Health Scare Story Du Jour

From MSN News:

Bacon is now the second biggest contributor of salt to the UK diet after bread, according to a study.

Two rashers of bacon can contain more than half of the recommended daily amount (RDA) of 6g of salt, while some brands contain three times more salt than others from the same supermarket, the research by Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash) found.

The group said bacon contained "huge and unnecessarily high" amounts of salt, with consumers turning to it as a cheaper cut of meat as the recession squeezed family budgets.

Excellent news.

I was always a bit worried that I don't get enough salt, but it turns out that those two rashers of bacon I get with my all day breakfast at lunchtime will get me half way to the daily target.

May, risks, according to, wants, less, more, would, if, could be, too much, can, can, recommended, about, said, around, estimated, could be, if, etc.

From the BBC:

Cutting back on salty foods such as bacon, bread and breakfast cereals may reduce people's risk of developing stomach cancer, according to the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF).

It wants people to eat less salt and for the content of food to be labelled more clearly. In the UK, the WCRF said one-in-seven stomach cancers would be prevented if people kept to daily guidelines. Cancer Research UK said this figure could be even higher.

Too much salt is bad for blood pressure and can lead to heart disease and stroke, but it can also cause cancer. The recommended daily limit is 6g, about a level teaspoonful, but the World Cancer Research Fund said people were eating 8.6g a day. There are around 6,000 cases of stomach cancer every year in the UK. The WCRF estimated that 14% of cases, around 800, could be avoided if everyone stuck to their 6g a day.

Strip out all the conditional and vague words, and there's not much left of that is there?

Probably beats sprinkling salt.

View From The Solent has spotted the ultimate defence in The Telegraph:

A herd of cows were spooked by a new pink-coloured road and suddenly turned tail, rushed into a garden leaving one trapped in a deep ditch...

The cow belonged to farmer Robert Wells who was herding the cows down when it became spooked and rushed into the front garden of a house next to the post office. He said he believed it was because the road had been resurfaced pink and this confused the cows. The disorientated cow fell in to the ditch after trying to rejoin the herd over the low roof of the post office which abuts the neighbouring house's garden...

Mr Wells added that the route the cows were taken was a regular one for the herd. "They've passed there many times before. Of all things it was a change in colour of road that spooked them. The herd ran off then turned around on a house driveway but one decided to take a short cut over the post office roof and then fell in to the ditch..."

What makes this all the more puzzling is that cattle are red-green colour blind, but hey, in my next house, I'm having the front garden done with pink tarmac, just in case.

FakeCharity scores splendid own goal

The aptly named CASH pointed out, probably quite correctly, that although 'posh salt' costs dozens of times as much as 'ordinary salt' it is not in any way healthier*. Their whole raison d'être is to encourage people to use less salt, so their thinking, presumably, to discourage people from using 'posh salt' and preferably to use no salt at all.

That's not how The Daily Mail seems to have interpreted it. Their view appears to be, OK, in that case we'll just buy ordinary salt. What's worse (from the point of view of CASH) is that if people buy the cheaper version, they'll probably buy more of it and hence use more of it.

CASH do make one good point though: "It is disgraceful that chefs still encourage people to use so much sea and rock salt.
'This has the added danger that, as the crystal sizes are much larger and don't taste as salty, more salt is consumed." I had noticed that with posh salt, the big lumps don't seem to taste of much, presumably because they don't dissolve quick enough in your mouth.

* They define sea salt and rock salt as 'posh salt'. But surely even the most ordinary of ordinary table salt is either made from evaporated sea water or dug out of the ground? I think the only thing that's 'posh' here is the label, or the size of the crystals. Which leads me on the expression 'cracked pepper', don't they just mean 'pepper'? Isn't it traditional for dried pepper corns to be ground up a bit or otherwise reduced in size before being used to cooking, flavouring etc?

Cuts, reductions and decapitation...

There's been a buzz in the media, and on the blogs, that the Food Standards Agency is to face the axe as part of Condem reforms on health and regulation. Douglas Carswell reckons the FSA:

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"...spends a small fortune producing patronising posters lecturing us about salt intake."

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What people fail to realise here, is that like the smoking ban, 'salt reduction' is pushed centrally by the World Health Organisation. Have a look at this glossy document from their 2006 salt reduction love-in in Paris (attended by the FSA). WHO recommended that:

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"Countries should commit to reducing the average salt consumption of the adult population to under 5g per day..."

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"Countries should develop a clear strategy to achieve this goal. This should include measurable objectives, targets, indicators (including for population subgroups), and a time frame for their accomplishment ..." and

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"National food authorities or other appropriate government-mandated public health agencies should be responsible for monitoring the actions of the food sector to ensure they comply with the existing national goals and recommendations for salt reduction"

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The UK have agreed to all these WHO strategies. If they do abolish the FSA, the civil servants that negotiate EU regulation on food (i.e. 99% of food regulation) will get shifted into DEFRA and the ones that spend your money telling you what to eat on behalf of your GP's trade association will probably be catapulted straight into the DoH, where they will enjoy a feeding on a juicy ringfenced budget.

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Oh, and guess WHO has just been in town to talk about salt reduction? Our decapitation method of changing governments stacks the deck firmly against our elected representatives in their war on Whitehall waste. This is more the case on health, because doctors vastly outnumber, hold more public goodwill than and are generally cleverer than MP's.

