Strawberries at Christmas? That is a treat too far in these obese times

The democratisation of our diets has downsides, as well as benefits. A loss of seasonality hasn’t helped our waist lines

Heading to the local farmers’ market in search of mince, I found myself distracted by a novelty sausage. Their sausages are always good, but this was an innovation: pork and hop. “Seasonal speciality?” I asked.
It was, so I bought some, along with the russet apples that I always look for at this time of year, but rarely find among the supermarket displays of South African Granny Smiths and New Zealand Pink Lady. (The dominance of these far-flung varieties in the midst of the British apple season always strikes me as – in the immortal words of Liz Truss – A Disgrace.) 
The hop sausages might turn out to be a seasonal speciality too far. But they are an enterprising use of a local ingredient that is available only during the brief few weeks of the hop harvest. 
Across the county border in West Sussex, an equally enterprising experiment in what you might call anti-seasonality is taking place. 
The Summer Berry Company has installed technology that will enable it to grow strawberries all year round. You can already eat strawberries in winter if you want, but the imported fruit tends to be a sour little ghost of the homegrown strawberry in its midsummer pomp. By contrast, The Summer Berry Company claims that it will supply “very tasty, excellent-quality strawberries”. 
Our national fascination with out-of-season fruit has a long and regal history. The Royal Collection Trust owns a painting of the royal gardener, John Rose, on bended knee, presenting Charles II with (supposedly) the first pineapple grown in England. Eighteenth-century orangeries, the palatial glasshouses constructed by the Victorians for cultivating vines and forced peaches – fruit that in warmer climates flourished on every peasant smallholding became in our chillier atmosphere an extravagant luxury. 
The democratisation of diet has many benefits. The fact that we can now buy a dragon fruit or a kumquat more readily than an English apple is testament to the growing adventurousness of the British consumer. But there have been casualties along the way, and seasonality is one of them. 
The token appearance of early forced rhubarb or autumnal cobnuts does not disguise the fact that the large grocery retailers’ main acknowledgment of seasonal produce involves quantities of inedible trinkets: plastic pumpkins at Hallowe’en; plastic eggs and chicks at Easter. 
The second casualty – arguably more significant in health terms – is the hyperinflation of “treats”. If out-of-season strawberries become commonplace, something else has to excite our palates. Evidence points to our appetite for treats doing us serious harm. 
The latest NHS statistics report that 26 per cent of UK adults are obese – a statistic that has increased steadily over the past 30 years. Weight loss jabs, about to become available on the NHS for the first time, may alleviate that figure, as they have in the US, but they don’t address the underlying problem. 
That issue is neatly encapsulated by an advertisement for a leading supermarket chain. This particular version (there is a series, all with the tagline “No 1 Always Comes First”) depicts a youngish chap keeping a trio of people waiting as he contemplates a Salted Caramel Croissant Cup – a bun-shaped confection encrusted with gooey brown lumps. 
Quite apart from the grotesque pile-up of things – croissant, chocolate, caramel – that were once treats in themselves, this advert and its other iterations emphasise solitary enjoyment, specifically excluding sociability and – in the case of the dog waiting, lead in mouth while its master scoffs his smoked salmon – exercise. 
The causes of obesity are multifarious, and the reams of words written on the subject have provided no real solution. A return to seasonality is not the answer (Growing Solo, a BBC Radio 4 series by the former political journalist, Max Cotton, who attempted to survive for a year on the produce of his Somerset smallholding, offered comically unpalatable proof of the impracticality of that idea). 
But it might become part of the answer: at the very least, a better understanding of where our food comes from, a sense of seasonal cycles, and the anticipation of their highlights: peas, asparagus – even hop sausages – might help to redefine our idea of a treat: as good food shared with friends, rather than the solitary devouring of a sickly lump of fat and sugar.