I suppose I'd better introduce myself. I'm Julia Wood, AKA Edwardian Spice, the nickname given to me by the glorious Leicester Market traders, who have a superb sense of humour.
I'm a philosophy postgraduate from Warwick University, who has retained an interest in The Big Questions - such as, why do women love shoes so much? has Victoria Beckham auctioned her buttocks on eBay to help make sofas for the developing world? Does God exist, or has the age of materialism finally given way to a culture in which Hermes, the God of Handbags, rules supreme?

Then, along came the marvellous Internet and I thought, hey, I'm too old to be thrashing out the Big Questions into the early hours at parties -which is the only use possible for a philosophy degree, apart from teaching other people how to pontificate in the kitchen after a bottle of Julio Gallo. So I thought, hey, why not get a blog instead? So here I am.
Throughout this blog I will be talking about any subject that catches my eye that is topical/controversial. I read lots of papers and magazines, and like to talk about the things I read. Here goes...

Reveal Magazine last week published an article about the inhabitants of Huntingdon in West Virginia and their eating habits. Apparently they have been treated to a visit from Jamie Oliver - brave man - who went accompanied by a camera crew for a new six part television series and bearing news from afar : that eating the Big Bad Double Wide Meatburger with 30 slices of cheese and a pound of pickles on a daily basis is seriously bad for your cholesterol. The burger - which would be like eating thirty Big Macs, 'contains enough calories to keep the average man going for a fortnight,' the article claims. If cholesterol were brain cells these people would be in Mensa.

Huntington has been dubbed the fattest place in the USA, with 34 percent of it's population clinically obese and the local funeral service frequently having to order coffins that are the width of a double bed.

Unsurprisingly Huntington is one of the poorest places in the country and where people once used to work in the steel and coal industries, since their closure people have continued with their poor dietary habits, leading to generations of clinically obese people.

Obesity is a serious health issue and is a problem in the UK as well. You only have to walk down the street of any English town and every other person you see is bordering on clinically obese. Jamie Oliver has a tough fight on his hands to change people's eating habits because it is not just a simple matter of re-educating people, but of redefining their culture and identity.

Fast food and fizzy drinks is as much a part of working class - or, dare I say, underclass - identity as health food such as asparagus and herbal tea is to middle class identity.

Because of this, the poorer classes regard the health boom with suspicion, seeing in it the Bourgeoisification - and thus potential erosion - of their culture. So telling overweight people to eat their five a day and to swap fizzy drinks for a cup of herbal tea is like saying you're going to send in the developers to bulldoze their council houses, or ban the wearing of hooped earrings and ponytails.

Perhaps what we need is to sneak healthy options into the fast food industry without declaring them as such. After all, this works in reverse in five star restaurants. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen fish and chips described as pommes de terres et poisson, or some such euphemism.

Cheeseburger anyone? (By the way, that's a cheese-free, wheat-free, meat-free burger on a rush matting, aka, wholemeal bun...)