Greggs Says Ring Doughnuts Are a Health Food Because They Have a Hole

The new public health champion is a ring doughnut

Greggs, the bakery, vegan sausage roll moneymaker, and noted provider of hot items, says it will do its bit for public health with a new product the likes of which has never been seen before: a baked good so fiendish that Piers Morgan will again be forced to denounce the chain online.

It’s...

A ring doughnut.

Yes: chief executive Roger Whiteside told a conference on childhood obesity that ring doughnuts — doughnuts with air voids, otherwise known as “holes,” in the middle — are a key cold item in its commitment to public health, according to i News. He also delivered a simple truth:

People like big cakes, not little cakes . . . we know that we shouldn’t be encouraging people to eat large cakes... but the problem is you have to go with demand.

Does Greggs need to do this, or even say this? Conference obligations say yes; corporate governance packs probably say yes; the government’s uncomfortably paternalistic approach to public health at the expense of education, with individual products — and not their consumption — classed as healthy or unhealthy, good or bad, in a sort of calorie vacuum divorced from real world circumstances. The only disappointment in Greggs’ statement is that it’s not a masterful piece of governmental trolling. [I News]

And in other news...

• Gordon Ramsay’s Lucky Cat was an “authentic Asian eating house” in its first life, an “Asian eating house” in its second, and an “actual kitchen nightmare” in its third. Its fourth life will be in Las Vegas, as Ramsay gambles on his version of an Asian restaurant — reducing an entire continent’s food to a tagline, via a menu of raw fish, grilled things, citrus, geisha iconography, and plush fabrics.
• Boris Johnson’s general election is on a curiously culinary trajectory. The Conservative leader believes his Brexit deal is “oven-ready” — but should be cooked in a microwave; he could move his campaign and constituency to the home of pork(y) pies, Melton; and his visit to Northern Ireland’s Tayto factory led to a lot of befuddled staring at potatoes.
• A glitzy Japanese restaurant will take over vaunted Antipodean pioneer The Providores in Marylebone — Peter Gordon and Michael McGrath closed the restaurant in the summer after 18 years in London. Taka offers a range of sushi, tempura, robata-grilled dishes, and kushiyaki skewers. [Hot Dinners]
• Good tweet: