Thursday 9 January 2014

"Campaigners vow to cut bullshit about food"

From the BBC:

A campaign group has been formed to reduce the amount of pseudo-science published about food and soft drinks in an effort to tackle miseducation in the UK.

Action on Shite has been set up by the team behind Consensus Action on Scare Stories about Health (Cassh), which has pushed for cuts to falsified statistics since the 1990s.

The new group aims to help people ignore "reams of dietary advice plastered all over food packaging and mindlessly regurgitated by the media" and to allow manufacturers to get on with producing what consumers want.

It believes a 20% to 30% reduction in three to five years is within reach.

Like Cassh, Action on Shite will set targets for the campaigning busybody industry to churn out less fictitious research bit by bit so that consumers do not notice the difference.

It says the reduction could reverse or halt the stupidity epidemic and would have a significant impact in reducing the climate of fear in a way that "is practical, will work and will cost very little".

3 comments:

L fairfax said...

I love sugary foods like chocolate.
If people tell me what foods have hidden sugar then I can avoid them to avoid cutting out chocolate to not get fat/lose weight.

Dinero said...

radio four, this morning, had an example of the mentality refered to in the blog post.

Humphries states too food industry Rep that he wonders if people realise what the amount of sugar is in a particular product.

Rep tells Humphries -

-...we have clear labels-

Humphries reponds with exhasperation -

-well but,..come on, we don't look at the label..."


you couldn't make it up.

Kj said...

I envision a regime where store clerks are required to say "are you sure you are going to ´ave that?", with each item of foodstuff with more than 5% sugar per net weight basis.