Working on an empty stomach and the worm humming is not a good idea. Friends of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have revealed that every week he fasts for 36 hours, from five in the afternoon on Sunday to five in the morning on Tuesday. And both the press and the opposition emphasize that many of his worst decisions (too many to list) are made precisely on Monday… Quite a coincidence.
Sunak, 43 years old, of Indian origin and Hindu religion, has no weight problems, but follows the so-called monks’ diet to the letter, to acquire discipline, age more slowly and live longer, although for there’s no magic formula for the latter (and certainly not recommended upsets like being twenty points behind in the polls and on the way to a historic defeat, a situation that can sour anyone’s character and smoke anyone’s digestion) .
Sunak’s willpower, rather than his ability to govern, has been amply demonstrated, since from mid-afternoon on Sunday he stopped eating like a masochist and until very early on Tuesday (if you want to profit from the day, which the sun finds you in bed) feeds on nothing but water, tea and coffee. He even refrains from his favorite vice, Mexican Coca-Cola made with sugar cane that he brings from the North American country, and of which he drinks an average of seven cans a day! The Conservative leader is totally abstinent, but sweets are an irresistible temptation. When he gets up, he has a yogurt with blueberries for breakfast, although a couple of hours later (when in Catalonia people eat an omelette sandwich), he has a cinnamon pastry or a chocolate croissant. But all Monday, nothing. And it is then – it is studied – when he decides to send immigrants to Rwanda, reduce social benefits, raise taxes or abolish free meals in schools.
Dieting can be highly political. The current Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, completely eliminated bread after being photographed in a swimsuit with a belly, and admitted that snacking between meals was his downfall; Gordon Brown swapped three KitKat bars a day for seven bananas during the 2010 election campaign, at his wife’s insistence; Joe Biden eats like an American boy, peanut butter sandwiches, pizza, crackers and spaghetti bolognese sauce; and Donald Trump boasts that he would live to be two hundred years old if it weren’t for his passion for Coca-Cola (a can every two hours).
But it’s not just about what politicians eat, but what they stop eating (or recommend eating). In both the United Kingdom and the United States there is great intellectual and philosophical debate about whether the potato should be classified as a vegetable, a starchy food, a bulb, a tuber, or a type of grain. The decision is not insignificant, because it affects whether or not it is included, and how many portions, in the meals subsidized by the Government (every Briton consumes a hundred kilos of the eleven varieties that are produced in the country, with the corresponding load of carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, and it is a global industry of one hundred billion dollars).
Fierce advocates of the potato (such as the growers of Idaho in the United States and their representatives in Congress) insist that it is a vegetable, as botanically speaking, and therefore should be included in the five daily servings of fruit and vegetables recommended by nutrition experts. With this interested criterion, a child can get rid of the pitiful belly of French fries and will be eating a “healthy” diet, even if it ends up as bacon… But it is a cheap product and, if it is not included on the menu, it will cost the schools an eye of the face.
The potato, like the diet, is political (and this without going into the fact that in 2003, due to France’s opposition to the invasion of Iraq, French fries were renamed freedom fries in the cafeterias of Congress North American). It is no longer just a question of whether it is a vegetable, but how much of a potato component a potato has to carry to be a potato. The British Inland Revenue considers papadams, pringles, doritos and the like to be, at least for tax purposes, even if their components are different. It’s like asking if a hot dog is a sandwich.
Dolly Parton said that all her diets had failed because she could not live without potatoes. Rishi Sunak lives on water from Sunday to Tuesday, and you can see how he’s doing…
