The annual Health Survey for England, today, gives details of the percentage of women and men who fail to meet the Department of Health target of taking 30 minutes of moderate exercise five days a week. In the case of women, the figure is a disappointing 96%. Men do better, however, in that only 94% of them fall short of the ideal. The compilers of the survey have discovered that we apparently spend most of our time watching television, looking at a computer screen, eating, studying or drawing. I'm with them all the way in this analysis. I congratulate the researchers on showing a real understanding of modern life – except for the last part: the drawing. Here I think they've gone awry. (Is it possible that they conducted their survey in an art college?)
Perhaps the department will now revise its targets towards something more realistic, such as, say, five minutes of moderate exercise every other day. Or perhaps the targets should be much more widely publicised. But anyone who needs to be told to do half an hour of exercise is never going to do it, and one factor stopping us doing exercise is that we spend so much time reading – in a sedentary position – about how much exercise we should be doing. I say cut out the middle man. Redirect the money devoted to conducting health surveys and setting health targets into the building of playing fields and the promotion of cycling.
The trouble with these targets is that they have obviously been set by people who have only recently arrived on the planet. Take the alcohol limits. It is self-evident to me that any man who confined himself to 21 units of alcohol a week, or any woman who confined herself to the female limit of 14 (as blatant a case of sex discrimination as I've ever seen, incidentally) is soon going to be suffering from severe depression as a direct result. (Come to think of it, what are the figures for suicide rates among those confining themselves to the drink guidelines?)
The idea is that the tired career man or woman comes home at the end of a stressful day, and drinks two 125 ml (ie small) glasses of 8% (ie weak) wine. Even assuming there are any wine glasses that size to hand, or any wine of that strength, that takes about 15 minutes, right? What is he or she supposed to do for the rest of the evening? Officially a third of us exceed the limits – or rather, a third are willing to admit exceeding the limits but I personally don't know anybody at all who sticks to them, except my two brothers-in-law, who are teetotal. Nobody I know has so far died of alcohol-related illnesses, or even been made slightly unwell. I suppose the test will come in 20 years' time. In spite of recent suggestions that the limits are just guesswork, the warning remains – the modern equivalent of the vicar's invocation of hell, and about as perplexingly unverifiable.
As for the other aspiration foisted upon us – the consumption of five helpings of fruit and vegetables a day – I'm afraid that nobody I know does this either. My son doesn't eat five pieces of fruit and vegetables a day, and he's a vegetarian. In my own case, if I were to eat meat and two veg twice a day, then that would be four, and I could always boost it up with a ripe banana in mid-morning. (Most fruit bores me, but I find I can eat the entirety of a ripe banana before the boredom sets in.) But I don't eat meat and two veg twice a day. I have a cheese and pickle sandwich for lunch. I have sometimes found myself wondering whether a helping of pickle counts as a vegetable (because I do have a lot of it), but then something else comes along to stop me thinking in these terms – something more important.
