Forbidden fruit

I RECKON I’ve found a new way to make loads of money and, even though it sounds a bit dodgy, I don’t think it’s illegal.

I’m going to need help though; a network of people who don’t mind travelling, want to get a slice of the action but are prepared to put up with the wrath of the authorities.

Interested?

I warn you now, we’re going to be selling illicit substances. Some people may even compare us to drug dealers. And to make it even more suspect, our target is going to be children. But there are millions of the little customers, all begging for what we’ve got: tomato ketchup and, occasionally, maybe a little Marmite.

There’s bound to be a demand because some time ago, authorities in Wales decided that to improve the wellbeing of schoolchildren, these delights should be banned. One catering manager said that ketchup “can have high levels of salt and sugar that could be damaging for the children”. Note the “can” and “could” in there. But unless the kids are eating ketchup sandwiches, it’s hard to see the logic. And anyway, I reckon these nannies are on a hiding to nothing.

The banning of cocaine doesn’t seem to have stopped the proliferation of the substance and there’s little doubt that young and impressionable people are tempted to experiment with drugs simply because they’re not allowed. And while I’m not arguing for the legalisation of drugs, it seems these authorities are more likely to raise the attractiveness of ketchup, simply by allowing youngsters to rebel. And I distinctly remember hating my first cigarette but soon found out that, because smoking was the cool thing to do, I grew to like it.

Is it going to be the same for those children that hate Marmite? And will it take years to wean them off it like it did me with cigarettes?

You can bet that they’ll still be able to get the stuff at home and when they stop at service stations, they’ll be filling their pockets with sachets to sell to their friends.

Good bottled tomato ketchup is a actually a good product. Along with HP Sauce, it makes a great accompaniment to dishes that we serve in the restaurant, such as corned beef hash. Are we now to ban under-18s from ketchup as well as alcohol or make provision to display the bottles on the “top shelf ”?

Let’s look at this sensibly. A little Marmite now and then is not going to give you terminal hypertension. It is salty but so is salt and they’re both meant as flavour enhancers, to be used in moderation. Isn’t that what needs teaching?

And good bottled ketchup, if I remember the ingredients list correctly, doesn’t contain much more than tomatoes, vinegar, sugar and salt.

Obviously, if it’s eaten by the bowlful with a spoon then maybe it won’t do much good. But if you ate a pallet-load of lettuce you’d probably not feel too well, and possibly die of laudanum poisoning.

Surely if we were teach our children a little more about their food – how to buy it, cook it, vary it – then they’re less likely to overdose on E numbers and might just live past 40. It’s a delight to hear that cooking is being brought back into the syllabus – something that I’ve been banging on about for years – although combining it with nutrition is concerning. How often have the nutritional experts told us that something’s bad for us only for the advice to be changed a few years later? Surely the answer is to educate children in the advisability of ensuring a varied diet which requires the ability to eat lots of different foods in lots of different ways.

But, and here’s the sensitive bit, maybe the teachers and others in authority don’t actually have the knowledge and wherewithal to pass the relevant information onto our progeny. Otherwise, how else can we account for the 40 per cent of adults under 30 who don’t know how to cook a potato? Yes, that’s 40 per cent.

We’ve obviously got a long way to go but banning totally harmless condiments isn’t the way to do it.

Which is a shame because I rather fancied myself as the North East’s ketchup Mr Big and retiring on the proceeds.