I've been back in London for about a week. Hard to believe that not much more than 2 weeks ago, I was still in Sydney...in the intervening time, I've travelled halfway across the world via Kuala Lumpur. It wasn't that hard to settle back in London since I'm staying back in the same place as before, although the gray skies here are quite different from the Sun of Australia.

In the mean time, I'll just have a health nazi rant. I was in M&S the other day to pick up some lunch. I was looking at some of the salads on the shelves, and I realised one thing: there aren't actually very much vegetables in any of those salads. Instead, they mostly seemed to be filled with pasta of one sort or other. How can you have a salad with hardly any vegetables?!? And this is from a retailer that has a reputation as a 'healthy' food supplier.

In Australia, I was eating so much fruit and veg that I was almost overdosing on the stuff. One of the most popular drinks franchises in Sydney is called 'Boost', which sells fruit smoothies, and there are several fast-food chains which specialise in salads, real salads with vegetables, not nonsense with 80% pasta. Vegetables are also outrageously cheap in supermarkets...I often end up having to carry 10 kilos of food home.

In contrast, the nutritional deficiency of most peoples' diets here are just plain alarming. Most people seem to go through the day without a shred of green or fresh fruit passing through their mouth. Even 'vegetarian' options seem to be loaded with carbohydrates without anything really nutritious. When trying to buy my lunch, it seems to be a daily challenge to try to find a balanced meal without paying through my nose, which is why I often end up eating at Subway: it might be more expensive but at least they load the sandwich with lots of vegetables. A lot of people do not seem to realise that it is recommended to eat at least 5 portions of fruit and veg per day to avoid cancer, and when they DO get cancer, it's as if it was totally unexpected. This is a totally unscientific pure speculation, but I suspect that it might one day be able to show causal links between diet and cancer in the same way we know know the causal link between smoking and lung cancer.

It might seem strange that I would turn out to be a health nazi, since I have more of a reputation as a gourmand. However, anyone who is observant will notice that while I eat large amounts, the food is actually quite balanced. That's it for today...it's off to have some grapes and juice....