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‘DAMNATION!’ I cried, spitting out a mouthful of food and at the same
time hurling the rest of the roll I had been eating at the opposite wall.
‘For pity’s sake,’ I added, in spite of an aching jaw, ‘why does every bit
of bread nowadays have adamantine grains in it?’ Not really. That is what
I fancied myself doing. The scene went on in my head. Besides, nobody I
know has ever used the phrase ‘For pity’s sake’ and I would certainly not
consider it because I am uneasily aware that I don’t know what it means
exactly. Adamantine is all right, though.

Hostesses tend to disapprove of guests who shout and throw bread about
as impolite, so, in truth, the crash of teeth on a hard grain, jarring a
filling so badly that I imagined everyone could hear it making a tiny rattling
noise, induced merely a period of moroseness. The incident set me cogitating
on so-called health foods, during the later application of oil of cloves
to the shaky filling. Why chewing bread filled with rock-hard sweepings
off the bakery floor should be reckoned as health-giving puzzles me. The
only health affected would seem to be that of the bank balances of dentists.
Yet you can observe people buying bread whose crusty appearance resembles
that of a cobbled street or Belgian pave, a surface used to test the springs
of cars.

Fashion rules the food world as much as it does clothes. Cut out saturated
fats, down with salt, sugar is death prolonged, cholesterol is bad for you,
eat more fish, turn vegetarian or risk heart attack – a sentiment that is
more likely to induce one in our Bible-based Minister of Agriculture – and
many others have deafened us over the years. (Only real life could have
achieved a fiercely carnivorous minister whose name suggests he would be
incapable of tackling anything harder than scrambled egg.) Fashions in dress
return after a generation or so, modified a bit to suit the march of history.
The same process may be at work in food fashion. Fifty years or so ago,
oats and oat products were bordering on the thaumaturgical. Not only were
they good for your insides, they were just as valuable for the outside.
Washing in oatmilk was, apparently, the age-old secret of the legendary
beauty of Cleopatra, though there may have been confusion with goats’ milk
in the advertising agencies of the time.

Now the oat age may be upon us again. Oat bran is said to reduce cholesterol
in the system and the American Chemical Society was recently informed that
‘oatrim’, an extract from the bran, can be used as a fat substitute for
making such delights as mayonnaise, ice cream and yogurt. Healthier, of
course, and time-saving too, as an instant breakfast drink can be made from
30 grams of it to give as much benefit as chomping 100 grams of bran. This
time round, though, oats have a rival in ‘brewer’s grain’. I take this to
be the barley seeds left after the malting process. It also contains a reducer
of blood cholesterol. I read with gloom that it is already on sale in the
US to food processors, so that they can embed it in high-fibre bread.

Surveying a health-food shop’s window a week or two ago (the breads
mostly resembled cow pats and horse manure), I noticed a label on a bottle
of olive oil. It said, ‘Extra virgin.’ What can it mean? It will not be
long before such shops will be stocking ‘functional foods’ on which the
Japanese are mad keen. These are foods that are supposed to protect the
body from serious diseases, or help it to protect itself, anyway. One I
don’t want to know about is an ‘isotonic sport drink’, downed to replace
nutrients lost during exercise. It is called ‘Pocari Sweat’.

* * *

THE George H. Gallup International Institute is organising what it calls
‘The pulse of the planet survey’ and ‘the world’s first planetary survey
of human relationships to the global environment’. People living all over
the world will be asked questions about environmental topics and after they
have been analysed the answers will show, the institute hopes, methods of
dealing with environmental problems that will be reasonable, practical and
acceptable to everybody.

The institute is at present setting up teams to guide the work, which
it wants to finish in time to influence, for instance, the United Nations
Environmental Programme conference which is due to take place in Brazil
in 1992. Its advisory board will thrash out between 50 and 75 ‘probing and
operative’ questions, which will then be used by public opinion firms in
45 or more nations. In the institute’s words, it ‘shall make available to
the citizens of the globe, a current and penetrating study of attitudes
and behaviours of men and women in all walks of life. Survey teams will
reach metropolitan areas and towns and villages even in remote regions of
the planet to allow a significant cross section of the citizens of the world
to express themselves about their relationships with the environment.’

It intends to make enormous efforts to communicate the results of the
survey through the press and broadcasting in ‘key’ languages. All this will
cost a lot of money and the institute needs sponsors to help. The budget
is $3.1 million, about a third of which is already in the kitty.

Perhaps some of the pop stars, such as Kylie Minogue, who make enthusiastic
statements from time to time about their concern for the environment, could
drop something in the hat? Post Office Box 140, Princeton, New Jersey 08542,
is the address.

* * *

Several newspapers carried a small story under some such headline as
‘Lost tribe discovered’. The story, clearly from some agency, said that
the lost tribe, of more than 200 people, has been found living in a remote
part of north west China. The tribe has been out of touch with the world
for 350 years and has no schools, government or writing. It was found living
around an oasis in the Taklemakan Desert by workers exploring for oil. The
more I looked at this, the more unlikely it appeared, until finally it seemed
to me as bogus as the pin-headed giants from another planet reported by
Tass a while ago. What sets alarm bells ringing and are the chimes to be
relied on? Frustratingly, we shall probably hear no more though I have a
slight hope that the Gallup survey might reach the oasis.