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When so-called experts’ advice is in bad taste
Ho hum, another new year, another new food scare, so what’s new about that? Why must we suffer a constant bombardment of food frighteners?
Hardly a week passes without geeks in white coats wasting television time or newspaper space with their solemn warnings of doom if we eat any of an increasingly-wider range of foods. They always pick on food we enjoy eating with no visible ill effects, so is it merely a matter of time before we must ensure our safety by storing food in a lead-lined fridge at the bottom of the garden?
When will the experts tell us lettuce can kill? Or we should reduce our intake of soya protein?
I’m certain that with the almost complete lack of control over this so-called research, a random collection of obscure facts can be cobbled together to prove just about anything eaten to excess can be harmful.
The best example appeared a few years ago when an incautious lady decided to lose weight using a carrot-intensive diet of her own creation. She sought help when it reached the point when she was bright orange like a Tango bloke, and it did not take long to establish she was really ill. I am advised it was some weeks before she could greet her physician other than with: “What’s up doc!”
This time it is the turn of processed meats to get the bad news, courtesy of Professor Susanna Larsson of the Karolinska Institute (no, me neither!) in Sweden. As usual there is very little hard information on which we might form our own judgement, although the published results of this and similar research papers are likely to be more than a little one-sided.
The general gist of the scare claims processed meats can increase our risk of getting pancreatic cancer, a nasty bug, difficult to treat and certainly something we should all take whatever steps we can to avoid.
That’s fair enough, but that risk is minimal compared with smoking, obesity, alcohol abuse or using public roads. Among the list of processed meats the bold Prof Larsson says we should cut out are bacon and the humble sausage, and that for me is a very big no-no.
I have been a banger fan all my life. In childhood days in Kent we ate sausages once a week, no matter what, and I must confess I still do. As I write this piece I am gently salivating at the thought of bangers and mash for lunch, and see no sensible reason to change my menu.
We need more information, more facts rather than carefully-selected statistics.
Prof Larsson does not tell us how many life-long vegetarians become victims of pancreatic cancer, nor does she give us a clue as to what levels of consumption we might use as a guide for safe eating. I would also like to see comparable figures for countries where processed meats are significantly more prominent in their national diet than in the UK.
It might well be the case she did just that, but we are not encouraged to discover this. The old saying of not allowing facts to spoil a good story is particularly relevant to food, so we can expect little more than what they wish us to know.
There is a common thread to many food-scare tales. The consumer is blamed for unwise choices in food when the chief culprits are the suppliers who add so many nasty chemicals to what we eat, and in the case of meats there is an easy remedy.
We are well served in Selkirk by good old-fashioned butcher shops who rightly pride themselves on the quality of their products, be it the best cuts of beef and lamb, mince, the humble sausage and top-rate potted head. And with the annual Selkirk Haggis Hunt only a day or so away, we must not forget that haggis is in itself a processed food in the view of the so-called experts.
In the UK (for as long as it lasts!) there are many rules and regulations as to the preparation and content of our foods, with strict controls exercised over anything carrying even the slightest suspicion of harmful effects. Add to that the notion the EU bans just about everything with the merest whiff of risk, so why do we allow others the privilege of peddling their views without any serious move to check them out before exposing them to the public?
There has been a whispering campaign against processed meat for some time now, mainly because no government can ban the banger and stay in office. I’m sure some of us will consume more processed meat as time goes by, not because we have a tradition of doing so, but for the simple reason that we enjoy eating a wider range of foods.
For a start, processed meat products appear in a high percentage of pizza recipes, a dish now part of the national diet in Scotland, deep fried or otherwise. Restaurants offer other ethnic foods and, of course, we are more likely to take our first sample of a wider range of meat products when we are on holiday in “furrin” places.
All in all, if we were persuaded to abstain from all the foods declared unsafe over the past 25 years there would not be a lot on the table at mealtimes.
So what is the solution? Quite simple really – ignore the lot, choose only high-quality food, local wherever possible, avoiding anything that is elaborately packaged, then take time to read contents labels and understand what they mean. From that you might well decide that the most lethal aspect of food is our willingness to accept everything and anything that is easy to prepare – and as far as I am concerned you would be right.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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