The Healthy Eating Conference

The Healthy Eating Conference was going very well indeed. Nearly all of the 200 delegates turned up on time, as did the speakers, everybody’s name badge was spelt correctly, even those with slightly foreign names, and the projector worked first time.

The first speaker was a great rabble-rouser, who kicked the event off enthusiastically and even finished five minutes early, leaving time for an extended coffee/fag break. The other speakers were all interesting and informative, the Q and A sessions at the end of each speech were engaging and the morning session overran by precisely one minute.

It wasn’t until lunchtime that the problems arose.

“Where are the chips,” people kept asking the conference organiser.

“There aren’t any chips,” she explained, time and time again, “It’s a healthy eating conference.”

“Exactly, a ‘conference’, you need chips at lunchtime at a conference. Otherwise you’ll never last ‘til the afternoon.’”

The conference organiser ran through the options. “There is a wide choice of cooked vegetables, and salad…”

“The vegetables are disgusting, it’s a conference lunch, the vegetables are always overcooked and tasteless. As for the salad, salad isn’t a meal, it’s something you have with a meal. We want chips.”

Worse was to follow. When the deserts were wheeled out there was a gasp of horror. “What’s this?” the delegates protested.

“It’s fruit salad,” the conference organiser repeated to every single delegate, “It’s very healthy.”

“But there’s no cheesecake, no chocolate fudgecake. We only come to conferences for the chocolate fudgecake at lunchtime.”

The bad tempers and disgruntlement were carried onto the conference floor or the second half of the conference, which was opened by the ministerial speaker.

The ministerial speaker was interrupted just five minutes into his speech, not just with a question from the floor, but a difficult question from the floor.

“Why does the government insist on using Body Mass Index as a measure for healthy weight, when it doesn’t distinguish fat from muscle?”

The minister didn’t have an answer to the question, ministers aren’t used to questions that weren’t written by their own civil servants and handed to a subservient media.  “I’ll take questions at the end,” he said, before adding that he wouldn’t be around at the end, but theoretically, on a matter of principle, he would be happy to take questions at the end.

The audience, fed up on account of not being fed up, took the opposite view. They bombarded him with questions, barely allowing him to talk. “Why was the definition of ‘overweight’ changed from a BMI of 28 to a BMI of 25, when those with a BMI between 25 and 28 are actually the healthiest people with the longest life expectancy?”

“Erm,” the minister said. “I will take questions at the end, after I’m gone.”

People had long since ceased to raise their hands before firing questions, they heckled comments the speaker as if they were at a comedy club, but the minister lacked the improve skills of a comedian and answered with meaningless soundbites that didn’t answer the questions and angered the crowd even more.

When the topic turned to the government’s new alcohol guidelines, things got really out of hand. A lynching seemed entirely possible, and it was all the minister’s security team could do to bustle him down the fire escape, away from the baying crowd and safely into the ministerial car.

“Thank god,” thought the conference organiser, “we’ve survived to the coffee break.”

But they didn’t survive much longer. When the coffees arrived a chant filled the room. “Biscuits, biscuits, we want biscuits.”

The conference organiser tried to placate the rabble, but it was too late. The delegates had transformed into a baying mob, a manic herd that stormed the conference centre in search of biscuits.

The crowd laid siege to the kitchen, whose staff fled in terror. Some biscuits were found, a box of the little plastic packets containing two mini-biscuits each. The packets were handed round, but only frustration followed, as the crowd, as one, struggled unsuccessfully to force the packets open. Unopened biscuit packets were hurled angrily to the floor, across the kitchen, or stored as future weaponry.

The ransacking of the kitchens continued. By twist of fate, the conference centre was hosting an Unhealthy Eating conference later that evening, for which the kitchen staff had been preparing the food. A discovery was soon made.

“Chips,” the cry went up, “There are chips!”

There was a greedy surge as 200 conference delegates descended on the newly-cooked chips, like a swarm of locusts laying waste to all before them.

An even greater discovery was made in the fridges: chocolate fudge cake. Another cry went up, and the herd stormed to the new pleasure. The kitchen was soon cleared of every trace of food, bar the surviving, much trampled-upon, unopened biscuit sachets, lying crumby and useless on the floor.

Having thus feasted, the delegates began to return to their seats. 

The rest of the conference passed benignly. The last speaker went unlynched, he even received polite applause at the end of his speech. The delegates completed their feedback sheets, which were mostly positive, except with regard to the lunch, and left with their conference packs and each others’ business cards.

The moral of this tale is a simple one, but important none the less. If you’re organising a conference, even a healthy eating conference, always remember to serve chips and cheesecake at lunchtime. There’ll be riots if you don’t.