Christmas in Larnaca has either exploded with colourful joy, or vomited tackiness and hypocrisy all over the town, depending on which side of the Christmas coin you land on. But either way, you won't be able to hide from it, and especially not in your local supermarket, where there is suddenly a whole new world of junk food, especially for the festive season.
It is quite remarkable how many seasonal tins of chocolates, biscuits and cakes appear in the run-up to Christmas. It's like these poor 'treats' have been waiting eagerly all year for their special moment, so they can stand proudly on the shelves all shiny and cheery, waiting to shower your Christmas with sweet promises… of weight gain or a heart attack!
It is just baffling and a little crazy too that we equate Christmas to eating a ton more than we would normally do, and in the form of these specially designed, once-a-year sugary confections. And yet we do; we go all out and buy calories by the truckload to gift, to offer guests and to stuff our faces with just because 'it's Christmas'.
But Christmas aside, the size of our supermarkets are largely determined on junk and packaged foods all-year-round. Imagine how small supermarkets would be if they only sold real food such as fruit, vegetables, fish, meat, nuts, legumes, rice, dairy and the like. Imagine entire aisles of processed, packaged or junk food eliminated, and you would probably be surprised at just how much space they had taken, whether in the freezer or on the shelf.
I (generally) only buy real food, so my trip to the supermarket involves bypassing the majority of aisles on most occasions, but I am noticing as the years go by that the number of processed and packaged foods our supermarkets stock is increasing, although not to the point of other European countries. I think that due to our cultural relationship with food, we won't ever reach that point where our children cannot identify fruit and vegetables (I saw a documentary on children's diets in America and many of them literally could not identify basic fruit and vegetables). Cyprus wouldn't be Cyprus without the aroma of souvla, the rubbery texture of Halloumi, juicy watermelon in the summer and small but tasty village cucumbers… all enjoyed around a big table of family and friends.
And I am happy to have noted that even the Cypriot ready-meals are by far superior to their imported counterparts. If you compare Cypriot frozen pizza or sausages to imported products, you will find around three-four ingredients in the Cypriot products versus a whole slew of unidentifiable and unpronounceable ones in the imported versions.
But there is one fresh food area where we are really failing – and which I have written about before – children's menus. This is where processed, packaged and junk really sells in Cyprus and keeps the 'fake food' industry afloat. It is a scary indicator of our times and our changing relationship with food.
As for me, I try to stay clear of junk in my house for the most part, but I may just sneak a tin or two of seasonally designed biscuits and chocolates into my trolley, after all, it is Christmas…
First appeared in The Cyprus Weekly, 05/12/14
