot be bothered to cook. So into the oven goes another frozen pizza – and on to our waistlines goes another 800 calories.