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Helen Timbrell on why working holidays make such good sense; and Bill Knott gets nostalgic for the oldfashioned toy shop
SPEAKERS’ CORNER
WE ALL HAVE A HABIT OF JUMPING ON THE HEALTH BANDWAGON AT THIS TIME OF YEAR, BUT FOR THOSE WHO ARE ALREADY IN DANGER OF FALLING OFF, FOOD DOCTOR IAN MARBER HAS A COMFORTING PRESCRIPTION: DUMP THE DETOX
FOR THE AVERAGE Brit, January is bleak. Cold days and long dark nights are combined with resolutions for a healthy New Year, probably in response to an over-indulgent Christmas. While it’s traditional to embark on a healthy eating regime in the new year – hence the plethora of diet books filling shop shelves (mine being the best among them, of course!) – why do we feel that a couple of weeks of abstinence is going to make up for a year’s worth of eating rubbish? Whatever you may have decided to do for 2007, I hope that some stupid half-baked detox isn’t part of it.
Over the last 10 years, it seems to have become the norm to treat January like a nutritional sack cloth and ashes, depriving ourselves in the hope that this will lead to physiological Nirvana. While I think that cutting back on alcohol, refined sugars and saturated fats can have numerous health benefits, I loathe the way that the detox movement has evolved. Of course, you can romanticise the whole thing by telling yourself that it’s like a spring clean or you are giving your digestive system a rest. Or that we were never designed to deal with the level of toxins that we take in every day. Sounds good, doesn’t it? But good enough to justify punishing yourself by eating nothing but clear broth and raw cauliflower for days and days?
In times gone by, Christmas meant overeating for a few days and then taking it easy, so that by the time Valentine’s Day rolled around you weren’t feeling like a bloated potbellied pig. Nowadays, it has to be quicker, faster, now. And knowing that a detox is in the offing, do people eat even more? And what about afterwards?
The truth is that your liver is detoxifying unwanted elements from the internal and external environment all the time, and it usually does a very fine job of it, however much it has to deal with. You might want to help it out by drinking plenty of water and eating fresh fruit and vegetables to provide valuable anti-oxidants and fibre. What you don’t need is a tincture added to a bottle of water that claims to make it all happen for you (the benefit likely to be in the water, not the tincture anyway). Unlike many other parts of the body, liver cells regenerate themselves, so that the liver should remain the most robust of all the organs, even over a whole lifetime. Unless your intake of alcohol, medicine and drugs is so excessive that your liver cannot cope, there is little reason to detox, at least not in the modern way.
My other issue with the detox is what happens afterwards: a good old-fashioned retox. The feeling that we have spring cleaned makes us feel immune and superhuman, so off we go again, gingerly at first, slowly gorging ourselves before we become corpulent and bloated once more. In clinical practice, I find that this extreme way of eating – abstinence followed by over-indulgence – leads to long-term weight gain and an unhealthy attitude towards food. It’s not hard to work out that we feel and look better if we eat well, so surely it has to be better to eat well perhaps 80% of the time, allowing room for treats, holidays and celebrations without having to resort to extremes and nutritional self-flagellation. After all, isn’t the best mantra “moderation in all things”?
The Food Doctor Diet Club by Ian Marber, Dorling Kindersley (£14.99); www.thefooddoctor.com
FLYING THE FLAG
TOY SHOPS HAVE BEEN ZAPPED BY VIDEO GAMES, SAYS BILL KNOTT
THERE WERE, I REMEMBER, two great consolations of childhood: toys and sweets. In middle-class homes like mine, both were strongly disapproved of, but the two great emporia which specialised in them – the toy shop and the sweet shop – defiantly traded in the lurid and the sugary, despite our censorious parents’ wishes.
The sweet shop, despite the good intentions of the anti-sugar lobby, persists: the old-style toy shop, however, is in danger of extinction. This is a great victory for the politically correct. Once you have cleared the shelves of toy soldiers (too militaristic), dolls (sexist and stereotyping), racing cars (not promoting eco-friendliness) and water pistols (militaristic AND wasteful of the Earth’s precious natural resources), what do you have left?
A beginner’s macramé set and a candle-making kit, that’s what. “Just what I wanted, Mummy,” mumbles little Jocasta, dutifully, still dreaming of her Barbie astronaut doll, the one with the pink spacesuit.
The other problem is that board games, jigsaws, Etch-a-Sketch and those funny binocular slide show things, are considered boring these days.
Well, Etch-a-Sketch was always boring, but you see my point. When six-year-olds are plugged into video games, saving the galaxy from swarms of mutant insects, the gentle charms of a game of Ker-Plunk hold little attraction. The toy shops of today are electronics stores. Actually, the real market for the toys of the 1960s and 70s is adults. I expect, given our era’s penchant for nostalgia, to see a whole new breed of toy shop springing up on the high street, aimed specifically at the older generation.
CULTURE VULTURE
HELEN TIMBRELL SAYS WORKING HOLIDAYS MAKE A DIFFERENCE
BACK IN 1967, a small group of volunteers went on the first National Trust working holiday in Warwickshire. This year, as the Trust prepares to celebrate the 40th anniversary of working holidays, over 100,000 volunteers from 16 years old and upwards have taken part across the country, assisting wardens, gardeners and property managers with vital conservation work that simply could not have been done without their help.
The National Trust is one of Europe’s leading conservation bodies and safeguards over 700 miles of British coastline and more than 600,000 acres of land of outstanding natural beauty. The buildings in its care date from the Middle Ages to modern times and include monuments, gardens and landscaped parks. As a charity, the Trust has to rely hugely on volunteers who share its passion for preserving these.
People choose working holidays for different reasons: meeting new friends, learning new skills or just to get outdoors and enjoy fresh air and culture. And, increasingly, they’re looking for a challenge that lets them give something back. In the past, volunteers have helped with everything from dry-stone walling in the Lake District and planting borders in Buckinghamshire, to mapping flower-rich hay meadows in Yorkshire and harvesting apples (rather than scrumping them) in Devon. The growing concern for wildlife – and the effects of climate change on the environment – also attract many people who want to help preserve and protect important habitats for insects, birds and animals.
So it’s attracted people of all ages and abilities. Some volunteers have been so inspired by their rhododendron-bashing or hedge-laying that they have left their jobs and changed careers. Or they have met their future partners, made lasting friendships and picked up new hobbies along the way. The great thing is that, whatever the reason for taking a working holiday, everyone gets to make a contribution and feel good about themselves in the process. And there are plenty of different organisations to try if you like a bit of variety.
For Working Holidays information, visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk or call +44 (0)870 429 2429
