It would seem that, as a nation, we have lost all sense of proportion. On the one hand, we have teenage girls desperately trying to squeeze into ‘size zero’ jeans; on the other, fast-food outlets are fuelling the UK’s growing obesity epidemic by ‘super-sizing’ our burgers.
In the midst of it all there’s a great North/South ‘food’ debate developing. Are portion sizes determined by our postcodes? In Manchester they call bread rolls ‘Giant Barms’, and indeed they are huge – at least three times the size of a London bread roll. Is it true that portions get bigger the further north you go? And what is a correct ‘portion size’ anyway? We decided to find out…
Is it really greedy up North?
According to the Department of Health, people in the North are definitely eating more and they’ve got the figures to prove it (pardon the pun). It’s been predicted that 13m adults in the UK could be overweight or obese by 2010, and there are the profound regional differences. It’s estimated that Yorkshire and the Humber will have the highest number of obese adults with 39% of men and 27% of women becoming overweight by 2010. In London and the south east however, the forecast is a much healthier 17% for men and women.
…13 Million Adults in the UK could be overweight or obese by 2010.
The great food divide = those with the least, eat the most
The stark reality is that living in poverty often leads to a poor diet and there is a definite divide across the country, with the North and Scotland having the greatest concentration of poorer areas and food poverty. But in modern Britain, food poverty doesn’t mean people can’t afford to eat, like it did in Victorian times.
Instead, what it really means is that people today suffer from a lack of access to healthy food. There is evidence that healthy food is more expensive, while there is an overabundance of cheap, processed food. For example an organic chicken could cost anything from £8 - £15; whereas a 250g bag of frozen chicken nuggets costs around 99p.
