The return of Turkey Twizzlers exposes Britain’s unhealthy obsession with the past

Reintroducing Bernard Matthews’ corkscrew meat strips highlights an ongoing failure to modernise our culinary industry, and it’s kids who will suffer

While thousands of Twitter users were busy this week sounding a curly, somewhat gritty-like horn, to spread the news that Turkey Twizzlers are indeed back, I was busy reminiscing. I thought about how many times I begged someone, anyone, older than me for £1.20 so I could afford two of the spiralised beauties and some chips for lunch.

I thought about the primary school I went to in Liverpool and how the once-popular Bernard Matthews food product transports me back there. But I also thought about what the Twizzler’s return – in its sparkling new “healthier” form – reveals about us as a nation.

In many ways, Britain is stuck in the past. Just this week, our white, Eton-educated prime minister, Boris Johnson, made a string of poor decisions that led to a calamity on A-Level results day for students across the UK and a damming report questioned why conversion therapy is still available in many parts of Britain. The return of the Turkey Twizzler, however novel it might sound, is yet another example of how we, as Britons, will do anything to live in the past – because we’re scared of the future.

The food industry in particular has issues when it comes to moving on. Whether you consider the once-renowned superstition that surrounded veganism and plant-based nutrition, or the tirade against gluten-free diets, it’s clear to see that for too long we’ve been told to fear progression – because it represents change and a move into the unknown.

Speaking as a vegetarian who’s had to walk from restaurant to cafe to bar, in countless cities around the world, looking for something other than steamed vegetables to eat, I can safely say there is still a way to go in modernising the culinary industry. And Turkey Twizzlers’ reintroduction to our freezers adds to that ongoing failure, because it reminds us that people are scared to move on from the past and find new ways to feed their nostalgia – and most likely, in this instance, their kids.

Jamie Oliver led a campaign against the meaty spirals 15 years ago, in a fight to rid schools of unhealthy meals that were leaving children overweight and unhappy nationwide. In an interview with the BBC this week, though, David Leigh, the marketing director at Bernard Matthews, said the brand has “been discussing the return of the Twizzler for some time” and hopes it will “go into schools” as soon as possible.

So, we’re now told, it’s totally fine because it’s 87kcal per twizzle instead of 137kcal. Oh, and it contains no E-numbers. As if the issue doesn’t go deeper than that.

For many parents, freezer food is the only way they can afford to feed not just their children – but themselves too. What strikes me is that if the food industry – and we, again, as a nation – spent as much time trying to think up new, actually healthy foods that could sit in the same cost bracket as, say, Turkey Twizzlers (prospective buyers will now be charged up to £3 for a pack of eight), we’d be doing a much bigger service to those families, to those children and to ourselves.

Our unified need to stick to what we know is understandable now more than ever. The coronavirus pandemic means we’re living in a state of constant uncertainty, with facts, stats, even lifestyles, changing on a daily basis. Comforts in any form – spiralised included – are to be encouraged, because it’s important that we all have the tools we need to get from day to day. But a voice inside my head, presumably not the same one that was once a Turkey Twizzler addict, says this is the tip of a slippery slope.

Frankly, we know more now than we did when I was a five-year-old and eating Turkey Twizzlers on a daily basis (sorry mum, I don’t think even you knew I was doing that).

We know that between 2018-19 there were 11,117 hospital admissions directly attributable to obesity, according to the NHS’s 2020 Statistics on Obesity report, an increase of 4 per cent from 2017-18. We also know that 20 per cent of year 6 children were classified as obese in that report. While this in no way means Turkey Twizzlers, particularly the newer refined versions, are a main cause such stats, it does mean we ought to be careful when returning to foods and habits that were frozen out for a reason. What’s wrong with trying something new?

There’s an ongoing need for better food education around the world, that need has been highlighted in the UK through our government’s recent – albeit shoddy – obesity campaign. And with that comes a need to look to the future, and away from the past.