Opinion

We've become a nation of snackers and guzzlers

  We’ve become a race of serial snackers, incapable of being separated from any form of sustenance for any length of time
  We’ve become a race of serial snackers, incapable of being separated from any form of sustenance for any length of time   We’ve become a race of serial snackers, incapable of being separated from any form of sustenance for any length of time

Three cardinal sins at my convent grammar school in the sixties were, rolling your waistband over to make your skirt shorter, not wearing your beret and eating in the street while in uniform, thus bringing the good name of the school into disrepute.

Times change, the beret’s gone, current pupils show an inch of fabric below their blazers and the world and its wife are guzzling and grazing on every thoroughfare in the country.

Early morning – here come the coffee-on-the-hoof brigade bearing their lidded cardboard cups like the Holy Grail, the bottled water slurpers, (Who gets dehydrated in this climate?) schoolchildren gobbling crisps at half-eight in the morning and students downing cans of energy drink to get them through double maths or a particularly dull lecture. There was a fellow behind me on the 9am Belfast bus last week whose noisy consumption of a Granny Smith apple reminded me of a horse in a field scobin’ turnips. Could be worse if you’ve ever had the misfortune to travel on the London Underground during rush hour squashed among the huddled masses attempting to convey the contents of small containers to their mouths with plastic forks, despite the proximity of strap-hangers with sweaty armpits.

We’ve become a race of serial snackers, incapable of being separated from any form of sustenance for any length of time. No wonder we have an obesity problem. The proliferation of coffee-shops, restaurants and fast-food outlets must be nearing saturation point.

A century and three-quarters from the Great Famine, half the population eats a bought breakfast on the run. No shopping foray is complete without a coffee and a little calorie-laden something, no child-centred outing without a Happy Meal; no launch or opening devoid of drinks and fiddly things on sticks, no television must-see or major sporting fixture unaccompanied by take-aways and carry-outs.

We’ve adopted the exotic foreign concept of ‘street food’. Half the stalls at festivals and open-air markets are flogging food and drink – and costing local councils a fortune to clean up after our alfresco excesses. Despite our uncertain weather, restaurateurs set up tables outside their premises ten months of a year and we choose to sit in a thin drizzle sipping our lattes and cappuccinos, inhaling the fumes of passing traffic and jostled by passers-by.

Never mind outdoor consumption, indoor public eating is as bad. Don’t speak to me of cinemas and their customers stumbling about in the dark with brimming buckets of popcorn (with its pungent odour of baby-sick) and litre measures of coke. Theatre patrons are no better. The fact they’ve had a pre-theatre meal doesn’t preclude their tramping over your feet slopping glasses of wine and fistling futilely through a box of chocolates to locate the ‘caramel kiss’ by touch alone.

A propos of nothing, whatever became of those big notices that said ‘no food or drink in the auditorium please’? It seems we can’t survive an hour without victuals, yet it’s not hunger that assails us – it’s habit. There’s nothing more irritating than hearing someone unwrap an Everton Mint during a particularly tense or tender scene onstage – except someone unwrapping an Everton Mint slowly and stealthily so the mouse like rustle goes on forever. I get an overwhelming urge to tap them on the shoulder and say, “Do us a favour. Next time bring wine gums – wrapped in a hankie.”

However, I’m not devoid of guilt in that department myself. The most shame-making occasion was the classical concert the Loving Spouse and I went to, he with a sore throat but insistent on attending. In the respectful hush between movements of a Beethoven symphony he whispered hoarsely, “Gimme a sweetie quick! I’m dying to cough.” In an echoing silence it’s impossible to extricate noiselessly from a coat pocket a crackling cellophane bag, which promptly tore. A fusillade of brandy balls shot out, bounced audibly off the parquet floor and rolled down the aisle in all directions, three of them coming to rest directly behind the conductor’s heels. I could’ve died….