A couple of years ago I went on holiday in southern Spain. The food, of course, was fantastic, much of it organic.
We decided to take the ferry over to Tangier — a day trip to Morocco. The food there would be very good also.
As we boarded the ferry I was excited to find out what I would be able to buy on board. Would it be Spanish or Moroccan? I was looking forward to my first taste of north Africa for several years.
The reality, I discovered, was that I could buy almost exactly the same range of ‘foodstuffs’ you would expect to find at the average petrol station in the UK.
There were pretzels and pringles. Crisps. Bags of salted nuts. Fizzy drinks with aspartame. Alcohol, wine and beer. Sweets.
This was such a contrast to the cornucopia of delights I had been eating on land, and that I knew was possible just a few miles away in Morocco. And suddenly I realised that every single one of these items was a poison. Sugar. Fat. Salt. Alcohol.
There was not a single item for sale that would benefit my body. In fact all of them would harm it.
How did we come to allow this? To create such a culture?
And how arid and empty it is by comparison with the alternative I had built up in my mind. And which is possible.