While teetotalism has replaced veganism as the thing people tell you about themselves instead of having a personality, the harmful effect of processed meat remains a serious issue.
A recent University of Cambridge study has shown that eating the equivalent of two slices of ham a day leads to an increased risk of diabetes.
Obviously, if you ate 730 slices of squeaky, wet pink supermarket ham a year – 732 in a leap year – it wouldn’t be good for you or your reputation. Britain still has a monarchy, but nobody wants to be the Diabetes Ham Queen.
I was vegetarian for three years in my tweens, until my virtue was undone in classic form: by a bacon sandwich. I was on a family holiday in the US and my aunt was cooking some crispy, sizzling bacon on the hob. She added thick-cut white bread, toasting it and letting it soak up the bacon juices from the pan. She put it all together with a swish of butter and mustard, which melted together in a chewy, crunchy, hot, salty, oily, bitey delight. I ate a bacon sandwich every day for the rest of the fortnight, and it was fantastic.
Yes, you shouldn’t eat processed meat. Like smoking, taking coke (I mean Coca-Cola obviously), hard liquor cocktails and cheap flings with toxic narcissists, just because something seems cool, looks great and feels fantastic every time, doesn’t mean it’s good for you.
Karma for Asda?
I don’t go to nightclubs but I do go to Asda. The last time, the guy on the till told me: “You always come here alone on a Saturday night, and you always pick me.” So that’s the end of that, unless I want to get chopped into pieces, featured in a crime podcast called Cleaner Call-Out: A Spill in Aisle 9 and eventually found in several bags for life near the online order pick-up point.
I’m not the only one turning away, as the chain’s shares fell more than 6% over the summer. Is it failure, or is it karma?
The supermarket arrived in our area decades ago and sucked the high street dry, leaving only charity shops, betting shops, chicken shops and nail bars in its wake.
With its ice-cold air conditioning, gummy sushi rice and an impressive selection of giant bras, it offers something to suit everyone’s aversions. It’s a great place to watch people stealing meat, or shuffling about in a nightie and pool sliders and verbally abusing staff.
I once watched the local drug dealer scream at an Asda worker: “I make more money in a week than you’ve done in your entire life.” Maybe he could donate some back to the company.
Critical mess
There’s been a mega marketing disaster about a mega disaster movie, as the mega studio Lionsgate has been caught fabricating quotes (by real film critics) about the director Francis Ford Coppola. His dystopian mooted mega flop, Megalopolis, a self-funded folly – sorry, unique vision – is due for US release at the end of September.
To add another layer of mega meta fatigue, the fake quotes are all negative and relate to Coppola’s previous films. With this deceptive strategy, Lionsgate was trying to imply that badly reviewed earlier works by Coppola were ultimately acknowledged to be masterpieces. Except that the films were rightly acclaimed at the time.
What a mind-bender! Here’s the truth, no funny business necessary: by all accounts, Megalopolis is bad. Mega bad.
• Bidisha Mamata is an Observer columnist