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Just so you all know not to be too disappointed when you're still getting nannied on what to eat, drink and smoke by international quangos in 5 years time :)

Health Scare, Fakecharity & Fakestatistic Du Jour

From The Soaraway Sun (1):

Shops’ balti is more salty (2) than seawater (3)

Worst offenders were Iceland's balti range, with six ready meals saltier than water in the Atlantic... Healthiest option was Birds Eye chicken curry with rice (4), containing just 0.5g of salt per portion... CASH's (5) Katherine Jenner said curries had become a British institution. But she added: "For every gram of salt taken out of our diet, 6,000 lives are saved and 6,000 heart attacks are prevented." (6)

1) Today's page 3 caption was a classic. The two young women were quoted as saying that the Labour/Lib Dem proposed ban on Page 3 Girls restricted their freedom of expression.

2) Of course balti is salty! If if were sugary, then...

3) How salty is seawater? I know it tastes pretty horrible, but that is not really a measure of 'saltiness', is it?

4) NOW that's what I call value for money! For a measly £1,000 donation (see 5) below) they've got product placement across today's MSM, with Iceland's stuff getting a good kicking.

5) According to their 2008 accounts, their major donors were:

Nissan UK Ltd £168,000 (wot? Toyota, I could understand, but Nissan?)
Food Standards Agency £23,500, Heart Research UK £10,000 and British Heart Foundation £2,500 (these three 'donations' put CASH firmly into fakecharity territory, of course)
Marks and Spencer £1,200
Birds Eye £1,000 (see 4) above)
McCain Foods (GB) Ltd £1,000
Walkers Snacks Ltd £1,000

6) Wot? One gram per portion? Per person? Per day? 6,000 'lives' in the UK? Across the globe? 6,000 per day? Per month? Per year? Are 6,000 lives 'saved' because 6,000 heart attacks are prevented? Do the figures add up to 12,000? Where's the evidence to show that countries with traditionally salt diets have shorter life spans? Oh, right...

"What this government really wants to do is bring back rationing"

Bayard left this comment on an earlier post:

... what this government really wants to do (and may yet) is bring back rationing.

??? There's no 'and may yet' about it. From an article in the FT last week:

Food agency declares war on dietary nasties

... as Britons indulge in Easter eggs and other sugary and fatty treats, the government is increasingly concerned about long-term health problems associated with over-eating. In a bid to tackle rising obesity and ill-health caused by poor diet, which costs the NHS £7bn a year, the Food Standards Agency has now issued a mandate for change...

It is the second assault on the food industry in recent years. The FSA has already run a salt reduction campaign, viewed by campaigners as a success after salt intake dropped by 10 per cent nationwide in 2008 – only two years after the campaign was launched... “Salt came first and the reduction in salt is easier because you can do it by stealth,” he says. “You can also retrain taste buds to accept less salt. But saturated fats are much harder to do.”

Food Standards Agency recommendations:
* Chocolate: Cut the saturated fat level in some confectionery (bars with fillings) by at least10 per cent.
* Soft drinks: Those containing added sugar should be made readily available in single portion sizes of 250ml.
* Cakes and biscuits: Cut the saturated fat in plain sweet and savoury biscuits, and plain cakes by at least 10 per cent; 5 per cent in non-plain biscuits and cakes.
* Portion size: Smaller single portion sizes should be more easily available for chocolate and confectionery...

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Geek points for whomever can work out which EU Directive this stems from.

Land of the brave, home of the free...

From The Independent:

Four years ago New York City's health commissioners banned artery-blocking transfats in restaurants. Now, if a legislator has his way, the chefs at every eatery in the Big Apple and across the state will have to make do without salt.

The language of Bill A. 10129, introduced by Felix Ortiz, a representative from Brooklyn, in the New York State Assembly, could not be more specific. "No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of food for consumption by customers," it says, whether on or off the premises. The penalty for every violation would be $1,000 (£665)...

Health scare story du jour

From The Daily Express: HEALTH SCARE: SALT KILLS 40,000 A YEAR

Are they seriously trying to say that nearly one-in-ten deaths in the UK is caused by salt?

If you go to the 'research' itself, over at The British Medical Journal, it says "Most adult populations around the world have average daily salt intakes higher than 6 g, and for many in eastern Europe and Asia higher than 12 g. International recommendations suggest that average population salt intake should be less than 5-6 g per day. "

In which case people in eastern Europe or Asia should be dropping like flies, right?

German fakecharities: catching up fast

From the comments to an earlier post:

Von Spreuth said "Hmm. Low salt diets do not seem to have reached us here in Germany. I have never heard salt mentioned as a problem, and when I first came here, permanently 15 years ago, I found most of the food so bloody salty, that it was inedible. A lot of it still is (Schnitzel, for instance). Do you have different internal organ arrangements in the UK or something? Because I do not recall seeing any figures suggesting that Germans have higher salt related heart attack/stroke rates."

Pogo said: "The '6 grams of salt a day' limit is complete bollocks anyway. See John Brignell's blog/book to see how to demolish a very incompetent set of "statistics"...

Hmm. I Googled the German words for "salt", "diet", "heart attack" and "stroke" and scrolled down to the first recent article that appears on the website of a 'reputable' newspaper, to wit Stern (that's German for 'star' by the way, the German word for 'stern' is probably 'ernsthaft', or something like that).

To cut a long story, there is a German 'consumer body' calling itself 'Foodwatch' (they think it's cooler to use English words, but haven't realised that they are supposed to have a capital 'W' in there, doh) who reel off a long list of ready made meals which are high in salt, mention things like breakfast cereal and bread en passant, and point out that yet another quango/industry lobby group/bunch of meddling do-gooding cranks* called the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ernährung says that the daily recommended intake of salt is no more than six grammes.

They claim that a higher salt intake leads to higher blood pressure, which in turn might lead to an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes, whence it is only a short step to missing out the middle bit and saying that a higher salt intake leads to heart attacks and strokes, I suppose.

* Delete according to taste. Their 2008 accounts say that their membership consists of 4,038 individuals, 58 companies, 24 trade associations and 24 otherwise unspecified 'groups'.