The Downsizing Diva has decided that the Food Giants must go
Introducing my new, being-written-as-we-speak book, and how to make your own mayo in 20 seconds
Hello, and welcome to this week’s Downsizing Diva. As we head into months of too much darkness, (is there anyone in the whole world who thinks this is a good idea??), I thought it was a very good time to get started on my book about fighting the Food Giants, and share drafts of it as I went along. As a Diva, my megalomania knows no bounds, so am confidently predicting that My Bumper Book of Food-Giant Slaying will save the world from the clutches of fake food – starting with how to make real mayo in 20 seconds. I’ve got my hopes up before, but this time I think the Nobel is in the bag.
My brain is stuffed full of ideas, and right now I am confident that I know exactly where I am going with it, but lurking in the depths of my world-beating ego and overweening modesty is the knowledge that sooner or later I will get to that bit of writing a book where I will be staring at a heap of random, vital pieces, with no idea where they should go. So if you want to join in this world-saving project, and have ideas, questions, and feedback – and anything you’ve found helpful in the fightback for real food – I would be delighted to hear them. All tips and recipes used will be credited.
N.b. I shall not be sharing the Nobel.
And if you know anyone with an interest in returning the world to a place where humans eat real food again, please share this with them.
My Bumper Book of Food-Giant–Slaying
The Food Giants are laying waste to the world and something’s got to be done about it. My name is not Jack and I get vertigo so beanstalks are out of the question, but I am going to slay them.
And this book is about how you can slay them too.
For the purposes of clarity, I’m talking about vegetarian giant-slaying: there will be no dead giants*. Or blood.
*But they may need counselling… and a new job. They might have to sell their swimming pool.
The book I would like to write would be short.
It would say:
Once upon a time Food Giants took over the world, destroying health, happiness, trees and crops. Then a wise king told them they weren’t allowed to do this anymore so they went to live on Mars, where they got a nasty shock when they discovered that absolutely nothing was covered in chocolate.
But everyone else lived happily ever after.
The End
But sadly, it will take more than that, not least because wise kings think all it takes is to hand out hands in marriages and a bit of their kingdom, and their governments think that banning a bit of advertising… possibly… and definitely not right now, is going quite far enough.
Although just as well: the market for one-paragraph books is really quite small, however many instagram followers you have. And besides, these Food Giants – or rather their effect on us and how we are currently dealing with them, is curious, nonsensical even; and, as one of the defining features of the age, well worth a bit of a book to get to the bottom of it.
A word about Giants
There have always been giants on the rampage - we wouldn’t get through a panto season without them – but they used to make do with the blood of an English Mun – whatever one of those is – and a type of gluten-free bread made out of bones – which is not for everyone. Obviously they took our gold and the odd chicken – especially if it laid golden eggs. And of course people died – to provide bones and so on – but most didn’t, and it was all a bit of light hearted fun.
But this lot are a different kettle of fish: they have taken away our food, and given us things that look like food – and taste divine – but are nothing of the sort. And while we are feasting on the divine illusions, they steal our bodies: they remove our health; they addle our brains; they suck the happiness out and replace it with misery – or anxiety and depression as we now call it; they shut down our bowels – or make them so excitable that we daren’t go out of the house – and they double our weight. As for our children, they remove inches from their height, rot their teeth, render their jaws too small for the ones they have left, and make them behave in ways that make parents wonder if it’s too late to change their minds, and teacher want to go and work in a nail bar*.
And they manage to do all of that and wreck the environment at the same time.**
*Note to Food Giants: elaborations will be forthcoming, so please put away your lawyers.
** Ditto.
I’ve probably left a few things out, but it’s plenty to be going on with, and in the interests of fairness, the Food Giants don’t set out to do any of this: they just want our gold.
They don’t steal our gold;* these giants are not petty criminals: we hand it over as fast as we can, as often as we can, because they sprinkle magic dust over their fake food, making it so delicious, we can’t stop ourselves. Which is the Number 2 reason why governments don’t put a stop to it.
*The Food Giants aren’t fussy where they get their gold, but there are two areas that produce particularly rich and easy pickings: the poor, and the children, and that is where they concentrate their gold-extraction. They have been especially clever with the children: they lure them with sugar-coated cartoons and plastic toys, and leave them to do the rest. The children don’t have to try very hard – their parents are grateful for all the added vitamins and calcium, and, of course, not having to cook – and if things get nasty, a well-aimed tantrum usually does the trick.
If you want to get cracking with your Food-Giant-slaying, it’s worth remembering that every time you don’t hand over your gold, a Food Giant dies. Or rather their Christmas bonus shrivels a little, which comes to much the same thing.
Food Adulteration is Not New
There’ve been hobgoblins tampering with our food forever – because there have always been plenty of people without the price of a wholesome loaf of bread – but they were frowned upon and legislated against – with threats of naming and shaming, fines, and even 6-months with hard labour. I think that needs repeating: in the Victorian era, people who sold adulterated food risked prison with hard labour.
What they were not allowed to do was sponsor the World Cup.
But it was the Nazis who took it to a whole new level when they found a way of turning coal-fat into margarine. No, me neither, but apparently it was a byproduct of turning coal into a desperately-needed liquid fuel for tanks and planes, and a genius chemist, Arthur Imhausen, seeing such a quantity of fat going to waste in a time of desperate food scarcity, found a way to make it edible. He didn’t make it safe, but he did make it delicious – dyacetyl is clever like that: it can make absolutely anything taste like butter – and the Nazis were unconcerned that it wrecked people’s kidneys and thinned their bones, because they only needed to keep them alive long enough to help them win the war.
