Espresso: Henry Dimbleby - How Britain Became The Most Obese Country in Europe

0:01We are at the forefront in terms of environmental regulation and changing our farming system. we're like probably the leading nation in the world on that and we are, in terms of outcomes, we're one of the worst only Malta has more obesity than we do in Europe we're a close second to America and Canada but why is that? I don't understand that other European countries, they booze a lot well, they don't binge, but they booze and they smoke Luke, like what's the, why do you think we're like, how have we got to this situation where we're the worst in Europe? I think there are two very plausible root causes.

0:49The first is that we became separated from the land way earlier than our European counterparts. So because of the industrial revolution, we uh enclosed large parts of our countryside to grow sheep to produce wool and we moved huge numbers of workers from the countryside into the town so by the start why were we before them sorry to interrupt just so why our industrial revolution kicked off before the others why but i don't understand why that was oh it depends if you believe the british narrative we had a lot of coal and we had some clever and we had some clever engineers you know right okay or the british narrative is we're just great but i'll take both of those i think you can argue that cheap coal plus engineers probably is as good as good as good you know good education and good engineers but so so we went from you know uh the early 19th century where we produced almost all our own food to producing only 30 % of it for the Second World War.

2:00So we basically outsourced food production. So we would create textiles and sell those to the world and we would use the money for that to buy our food for the rest of the world. The France didn't reach the same level of urbanization that we had in 1860 there or thereabouts until 1960 so we so they kept their food culture if you that i've just done this uh report called nourishing britain which was published last week where we interviewed loads of prime ministers and health secretaries and people about why we're so bad at the politics of food in this country and nick clegg as part of that said you know my wife comes from a rural spanish village where the gdp capra is much lower than a lot of the uk and they eat really well so this this link between poverty and bad diet uh is a quite a uniquely british thing and i think that is partly because we just lost the culture we lost the culture of living on the land and of our own indigenous diets that's that's one part of it another thing i've found fascinating again through is just like our class system is just quite a uniquely british thing and like how does that i again being a fish and water right literally until i interviewed seth godin he was like you don't realize how um sort of and listening to podcasts between brits and and americans is like we'll always say oh you're posh or like you know there's there's there really is a clear class system and when me being a fish and water you don't realize you're in it like how has our unique class system um impacted our food system well we go back to 1846 i'm just sorry i'm gonna have to think this through because i've never thought of it with the class lens on but i guess the first like one of the first events would be 1846 which was the repeal of the corn laws repeal of the of the corn laws corn laws right Up until 1846, we were very protectionist.

4:03And so we basically kept the price of corn at a high level so that the lords, largely, the upper class who owned all our land, could benefit from the price of expensive corn. And then there were riots. And in 1846, the corn laws were repealed. Government fell. And that was when we started importing lots from abroad. And then at the same time, you were getting this mass migration into cities. So, you know, how has that impacted our food system? I don't know, because you'd say in a class sense, you would say that the... I don't really know how class works now. The people who own the factories, they're middle class, aren't they?

4:54They're the aspiring bourgeoisie. I don't know. It's a good question. I'll have to go back to it. It's true through a class lens. I've always looked at it through a poverty lens, but not through a class lens. There must be elements of it that are class related, but not poverty related. Yeah, because I didn't realize how, I think it was Jimmy Carr said on a podcast about how he spent a lot of time in America and the UK. It's like when he went to America, he was like, it's a racist divide, whereas in a racial divide, whereas in the UK, it's way more of a class divide. And it's just, I was like, but again, being a fish in the water, you don't realize it until you're out of the water kind of thing.

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