Tim Spector, the doctor and diet bloke behind the Zoe nutrition app, has a lot to say about how different bodies process the food put into them in different ways. He comes out with some very clever stuff, as well as a smattering of the startlingly obvious. An example of the second is something he said at the Cheltenham literature festival, where he pointed out that drivers are prone to eating an awful lot of junk on long journeys. He says we don’t need to stop for snacks at service stations every couple of hours.
Perhaps he drove himself there, gave into temptation en route and felt as if he had let himself down. I know I have on the same journey, from west London. Oh, the opportunities to eat filth! Beaconsfield services for breakfast; Oxford services for elevenses; early lunch at that big filling station where the A40 takes its leave from the Oxford ring road; late lunch at some garage or other on the often tricky last 20 miles into Cheltenham. Crisps, nuts, pastries sweet and savoury, chocolate, sweets, the lot.
The thing is, I’m pretty sure the good doctor won’t have stuffed himself like this. I base this on his answer to a question I once put to him on the radio: what was his trigger food? What was his poison? What was there that he just couldn’t stop troughing once he had started?
Initially he was stumped, but eventually confessed that there was something he struggled with: cashew nuts. Just occasionally, cashew nuts. Cashew nuts?! I mean, I don’t doubt his word – and, of course, wish him well managing his cashew problem – but cashews wasn’t the answer I was looking for. If cashews are your cardinal snacking sin, you needn’t bother going to confession.
My point is that those of us filling our faces with rubbish every two hours when we are on the road know very well that we don’t need to do so. Our problem isn’t that we think we need to eat; it’s that we can’t stop ourselves, because we are driven – if you’ll pardon the pun – by forces I cannot fathom.
And it’s always junk. At some services, sticks of celery and carrot batons – and indeed cashews – are available, but who in their right mind is going to munch miserably on a raw vegetable to while away every mile? There seems to be something about driving that makes us think we have a free pass to eat what we like, as if it’s Christmas Day or our birthday, or we are on holiday or doing something physically arduous such as long-distance walking or fighting behind enemy lines.
It’s absurd. Where did it start? Childhood, I suppose, although I can’t imagine my mum kept up a running buffet of snacks on long journeys. In fact, I know she didn’t, as my carsickness was so acute that once I had heaved up whatever had been in my stomach, she wouldn’t have risked any more going in there.
At the shops at services, they are delighted to flog you all the junk you can carry to feed your frenzy, but I sense they are also squeamishly aware of the madness. In proximity to the sweets, chocolates and the magnificent variety of crisps available, among the reading matter for sale, there will invariably be plenty of diet books on offer. Weird.
Anyway, all I’m saying is that if “Cashews” Spector wants to get to the bottom of what is going on in drivers’ brains to cause them to eat more fuel than their cars are using, I hereby submit myself for testing. Cover me in patches, wire me up and I’ll hit the road.
• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
