We all know that the World Cup season brings many versatile excuses for matters from work (“Sorry boss, I need to take an MC today”) to family ones (“Daddy, wake up! It’s time to go to school”). More positively, this season is also closing ties between friends (sharing a pint of Stout more than once a fortnight) and family (cheering on the teams with my granddad at 2am).
How about our diets? How does the World Cup season affect the diet? As I stand in a long line to pay at a local hypermarket 30 minutes before England was hoping to get through the quarter finals, I observed a little phenomenon.
Clutched in the hands or stacked up high in the baskets were packs of groundnuts, an assortment of chips, bottles of fizzy drinks and cans of beers – all to be consumed along the dramas of the next 90 minutes in the field.
Extra consumption of Stout, chips and pizza has crushed my disciplined menu which comprised of their abstinence controlled consumption in the previous weeks. I am feeling guilty. So in repentance, I prepared a lunch of cold soba, tossed with gingered honey miso dressing served with toasted organic sesame seeds and calcium-rich wakame.
But would I give up chips and stout for the coming semis and final? Not a chance!