Beautiful Body Ideal Weight Health & Nutrition Article

" Gourmet Food !"

Britain is undergoing a well-publicised food revolution. During the 50s, 60s and 70s, the isles had a well-deserved reputation for terrible food, with the average post-war diet rather mirroring the usual post-war architecture in the UK: functional, but rather disgusting!.

Just as drab towerblocks came to characterise many parts of the country, vegetables for many urban dwellers came from tins while European cheeses were viewed with suspicion.

Around Europe and the world, Britain's diet was looked down upon. With hindsight, this is really little surprise as the deep-fat frier was (and still is) used more in the UK than in almost any other country.

European neighbours such as France and Italy had every right to view British 'cuisine' as sub-standard when they had such rich gourmet traditions of their own.

The times they are 'a changing, however, and London is now home to a number of the best restaurants in the world. The food revolution in the UK has come from the top downwards and now more people are making more of an effort to eat a balanced diet and to cut out the junk.

While it is fair to say that luxury dishes such as caviar and foie gras are not standard fare at most dinner tables, it is also true that Brits, as a whole, are eating a more balanced diet than at any time in the past fifty years and a more varied one than ever before.

Interestingly, caviar has not always been such a prestigious food: New York bartenders would put dishes of the salty sturgeon eggs out for drinkers at the start of the Twentieth Century to make them drink more.

Traditional British classics such as sausages are still on the menu, although what constitutes a sausage has changed for many people. The introduction of gourmet lines at supermarkets has shown many shoppers that alternatives exist to the low-quality, pureed meat and gristle that constitutes a cheap sausage.

Of course butchers have been selling great, handmade sausages for hundreds of years and it was only the spread of the supermarkets that changed the public's perception of what constitutes food in the first place. The seemingly endless expansion of McDonalds in the UK has now slowed to a crawl: branches are closing for the first time in history.

Up until the Eighties, many people would only experience good quality ingredients in the form of hampers at Christmas time. Nowadays, more people are eating a balanced diet and reaping the rewards in terms of health benefits and general wellbeing.