English Learning Podcast: Nanny State

Hello and welcome to Green-Eyed English, a podcast for intermediate and higher English speakers. Interesting topics, with real, understandable spoken English.

Now, I'm from the UK, and in the UK, when the government is being too strict or making too many rules for people, we call it “a nanny state.” “Nanny state” is used negatively, of course, but recently I have been missing some parts of the nanny state in the UK…

… But, before we get into why, let's talk about what “nanny state” actually means.

A nanny is someone who looks after young children. In the past, this was usually a woman who was paid money to come to the children's home to look after them. Generally, richer families would have had a nanny, so Kings, Queens, Prime Ministers and so on were often looked after by a nanny when they were very young. This part is important because, in the UK, we usually think of the government as a group of rich people making rules for everyone else. Although there is some truth to this, meaning that many people in the government do come from rich families, there are also many working-class politicians these days as well. So, that's the “nanny” part. “State” basically means country, although when we say “nanny state” we specifically mean the government of our country. So, when we say things like “we are living in a nanny state” or “this is a nanny state decision,” we mean that we feel like children being told what to do.

This is quite a common phrase to hear in the UK, and sometimes even the government will use it. For example, the UK now has a new Prime Minister called Liz Truss and her government is thinking about stopping trying to keep people slim and healthy. Obesity is the problem of people being overweight or, basically, too fat. It is a big problem in the UK and is getting bigger and bigger every year. The UK now has laws to try to reduce obesity. For example, you cannot sell foods with lots of sugar in them on TV before 9pm and menus in restaurants have to show how many calories different dishes have in them. Liz Truss's government wants to remove some of these laws to help the economy, so they have been calling them “nanny state” laws.

So, basically, a “nanny state” is a bad thing.

However, at the moment I am living in Malaysia and I sometimes miss some of the “nanny state” laws in the UK. The laws I miss most are about food quality and what you can say on food packaging. I have a young son and I try really hard to make sure he eats very healthily, but in Malaysia you have to be very careful because foods lie to you! I have a pet hate here, which means something that I personally really dislike: my pet hate is milk. Here, if you go to a supermarket, you will find lots of different kinds of milk, and they all say things like “fresh milk” or “Australian Milk” or “full cream milk” but… they are lying to you! If you read the label, you will see a long list of ingredients, and often a very long list of ingredients… but of course, you should actually only see one ingredient on the list: milk. I have to spend a long time reading different labels trying to find the one or two kinds that are actually just milk… and it drives me crazy. In the UK, you don't have this problem: if it says milk on the label, then it is just milk. Basically, in Malaysia, the companies are making cheaper, low quality milk products and lying on the label because the government does not stop them. When I lived in China too, I did not have this problem. In China, like the UK, if it says “fresh milk” on the label, it must be just milk inside.

And it is not just milk here. We were looking at some beef burgers in the supermarket this morning and even the expensive ones had a long list of ingredients that should not have been there: things like soy, palm oil, and even sugar…

So, when it comes to food, Malaysia could learn a thing or two from the nanny state of the UK…

Now, of course, the UK is not perfect, and actually the quality of food there is not amazing. But, if you are buying basic things like meat, milk, cheese, and so on, you can trust that it doesn't contain anything else, which is a good thing.

To make sure my son is eating healthily, we now cook a lot. And, although he is only four, he loves helping me in the kitchen. Of course, because he is young, he loves sweet foods like popcorn, cakes, and popsicles, so we try to make healthy sweet foods at home more than buy them when we are outside. This way, we know that, for example, a watermelon popsicle is only made from watermelon and doesn't have a list of ingredients as long as your arm…

So, England's nanny state, I miss you… sometimes.

How about your government? Could you call it a nanny state? Is that a good or bad thing? Perhaps you can test it next time you are in a supermarket: go and read the labels on the milk and see how many ingredients you find…

Finally, if you are a language learner, you should visit my website at greeneyedenglish.com where you can download a learning pack for this episode. It has a transcript, a glossary of interesting language, and notes on useful phrases and grammar.

Nice talking to you. Bye bye!