Add buttered bread and sauce and you have yourself a chip butty - something that Wyn Drabble has never eaten. Photo / Supplied
Add buttered bread and sauce and you have yourself a chip butty - something that Wyn Drabble has never eaten. Photo / Supplied
I'm always shocked when I see school children walking to school drinking brightly-hued, sugar-infused, carbonated "beverages" from a 2-litre bottle.
To be fair, the whole bottle probably lasts them through the morning.
I can't imagine what they have for lunch, but I fear it might involve vibrant colours.
Let's admit,adults do not always set the best example, and there are plenty of grown-up symbols of ill-health, obesity and high-fat or high-sugar diets. I'd like to focus on two which I can say, hand-on-heart, I have never eaten.
I know that, in times of need, people have had to resort to the likes of bread and dripping, something else I have never had to consume. But these other two are not born of need; people eat them on purpose.
Okay, I admit I eat fish and chips at times, but only occasionally, and I don't think they can compete with my two targets.
The first celebrates an overload of carbohydrates and fats without the addition of any redeeming element, such as a sprinkling of chopped parsley. No, it is all pure artery-clogger. I talk, of course, of the chip butty.
The Brits are to blame. To make one, lavishly butter two slices of bread and use them to encase a good handful of thick-cut chips (matchstick fries don't cut the mustard here). It is acceptable to add a condiment (brown sauce, ketchup, mayonnaise, malt vinegar) but definitely nothing green.
There is even a variant in the north of England called the scallop butty. No, molluscs are not involved. A scallop is a thin slice of potato which is battered then deep-fried in fat and used in place of the chips. Plenty of salt is called for.
Recipe: take some thinly-sliced carbohydrates, dip them in batter, deep-fry them in fat and serve between two slices of bread lavished with a spread of more fat. Sprinkle with far too much salt.
It seems the Scots are to blame for the other one and, if you've been wondering what's hidden under their kilts, the answer is possibly a deep-fried Mars Bar. Yes, a delicious sugary treat is not enough; it needs to be dipped in batter then immersed in a vat of hot fat. Fatty, sweet, possibly deadly.
But I feel they haven't perfected it yet. Why, immediately after frying, couldn't they roll it in refined caster sugar, then drizzle fat over it and sprinkle it with hundreds-and-thousands?
The success of the deep-fried Mars Bar even led to the deep-frying of other confections; Creme Eggs, Snickers, Bounty Bars (thank Nigella Lawson for that one). In New Zealand you can find deep-fried Moro bars, though thankfully, I have not come across them. I obviously go to the wrong venues, or need to get out more.
I know this isn't just a modern problem. I went to an all-boys secondary school in the 1960s, and a typical lunch order in the tuck shop was "two meat pies, a caramel milkshake and six banana bikes" (banana bikes were little yellow chewy cubes flavoured with artificial banana essence).
To their credit, banana bikes were not battered and deep-fried.
I suppose, if you are a bit worried about your own dietary choices, you could always offset your carb-sugar-cholesterol overload by drinking a "diet" soft drink. I have more bad news which space does not allow me to elaborate on today.
All this has got me wondering whether, to get financially ahead in life, I could find a way of battering and deep-frying candy floss. I realise I would need to serve it with chocolate sauce and a side of fries.
Wyn Drabble is a teacher of English, a writer, a musician and public speaker.
