Even before fat was a feminist issue, society was seared by culinary divides on class lines – and the question of who could afford what ingredients was only ever part of the story. “A millionaire”, Orwell wrote in the 1930s, “may enjoy breakfasting on Ryvita biscuits and orange juice; an unemployed man doesn’t.” Wholesome living has always been connected to confidence and status. At the top of the scale, there is ample scope to cultivate the virtue of deferring gratification; at the bottom, there’s a pressing need for cheap palliatives for hard lives lived, in Jarvis Cocker’s line, “with no meaning or control”. Epidemiologists observe the consequences everywhere, from the class gradient in the data on who continues to smoke, to the tendency of the better-off to do more shopping in the fruit and veg aisle.
The spread of fitness across society used to be less skewed than the distribution of super-foods. Heaving, hauling and even standing were, after all, features of manual and not desk-bound trades. And from the school playground on, the working class could compete on level terms, as they could in few areas, in sports such as football: they dominated them as a result. More recently there have been depressing signs of physical activity going the same way as smoking cessation and raw-food diets. Exercise is becoming an echelon issue.
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