BritGrub: The British National Diet

The Department of Social Scrutiny is proud to present the first annual event to celebrate the new British National Diet.

BOILCON draws together the food industry, politicians, food regulators and MI5 under the same roof to eat, drink and mount surveillance operations on anyone daring to ask for couscous during the event.

This first year, we are concentrating on the introduction of the British National Diet – a bold new policy to manage the nutritional needs of the nation in a consistent manner. Restaurants and supermarkets will be required to mark prepared meals with the National Diet Charter Mark. To help consumers make sense of the scheme, the following classifications will be used.

1. BND Key Stage 1 – Starters
2. BND Key Stage 2 – Main course
3. BND Key Stage 3 – Pudding or dessert
4. BND Key Stage 4 – Cheese and/or mint-infused chocolate wafers

Other Key Stages will be approved, depending on how hungry civil servants that work on the classification scheme become.

Finally, the Department of Social Scrutiny would like to thank all delegates for attending the first ever BOILCON. Thanks to your efforts – and the application of a certain amount of oppression – British food like over-boiled vegetables and cauterised meat will once again take its rightful place at the head of the menu.

Exhibition Facts

Where is it?

BOILCON ‘06 takes place at the National Propaganda Centre, located on the banks of Birmingham’s famous Alimentary Canal.

What is there?

Stalls, displays and seminars (see below) about British food and the new National Diet.

The exhibition is arranged like the human gut tract. You enter, via the Mouth, into the Oral Mastication Room. Darkened and slightly moist, this display is dedicated to getting you to chew your food properly, and you will be held here for 10 minutes before joining the Peristaltic Escalator to the rest of the exhibition.

After time spent in the Oesophagus Corridor and the Stomach Room, your journey through the Intestine Complex can be broken with a stop-off at the Appendix Café – a temporary room that may be removed at any time.

After several hours, the urge to leave will be unavoidable. An exit through the Rectal Atrium and on to a waiting bus to Digbeth Coach Station will complete your journey from dinner plate to toilet. We hope you enjoyed your visit to BOILCON ‘06, and look forward to seeing you over the years to come.

Seminars

Fish and Chips and the Post-Structuralist Discourse on re-contextualised Food Memes

• Tartare sauce has been found culturally void. Please bring your own vinegar.

Sponsored by: The Troubled Sole Psychiatric Chip Shop.

Yorkshire Pudding: Re-integrating the Hermeneutic Perspective

Yorkshire pudding is mentioned only nine times in the Bible. What can be done about this?

Deconstructing Lard

What is it that lard is trying to say, exactly?

Roast Beef: Towards a Self-Reflexive Understanding of Gravy

Britain’s Sunday favourite is served within a medium constructed from the meal itself – meat and vegetable stock radicalised by a thickening agent. What does this say about the role of gravy as both content and container?

Further seminars in brief

• Cauliflower Cheese in the Age of Enlightenment
• Reflections on the Consensus Reality of the Potato
• Understanding Broccoli