A person makes a decision about food 220 times a day, I understood from Wednesday’s episode of Focus about obesity. Endocrinologist Liesbeth van Rossum from the obesity clinic at Erasmus MC said that most food choices are made unconsciously. Should I have one or two sandwiches? Am I passing by this chip shop? And the recurring issue that sometimes arises at the crack of dawn: what are we having for dinner tonight?
Frans Timmermans, the party leader of GroenLinks-PvdA, had to answer one of those 220 questions with full consciousness on Monday morning. He was presented with a rather personal food choice. In the radio program of Rob & Wijnand on 3FM listeners could ask him a question, and Daan from IJsselstein wanted to know which snack from the chip shop would be Timmermans and why. Given his size, Timmermans thought of a meatball. The fragment from the radio program was shown in the On 1broadcast on Monday, where party leaders Henri Bontebal (CDA) and Caroline van der Plas (BBB) were guests. The same question to them. “Frikandel,” said Bontebal very quickly and it seemed like it took a while for Van der Plas to switch gears. She chose the third most popular snack in the Netherlands, the croquette. “Nicely filling.” (The frikandel is number 1. The spring roll is number 2).
During the rest of the Op1 broadcast, the party leaders received serious questions from people from ‘the region’. They were there as an audience. Questions arose about unprofitable bus lines, about maintaining the range of shops and about housing. Both got through it reasonably cooperatively, Bontebal only put the brakes on when Caroline van der Plas analyzed, without being asked, that it was not the voters who had left the CDA, but the CDA had left the voters. He preferred to make that diagnosis himself.
Cauliflower florets
So far the choice consists of the meatball, the frikandel and the croquette. I think I can safely list D66 leader Rob Jetten as ‘Indian cauliflower’. I saw him make that dish on Monday afternoon at Inside out. He cut cauliflower florets with chef Ramon, and I must say, his cutting technique looked quite professional. Never before have I seen Jetten so loose, so relaxed, so at ease as there in the kitchen.
In News hour On Wednesday, Mariëlle Tweebeeke introduced CDA member Henri Bontebal as “climate man, city and green”, and that may be true, but Rob Jetten really seems to me to be the green climate man incarnate. As convincing as he said that he tries to eat “as much vegetarian food as possible”. Nuts, tempeh, lots of vegetables. He chopped the garlic and in the process raked in the meat eaters and all the CDA pillars. A pinch of community feeling, a spoonful of solidarity, a handful of family values. He came from a large Brabant family, he said, where everyone was there for each other, and where we ate together every week with grandpa and grandma (with the elderly – and informal care included) and a good barbecue or “braai” was also enjoyed by them. Furthermore, Jetten has had an open door and open refrigerator policy since his student days. Everyone is welcome at his home, “as long as you have a nice time.” D66’s migration position is also immediately clear.
No, then Bontebal. No cooking, he had to fight News hour. If Tweebeeke did not bombard him with questions about the climate or the energy transition, it was Arjan Noorlander’s turn to list all the promises the CDA has not kept since the Van Agt cabinet. And then there was also an ex-CDA member in the studio who feared he would become an ex-dairy farmer. And oh horror, next to it was a former vice-chairman of CDA youth who no longer had any confidence in the party.
I really hope for Bontebal that he can come and fry a frikandel on TV one day.