Leaving our cars at home is good for the step count – but maybe not social progress
Is breakfast the most important meal of the day? Pfft.
Only if you want it to be: there’s not much evidence beyond some observational studies. But we’ve been conditioned into believing it by a breakfast food maker who asked a physician to agree it was true, who in turn asked a group of other doctors to countersign his statement.
That was sent to the newspapers and so later it’s what our mums told us when they wanted us to eat our porridge. Ultimately, though, it was a marketing campaign, a message that Big Bacon concocted when it wanted to boost sales. Eat a heavy breakfast! It’s the most important meal of the day!
Look, have a croissant or don’t: it probably won’t make any difference.
I wonder if Big Underwear, meanwhile, is behind the latest recommendation I’ve read, which is that one should change one’s underpants every six months (as in throw out and replace, not just get dressed). An alternative suggestion I see is after 50 washes.
Either the entities pushing these theories haven’t coordinated their strategies or I own a lot of underpants, because – TMI? – I don’t have so few that I’m washing the same pair twice weekly. (Maybe I should cut down on stock levels. Reduce storage bills and energy costs. A just-in-time strategy for domestic laundry. I already only wear black socks to save time pairing them. It’s the next logical step.)
Anyway, call me cynical, but I wonder what motivates these various theory merchants. Could it be that in the way cereal makers would prefer us not to wait for a lunchtime meal deal, underwear makers and retailers want to give pant-wearers – most of us – a nudge to replace ahead of time?
The pants thing hasn’t entered public consciousness like the breakfast messaging. At least not yet. The difference being that bacon producers said it loud, with authority, and found a slogan: their version of ‘Guinness is good for you’ but less easily disproven.
Big Underwear – forgive me; Big Pants? – needs to pull its socks up if it wants to compete.
So perhaps we, as car drivers, need to start marketing our preferences better too. Because the active travel lobby is definitely selling itself well.
They say that it’s good for you and the planet if you get out of your car and onto your bike or your feet, and that by doing so you will live a healthier, longer life.
It’s a message that has cut through, certainly to politicians, who think this sounds easier and cheaper than filling potholes and can be used as an excuse to tax drivers ever more highly.
But it’s not really right, is it? When we all walked or took horses everywhere, technological progress was glacial. We lived short, painful and difficult lives, mostly very close to home.
If you wanted a doctor before the car existed, he would take a day to come, and he would have only ever read one book, and it recommended leeching. The car changed all that. It revolutionised education, culture, health and love.
Heathcliff and Cathy would have been fine if only they had got out more, stopped moping around on the moors and popped to Harrogate for a night out.
Is it really good to walk three miles to a parochial workplace? Or might it not be better for brilliant people to drive around the country, or indeed fly around the world, to meet similarly brilliant people in laboratories where together they cure diseases?
Our ability to go places at speed changed the world. High-speed travel lets us meet more people, build more connections and solve more problems.
I wonder if it’s a coincidence that quality of life improvements the expectation that children will have better lives than their parents seems to have stalled at the same time as our ability to go places quickly. Congestion stifles our crumbling roads.
The average speed fell by 6% on the UK strategic road network in the decade to last April. The latest railway stats show “the lowest July-to-September quarterly percentage [of punctual trains] since 2018”. Concorde hasn’t flown for 23 years. And coming down with average travel speeds is the country’s productivity.
We’re trapped in a sluggish fog, metaphorically and literally going nowhere fast. This slogan might need work, but: speed is good for you.
