CONNECTIONS to HEALTH

For the Swill that's Swell Regular readers will know that I pride myself on three things. One, being the best chiropractor I can be. Two, being able to throw a ball with my left hand further than my friend Paul can. Three, my knowledge of discursive psychological approaches for the harvesting of rich pickings vis a vis participant information and subsequent qualitative data analysis therein. Hmm… OK a little translation of number three. My experiences are always giving my ideas for articles for this newsletter. Our sorry tale As some of you know we are giving a series of talks around the country this year on Spinal Touch. We are the European tutors in this amazing technique. To see a list of where and when we are speaking go to www.spinaltouch.com. Over the recent half-term holiday we gave talks in Canterbury and Cardiff. Driving between the two we had planned to stop at a little café we knew of for a nice lunch. However, Nathan, our little boy, fell asleep not long before we got there, so we decided to let him sleep and carried on. This meant we eventually had to stop at a motorway service station to get something to eat. Not the most pleasant of prospects. What we found We ordered the least offensive items on the menu and were given a little booklet with the meal that the owners of the service station chain had produced specially. It was designed to tell us how good their food was and how much better it is now than it used to be! Well, I immediately thought that if they need to give us a book to tell us how good the food is with the meal then it doesn't say much about what they think our impression of the meal are going to be, and they are trying to sway our opinion in advance. It didn't work. They must have spent a packet on this glossy little book and hired an expensive marketing team to produce it. It read very well, in fact much better than it tasted (the food that is, not the booklet). So what do you think this book was called? Bearing in mind it was to make us believe their food was top quality, and produced by a dedicated team of, and I quote, "foodies that live and breathe food who are dedicated to the continual evolution of our food offer". What hyped up title do you think they chose? "Good enough to eat" Very low aspirations That's right, they are making a song and dance about food which they now consider to be good enough to eat. I'd have thought that that was implicit in the name food. It makes you think though, that if they have improved so much and are selling food that is now good enough to eat what on earth were they selling before. But don't you think that that is a very low aspiration? They aren't making delicious, or mouth watering, or even nutritious food, just food that's good enough to eat. They must have quite a low regard of their customers to give us something that's just good enough. Further proof There were several fast food franchises at the service station and we all shared the same common dining area. A mother and daughter on the next table got their meal in a bucket!!!!!! How much clearer do the sellers of this stuff have to be about the quality of their fare and what they regard their customers to be? As far as I know there's only one type of food served up in a bucket and to one type of animal. An advert I had a hysterical giggling fit, which Nathan really enjoyed, because I came up with the perfect advert for them. See what you think. "When the kids are hungry and won't stop pestering you, give them the swill that's swell and keep the little swine quiet!" Remember it's called fast food because when you fast you don't take in any nutrients. Having read what I've written I think this is good enough to read.

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