Porridge for breakfast

I heard a portion of “The World” radio show when driving home from a Fayette meeting last night and caught a report from London about construction of the Olympic village. It was actually about the diet of construction workers. They were skipping breakfast, loading up at lunch, and getting into accidents:

Mr Waterman said that as soon as bosses at the ODA realised how unhealthy the workers were they started offering bowls of porridge for just £1 to workers so they got a ‘healthy start to the day’.

He stated in his report: “They (the workers) were coming into work for three hours suffering really low blood sugar.

“We had canteens offering porridge for a £1 and accidents in the morning went down.”

One 41-year-old worker, who did not want to be named, said: “A lot of the lads on the site were pretty big.

“Builders are known for their love of fry-ups and fast food – it comes as part of the job really – but nobody realised quite how unhealthy most of us were.”

The 40-year-old worker – who admitted that he was overweight – added: “Lots of us ended up eating porridge in the morning to see us through to lunchtime and I must admit it did work. Before that we couldn’t stop thinking about what we were having for lunch.

Andrew Zimmern was interviewed and mentioned an African people who started the day with fermented milk and some beef blood. They made little balls from cooked millet and ate them throughout the day when they were out herding. It sustained them for hours.