THE BAKER BOYS

It’s a new year and everyone’s banging on about diets. So Channel 4 launches a new pie and pudding banquet. Putting aside the fact that the recent arrival of the ‘We are the Fabulous’ Baker Brothers on Channel 4 pushes me yet another two posh boys further away from telly land. Is this really the kind of food-gorging display people need right now? It’s true that with their Jack Jones turned out checkered laddish looks, slight speech impediment and just not-too well-developed muscles these boys are doubtless top of the sexy new TV cook, housewife’s choice hit-list.

But all said and done I cannot fathom the baking craze. These gorgeous baker boys and their equally scrumptious lady peers – like Nigella and Lauren – are everything from positively pectoral to plumply fulsome but not one of them is fat. I mean really overweight: obese. But behind this refined, sugary, lardy, high-carb cooking spree that has become our national baking obsession, all these floury delights and their cheap mass production imitations are making everyone bigger. Apparently 24% of women and men in the UK are obese. The cup-cake culture, once middle class mumsy, now fuck-me Abercromby & Fitch is dangerous and is causing a serious health epidemic.

OK, people make their choices and I love good bread but if all you see is cakes and pies everywhere who’s going to stop you? Move over MDMA, these days serotonin levels everywhere are peaking on the shortcrust rush of insulin as starch converts to sugar and stores itself in our fat cells. But all the pushers are thin and gorgeous. Funny that.

The Bakers are clearly passionate cooks. And no doubt their hunk hungry producers have made a smart ratings choice there. But there is an incredibly serious point in all this. TV cooking programming has all but thrown aside any nod to healthy eating since the ill-fated “Doctor” Gillian McKeith was thrown to the wolves. In fact, the message she was giving, albeit a little obsessed by poo, is right. You are – or will become – exactly what what you eat. If you spend a lot of time cooking cakes, bread, pies and chocolate sticky sticks and then eating them, you’ll end up like the back end of a bus with any number of potential reasons to suffer complete engine breakdown.

Fine for those who have the time, money and energy to go off to the gym or body attack after filming. But the country is stacked high with people who can only just make it to the cake tin and back. And it’s just a bit dangerous that we are not doing anything to encourage people to eat responsibly.

It stands to reason that there is a direct link between obesity and people’s ability to cook. If you distance yourself from the actual act of cooking, then you are devolving responsibility to someone else for your physical well-being. Mostly that other is a nasty food producer who is filling you full up with salts, sugars and fats you just don’t need. And even if all you are doing is following recipes from the telly you are still giving over to someone else (however good-looking) the choices of what you eat. It’s time for TV to get responsible again. Move over boys.

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