Another week starts badly for the antis. In today’s Daily Mail we find an excellent article by well-respected British author and zoologist, Desmond Morris. He refers to his attendance at the 121st party of the oldest person who ever lived and writes:

In these health-conscious days of carefully balanced diets, fitness regimes and workouts, it is worth asking what kind of lifestyle the astonishing Madame Calment had enjoyed for so long.

The answer comes as a shock. It turns out that she was a gourmet who liked alcohol, cigarettes, chocolates and sweets … …When she reached the age of 117, doctors advised her to give up drinking port and they tried to stop her smoking. Somehow she managed to fool them and was caught by a photographer puffing away on a cigarette the following year.

Desmond Morris adds that:

there are important lessons here that can be learned from people like Madame Calment. … She ate the rich food she liked, she drank the cheap wine she liked, she smoked the strong cigarettes she liked and – as she said – she kept calm … Another important point is that she didn't do any extreme exercise, but she did take a lot of the milder type. She was still riding her bicycle at the age of 100.

He then goes on to say:

Surprisingly, among the very old, Jeanne Calment was not alone in her love of cigarettes. The actress Estelle Winwood was still smoking 60 a day aged 100; a woman named Edith Beck gave up smoking on her 103rd birthday because she felt it was time to start looking after her health and promptly died … The couch potato goes to the other extreme. The secret is moderation. Another source of health-destroying anxiety is food faddism. Diets that are supposed to make you live longer are forever being offered to the gullible by the cynical.

If we turn the clock back 18 years, we find another article by Desmond Morris criticising the Health Police, the faddist gurus and diet fascists. In 1999 he told us that:

There is a breed of modern pontificators who feel it is their social duty to tell the rest of us what we should and should not eat, as though they have somehow discovered the secret of eternal life. There are two flaws in their arguments. First, they keep on changing them. One year it is bad to eat something and the next year this same, vilified food object is suddenly discovered to be good for you. Second, they all seem to overlook the fact that the human species evolved as an omnivore … The bigger the variety of foodstuffs we eat, the better off we will be. End of story.

We also believe in the common sense recommendation – everything in moderation.

Sadly this message seems to have been completely overlooked by 21st Century Politicians. They believe that by denying choice and imposing bans and restrictions that they are creating a better and safer world for everyone.

Is that really so, I ask?

Martin Hensman M.Inst.L.Ex, LLB (Hons)

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