Nobody spreads coal on their toast for breakfast anymore, but today’s food manufacturers are devilish clever at passing off an infernal collection of substances as food – and making it taste absolutely delicious. At least, it might not taste delicious for the first bite or two if you’ve only ever eaten food. But after a very few further bites, the flavour and texture wizardry will start to work their magic, and soon it will be real food that tastes lacking. As I discovered when I started to wean myself off Hellmann’s. And yes, I am now a post-Hellmann’s-human.
I’ll get onto why later, but please take a moment to be admiring.
The Nazis tested the safety of their coal-butter on 6,000 concentration camp prisoners – who had no choice in the matter, and no one was worried about longterm consequences for them, or for the soldiers it was fed to.
Modern-day Food Giants would not be so unethical: they conduct their longterm trials of flavourings, thickeners, emulsifiers, chemicals, and processing techniques on us, who have freely agreed to take part. At least, no one forces us to buy their wares … or eat quite so much of it. It’s a completely understandable approach: it takes decades to be sure if something affects a human adversely, and food companies have shareholders to feed in the meantime. And anyway, they’d be hard put to get volunteers:
‘Would you eat these ersatz foods and nothing else for the next 40 years, so we can see if it gives you lots of horrible diseases and shortens your life compared to the group over there who get to eat the real thing’; it’s not a good chat-up line.
And besides, the tobacco companies used exactly the same method, although it has to be said that they were rather disappointed with the conclusions. And spent years disputing them.
It wasn’t till the 70s that the Food Giants got a proper toe-hold in people’s kitchens, and over the last fifty years it has grown into an all-devouring hobnailed-boot-hold.
The results of this mass experiment on the human race are now in and unequivocal.
To everyone’s great surprise, it turns out that eating industrial chemicals and additives, padded out with cheap commodity crops is not very good for us. The list of life ruining and life-shortening diseases is long and it’s made everybody fat. But governments steadfastly ignore the evidence, because apart from the economic factors – it contributes £28 billion and 400,000 jobs in Britain alone – it gives a brilliant illusion of food to all the people not paid enough to eat the real thing. Governments are well aware that things can turn very nasty if people don’t get enough bread – or cake – to eat, so they put their compassionate and inclusive hat on, and say things like, ‘regulation would hit people on the lowest incomes’ or, ‘it’s all some people can afford’. As if poor people didn’t mind eating substances implicated in diabetes… heart disease… cancer… depression… dementia, because they are so grateful that they are able to eat at all.
There are other ways of making real food affordable to people on low incomes and besides, if people were drinking gin because they couldn’t afford to drink water, nobody would suggest that they should continue on the gin.
But they should be able to avoid riots and economic armageddon for quite a bit longer because the Food Giants are very obliging about funding research out of their own pockets that proves that all the sickness and obesity is nothing to do with them. But they don’t like to big themselves up: they do it discreetly so we might never know how generous they were being.
Sometimes they might have a point about some ill or other, but however much money they throw at it, they can’t hide the fact that everywhere they go, people get ill and fat.
So on with the motley
There are two parts to this Food-Giant-slaying business: how to get rid of them, and how to live without them. But as it’s going to be a colossal task, first of all it’s important to understand what they are doing to us, and why it matters so much.
But before I get on with it, this is the most useful recipe you will find anywhere.
Giant-Slaying Mayo
The thing that everyone knows about making your own mayo is that it takes forever, curdles at the last minute, and after all that, it’s not nearly as good as Hellmann's .
Except that it doesn’t have to be like that.
This is how you can make it in less time than it takes to remove a jar of Hellmann’s from your fridge.* And it’s so easy and so much fun, that I often make it if I’m having a bad day at the typeface and want a bit of instant achievement, and a two-year-old who watched me making it last July, is still talking about it.
*Requires fridge to be inconveniently located in large kitchen, or timing may need to include getting the top off.
Essential kit:
Stick (immersion) blender + a tall thin beaker – which is best if only the tiniest bit wider than the head of the blender.
N.b. Essential kit is essential.
Ingredients
1 whole egg
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar or lemon juice
Salt and pepper
Roughly 150ml bland oil – a mild olive oil or sunflower work well.
Any spices you feel like using – I often add turmeric and paprika
Put the egg, mustard, vinegar, and salt and pepper – and any spices you want to use – in the tall beaker.
Add the oil – you don’t have to be too precise about the amount – and allow it to settle and separate from the rest.
Put the stick blender in, making sure it touches the bottom.
Turn it on and hold it on the bottom for about 10 seconds – you will see it beginning to emulsify immediately.
Gradually draw the head of the blender up, watching it emulsify as you go. You may want to draw it up and down a couple of times if it is not completely emulsified.
And that’s it.
Diva Notes
Never Make Mayo With Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Extra virgin olive oil is inherently extremely bitter. Its droplets are made of tiny fragments but while they are bound together we are protected from the full force of the bitterness. However, the vigour of the stick blender breaks them apart and the bitterness is released, making the mayo taste so disgusting, you fear it might do you a mischief.
Make it with a pale, non-virgin olive oil or something like sunflower oil – even the cheap stuff works perfectly well.
Emulsifying
If your mayo doesn’t emulsify and thicken properly, it is probably because the beaker is too wide for the head of the stick blender. The one that came with it may be too wide.
Great story, better recipe!
It would be better not to use sunflower oil- it’s one of the hateful 8 seed oils that is pretty terrible for you- almost worse than canola oil and one of the worst ultraprocessed foods
I cannot remember when I last ate margarine, thank goodness. Possibly during the 1950s. I’ve never wanted to eat industrially produced food and now I have the time to make everything myself. I had my own stick blender but my aunt gave me her Bamix and jar which is superb for mayo. The population has been at the mercy of the food giants for too long and just look where that has got us.