The lonely lettuce leaf

Grasmere, Cumbria, United Kingdom

I looked at the lettuce leaf. I imagined it was looking at me. After all, it was alone, abandoned, by itself in a sea of porcelain white. Its only company was a brightly polished knife and fork, soon to be tested. A strange situation, perhaps. Yet this was a meal, someone’s snack, maybe even lunch. This was a meal for a dieter.

I worry about dieters, not for their welfare, not whether their specific regimen is an advantage. I worry because I feel sure their eating may affect the non-dieters around them. I do not mean that should dieters fail, they enlarge and become harder to hug. I do not mean as they shrink they can be mistaken for a stick insect. I do mean that I sense the planet has decided that those not on diets are the ones who are abnormal. Only the other day someone called me a carnie, disapproval in her tone, because I was eating meat.

Let me be clear. I am not on a diet of any sort, will eat almost anything put on my plate and have the good fortune of being allergy free. If you discount feathers, which make me sneeze but have not yet made their way to my gut. If I put on weight, my solution is simple. I stop eating. I do not possess a single diet book. Easy? Not at all. Effective? Of course. It works every time.

Yet these days I appear surrounded by colleagues, acquaintances and friends on diets of every kind - Atkins, Zone, Vegetarian, Vegan, Weight Watchers, South Beach, Raw Food and Mediterranean. Those happen to be the eight most popular diets in the world today but you can add thousands more to this list. In a familiar, domestic setting I can handle it but when eating out? That is when troubles begin.

Frighteningly perhaps, the typical Brit dines out 1.5 times each week and spends more than £4000 every year on restaurants. That is a quarter of the national average wage. On Christmas Day alone, 61% of Brits eat out; add to this the mind-bending £76 million they spend daily just dining out for breakfast. Hospitality is clearly an excellent choice of profession for the youngster seeking a job.

Traditionally, each morcel of food should be chewed 32 times, or so the world dictates. Unless you were Horace Fletcher, the so-called Great Masticator, who claimed that 100 chews per morcel was the only way to survive. Fletcher died in 1919 of bronchitis and never made it to 70. However, the idea of chewing food to destruction flies in the face of modern thinking as the more you chew your grub, the more nutrients are released and the greater the likelihood they will be absorbed. If, like me, you believe in clearing your plate in record time, and that taste buds are for bypassing while your stomach is where it is at, the morcels in my tummy are so large there is zero chance of full nutrient absorption. One very good way of staying thin.

For me, the self-appointed Great Swallower, who feels that mastication is rather by the way, I remain fascinated by the anxieties of fellow humans and their diets. A while ago I was sharing coffee with a Vegan. Sorry, that is wrong. I was not sharing coffee as the Vegan had opted for soy while I had selected traditional moo-moo milk, straight from the nearest udder. Sharing is not something a non-dieter does with a Vegan.

However, I was watching the antics of the waitress, who spent at least five minutes discussing soy, types of soy, origins of soy, uses of soy, benefits of soy and eventually the advantages of coffee. And when it came to the cake to accompany the coffee to accompany the soy that filled the cup, oh boy, at that point the conversation then exploded.

While soy enthusiasm reigned, I sat opposite, silent, yet to order, basically ignored, and wondering how many times each day the waitress held this conversation. I guessed quite a few. After all, 75% of the world’s population is lactose deficient, especially those who are black, so instantly there is a problem with milk. More than 1% of the UK population is now Vegan, a figure that has jumped three-and-a-half times in the past ten years. Vegetarians meanwhile, and Vegans are a version of vegetarian, comprise 2% of the population. Would you believe there are 375 million vegetarians worldwide? There are. Golly.

So, sat opposite a Vegan in a café, and listening to the intense discussion about foods and whether a customer would self-ignite the moment meat passed lips, I began to wonder. Was I right? Was I wrong? Who was the winner? Did I have to go Vegan, too, and spend the rest of my life peering at microscopic, indecipherable, illegible print on food packets and cartons? And if I did not, would I be one of the Great Unwashed? An Untouchable, an Outcast, an Outsider, a Pariah, or a Recluse? I took no comfort from the waitress’ malcontented gaze when she took my order, brief and to the point, of a full-fat café latte and a double helping of chocolate cake.

“I see,” she said, scribbling rapidly on her notepad. “One of those.” She nodded knowingly at the Vegan, then turned on her heel tut-tutting and headed for the kitchen.

When it comes to diets, educating the masses will undoubtedly take time. Educating me is bad enough, while educating some of the remoter parts of the land will, I sense, be near-to-impossible.

How about this? The other day I was ordering at the counter in another café somewhere in the UK’s Lake District. The Lakes, as they call it, is one of the most scenic places in the land.

I’ll have the egg and chips,” I said, pointing at the smudged and laminated menu, part caked with crystallised tomato ketchup, maybe mustard, I could not tell. “Just miss out the black pudding.”

“Aye, that’ll be fine,” came the reply from the Cumbrian behind the glass display counter. I thought I detected a Scottish twang to his accent. I was not surprised as Scotland has been haemorrhaging inhabitants in fear of forthcoming independence. Best estimates are for 700,000 to leave the country should independence ever be agreed.

“One full English; no black pudding, Bill,” the Cumbrian-cum-Scotsman shouted, relaying my order to his colleague in the kitchen. I could not see the chef, despite an open door beyond, but I could clearly hear the reply.

“Nae problem,” it said. Another Scotsman. Soon the Highlands would have no Scotsfolk left, I thought. Maybe that is the trick of the Scottish National Party? Encourage all opposition to leave and then what do you have? Only those who wish to become independent.

“What have you got for Vegans?” I asked, glancing at the table over my right shoulder, in the far corner by the gents’ loo. “I have one with me.”

The Cumbrian-cum-Scotsman looked perplexed. “You what?” he asked, his forehead now etched in confusion.

“Vegans. What have you got for Vegans?”

“Sorry son. What’s that?”

“Vegan. V-E-G-A-N,” I spelled.

Realisation, or perhaps half realisation dawned on the Cumbrian-cum-Scotsman’s face. “Ah! Vegan!” He was shouting now, almost as if with joy. Maybe he thought it was some television quiz and he was answering the first question with success. “That’s some sort of vegetarian, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“Bill?” the Cumbrian-cum-Scotsman shouted.

“Yeah?”

“What have we got for a Vegan?”

“A what?”

“Vegan. You know, one of those veggie folk.”

Silence. Then more silence. Then, “Och, of course,” came the reply drifting from the kitchen. “I remember now. Funny lot but…let me think…och, here we are.” Another hesitation. “Would a lettuce leaf do?”