How can a family barbecue create better awareness of what we eat?

Family barbecue

grilled sausage

vegetable skewer

“You have to KNOW what is in your food to be aware of what, and how much, you are consuming – this is a great way to sear that knowledge into your mind.”

Some takeaways…

  • Look at what comes out of your food during the cooking to see what is in it, and what you are eating
  • Salt and fat taste good, but don’t be blind to how much you are eating
  • Finding ways to imprint knowledge in your mind creates much more effective learning than simply being told.

I surprised myself this weekend when I hosted a family barbecue, which was half-half vegetarians and meat-eaters. Knowing I should get all the veggie stuff cooked first, I set out early with plenty of coal, and got things moving with veggie burgers, veggie sausages and home-made skewers of mushroom, pepper, courgette and tomato. (By the way, the kids had a lot of fun making these, and it was a great way to sneak in a little practical maths lesson while getting the food prep done, as I asked them to divide the veggies equally into piles to fit each skewer with the same number of each vegetable per skewer – every little bit of practical everyday maths helps! ? )

 

Anyway, we got the barbecue up and cooking, and I was stunned by the benign way that the veggies cook. There is no spitting fat, no hissing, no fat leaking down on to the coals and causing flare-ups… I mentioned it to my brother-in-law, who laughed, and said, ‘what do you expect, what is there to flare up?’ 

 

Compare this with then cooking the sausages, and I was amazed at just how much fat came out of them. It drips and drips, and the flames flare up as a result.

 

This difference then seared itself in my mind, pun intended, as a polar opposite to the fat-free veggies just grilling quietly in front of me.

 

This got me thinking further – washing up a salad bowl is so easy, because there is no fat in it. Compare this with the pan you have just cooked a chicken in, or worse, a joint of pork or lamb, and it is incredible how much clinging, cloying fat you have to get rid of.

 

I remember, also, when I was a chef, we would cook all the bacon for the day in a big pan in the oven, then take it out and leave the pan on the side for the kitchen porter to clean. Give it an hour or so, and you would see all the fat that has leaked out of the bacon turning to solid lard at the bottom of the pan! My co-chef, a large Polish guy, used to love dipping his bread into this congealed, solid fat, and I confess to having done it myself a few times… gosh, it tasted good! And why wouldn’t it?! Of the three easy taste satisfiers – sugar, salt and fat – here you have salt and fat in abundance!

 

See it for yourself

 

Here is an experiment – next time you have a barbecue, cook some veggies alongside some sausages, and witness for yourself the difference. It is striking! If you don’t have access to a barbecue, roast some veggies in a pan whilst separately roasting a piece of meat in another pan (the fattier the meat, the better), then leave the two pans to cool, and look at the difference of what is left.

 

“Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.”
John Keats.

 

Why does any of this matter?

 

Simply put, the fat that is congealing in the pan is a fair representation of the fat that will be collecting in your arteries and your body’s fat stores, clogging you up and slowing you down. When they say that a veggie diet is good for you, vitamins aside, it is precisely this they are talking about. Meat is depositing fat inside you, whilst veggies are filling you with vegetable goodness, which you can’t really get enough of.

 

This is not news, of course – I knew this, but it is rare to see things displayed in such practical, stark clarity, and it is that which spurred me to write this piece. Such a display of clarity can be a great way to reinforce learning in your mind of just what is in the food you eat, which you simply don’t get from someone telling you. As Keats says above, experience it for yourself and it will become ‘real’. If I were to tell you: ‘Guess what, there is a lot more fat in lamb than courgettes’, you would probably respond with something along the lines of ‘duh!’ and think no more of it. See it for yourself, however, and it will imprint itself in your mind, making a link that will stay with you, and helping you make the right food choices further down the line.  Remember, your weight choice starts and ends in your head!

 

A final thought

 

Now, don’t get me wrong, this is not an impassioned plea to become veggie. I am a meat eater who has no plans to turn veggie any time soon, and I do believe that there are things you get from meat that you don’t get elsewhere, but we can’t claim to be the thinking person’s approach to weight control if we aren’t cognisant of all the facts, and experiments like this are great ways of drilling that into our consciousness. 

 

The more conscious I become of what I am eating, and what effect it has on me, the more I can put them together in my head as evidence of what I should and should not be eating.

 

By all means, eat meat; by all means, barbecue; and by all means, eat salt and fat – they taste good! – but just KNOW what is in your food, and how much you are eating of it.

 

Knowledge -> Awareness -> Choice.

 

Thank you for reading.

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