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3 January
Remember those 'statistics'* that told us that, on average, cat-owners were x% less likely to have something horrible happen, or, as it might have been put, were y% more likely to have some health benefit ?
(The bogus inference, which might have ended up benefiting animal shelters, was that, if you got a cat, you would buy yourself the good thing, or (as the case might be) avoid the bad one - nothing to do, it appeared, with whether the sort of person who would choose to have a cat would probably be of a certain disposition, and would, say, accept an enforced time of rest when he or she favoured one's lap with his or her presence.)
That's what I mean by a shortcut to perfection here, and I want to explore that notion with regard to this painless proposition:
Oddly, the tin of Heinz Beans (not 'Beanz') says that it's 1 of my 5 a day, so I'll have a large dram and call it 2 as it's made with barley
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 3, 2013
The tin in front of me (I haven't hit the single malt just yet !) says, on the back of the label, just ¼ of a can = 1 of your 5 a day, with a little measure that divides the notional contents up (apparently, they are green) into four, in the way that a petrol-gauge does (no doubt, with all the overtones of fuel and energy). On the front, I am told that the product is Baked beans in a deliciously rich tomato sauce.
No slur on that invention of a cuddly Uncle Heinz who prepares these strangely British recipes in his nonetheless Bavarian kitchen, knee deep in pasture, or how this brand has become a premier one (if not the premier one for these mysterious 57 varieties, which are mentioned on this tin, as usual), although feelings ran high about The War well into the 1970s, with such a patently German name.
However, no one who has ever had any variety of spaghetti, baked beans or anything else that comes tinned can really mistake the syrupy, sweet liquid that accompanies those things for anything else, or for having very much to do with tomatoes. So what qualifies one-quarter of this tin of 415 g as being 1 of my 5 - is it meant to be the beans, the sauce, or both?
Whatever it is, I find it quite improbable that the Chief Medical Officer's guidance to us ever intended such a product qualifying, when, unless I completely misunderstood the idea behind it all, it was to encourage us to eat fresh fruit and vegetables, and a good mixture of them, not food that I do not need to eat until March next year.
A shortcut to perfection, a bit like the cat that makes you healthy, but, here, literally re-labelling something that we might eat anyway, and which we could be encouraged to do more, by believing that we are absolved from a few of our 5 a day ? Which is where I come in with my generous dram, which is far more pure than this tin of beans, with just spring water, malted barely, yeast, and a little peat imparted by drying off the malt - same's true of beer, in theory, with just the addition of hops, so when are bottles going to start announcing how many of our 5 a day we can deal with in a pint ?
Oh, and the 5 a day - they knew that, whatever our initial intentions to do it might be, we'd end up on 3 a day**. However, according to those much-to-be trusted supermarket portions of prepared fruit, even a large container only seemed to account for at most 2 portions (and somehow seemed designed, oddly enough, to make you buy more and more fruit), so maintaining 5 at the outset was probably too high, and they should have made it 4 a day, so that we did not feel so defeated by it all***.
That so-important balance between doing something that makes us much healthier overnight, or less prone to be attacked by free radicals, and making it simple - in short, a shortcut to perfection !
STOP PRESS : That deliciously rich sauce must make Heinz spaghetti, another product immersed in some sort of goo that bears little resemblance to tomatoes, somehow worth another one of one's five a day (the whole tin, I gather), since (little though it resembles pasta) the spaghetti clearly doesn't...
End-notes
* Which I cannot believe any feline charity would have promoted.
** 3 a day is what they wanted all along, though.
*** Whereas a 415 g tin of fruit cocktail containing 4 such portions just seems a little too easy...
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