Mal de detoxification

I know I’m not the only one to suffer, but January sees me enter a particularly dark depression that takes me weeks to come out of. Even though the nights are drawing out once more, January seems darker and more melancholy than other months of the year, the combined result perhaps of the long slog from the distant memory of the summer holiday into winter, and the excess of the festive period. I hate it with a passion: it’s cold and wet, and dark more than it’s light.

As I struggle on, I convince myself that I need to rid my body of all the toxins that have built up over Christmas and New Year even though I’m not completely convinced that this latest fad isn’t just the invention of all the companies that peddle their products to help with this process.

My own particular take on detoxification, which I recommend wholeheartedly, involves a simple regime of restricting coffee intake to just one cup in the morning, with breakfast., drinking more water than I normally do, and keeping alcohol consumption down to just two or three units a day. Occasionally, I do take a cup of coffee later in the day as well, but hey, so what.

In other words, I haven’t really changed my lifestyle at all, and while my friends are all on various combinations of cabbage soup, hi-carb, hi-protein, water and fruit, raw vegetables, green tea or goodness knows what else, I have carried on regardless. They all look and feel terrible, whilst I on the other hand, well, I look no different at all and frankly feel no different either. The reason for this, I am convinced, is that the main drivers behind my lifestyle do not come from my diet but from the fact I run around like the proverbial blue-arsed fly from morning until night. Frankly, if I didn’t drink all that coffee, wine and beer I’d be a lot worse off.

Now from my knowledge of life in France, I’d guess that detoxification is a phrase most probably restricted to chemical and waste processing use. The idea that the human body might need help to remove toxins normally pretty effectively dealt with in the regular way would be anathema to most French people – although given their predilection for suppositories it could be an enema to them (oh dear!).

Life in France has continued pretty effectively for years on their diet of meat, fish, wine and brandy, not to mention rich butter pastries, white bread and several hundred varieties of cheese and other diary products. It is not uncommon for people on their way to work in the morning to visit their local café and order a coffee and a brandy – un café cognac – a million miles from the sickly milky mess most people here get from their local Starbucks.

What they are also very good at is lunch. I know plenty of people, me included, who while away their lunch hour (now there’s an oxymoron if ever I wrote one) at their desk, grabbing a hurried sandwich, a chocolate bar, some crisps and juice – all that sort of thing, all the while sifting through e-mail or reading papers and getting crumbs in the keyboard. This is such a common phenomenon that it has a term – eating al desko.

This of courses forces the question. Who the hell thinks this is such a great idea that it deserves recognition? Honestly, is this such a healthy society that it obsesses about detoxing the body, but fails to consider the effects that actually not taking a proper break and eating a decent lunch can have on your wider health and vitality.

And even if the practise is declining somewhat, France, and to be honest many other Mediterranean countries, has survived perfectly well with a regular two hour lunch break in the middle of the day when all decent working citizens switch off and sit down with their friends, or go home to their families for a square meal and some quality time.

This practise is so much part of the culture that even parking charges are lifted between 12 and 2 each day – how cool is that. But what’s is more impressive is the life that buzzes through each and every café, restaurant and open space in France during that time. To people from the west coast of Scotland it must seem like a carnival every day, but to the native inhabitants it’s just what they do. It’s normal life and they seem just fine about it.

Our whole culture seems to have turned it’s priorities on its head. We are asked to work more and more within more demanding environments. We are not asked, but there is one argument that suggests we are expected to work through our permitted breaks. What we do eat at lunchtime is hastily consumed without any discussion or social interaction with friends or colleagues let alone family. We are selling ourselves short with this practise.

Take me to France any day. I guarantee I’ll work just as hard, but perhaps I’ll be better off for it. My family life will be respected and supported, the food will be better and if nothing else the sun will shine a lot more than it does here.