Saturday 2 June 2018

When life is hard, cheap pleasures hit the mark.


This from Grace Dent is the sum of it (do read the whole article)....
I will never view eating Heinz macaroni cheese cold from the tin as anything less than heavenly. If I had a gun to my head and was asked to choose between 10 courses of Michelin-star fine dining at Claridge’s or lying under a blanket on the sofa eating sour cream and onion Pringles, I would go for the latter. The thing that well-to-do food experts will never truly get is that, for millions of people, life is very hard and, via a million tiny ingrained cerebral signifiers, processed food is very cheering. You know these brands and they know you.
Food, drink, sweet treats, crap telly and fags - cheap pleasures as we used to call them when we were promoting Christmas hampers and researching the potential customers. Not is a bad way but in respecting the fact that when your life is tough, arguments about how your life will be shortened by that pizza, cheap bottle of white wine and 20 Silk Cut really don't wash. Public health folk and foodie wibblers need to start here rather than with trying to ban stuff and wagging stern nannying fingers at stupid poor people.

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6 comments:

Mark In Mayenne said...

Yes!

Anonymous said...

Sorry, cheap pleasures not allowed in Nippy Sweetie (Nickalla Sturgeon) land. They can't increase the Duty on booze, yet, but they can jolly well force the retailers to have a minimum price - 50 pence per Unit.
You already know about sugar, fast food etc.

Anonymous said...

Quite right. Easy to be a lentil-muncher when you have that exotic holiday to look forward to. When you're skint with no hope of improvement the only pleasures are to be found in the little things: familiar, filling food, a couple of cans at the weekend, a cup of tea and a fag (no longer cheap, but instantly gratifying).

asquith said...

Herbal tablets

asquith said...

Grays herbal tablets I mean.

That and mocha are my medicines!

Anonymous said...

Or even more shocking it is possible to enjoy both the 10 course 3 michelin star tasting menu, and another time to eat almost an entire tube of bbq pringles washed down with pepsi max. If asked to choose between two pleasures, I prefer to the answer "both".