Butter or "We knew this anyway"

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We are getting to the point where the misplaced emphasis on saturated fats as the guilty complex molecules has to end. Obesity, heart disease and much else really isn't driven by these essential little darlings:

Four decades of medical wisdom that cutting down on saturated fats reduces our risk of heart disease may be wrong, a top cardiologist has said. Fatty foods that have not been processed – such as butter, cheese, eggs and yoghurt – can even be good for the heart, and repeated advice that we should cut our fat intake may have actually increased risks of heart disease...

Some of us have been saying this for quite a while of course!

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"Get this killer off New York's streets"

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Or so says that jumped up little fascist Mike Bloomberg. And the killer in question? Ben & Jerry's!

"Heart disease is the number one killer in the nation,” said Mayor Blomberg, “and we must do everything we can to get Ben and Jerry and these other killers off our streets.”

Seems our little health nutter isn't content with trying to ban smoking in private houses, or indeed with requiring restaurants to produce a full nutritional study with every portion - he's now using New York's tax dollars to buy up ice cream at $5 a litre.

So if you're somewhere near New York how about:

In previous buybacks, enterprising individuals have even bought cheap ice cream at Walmart and sold it back to the city at a profit.

Apparently these buy-backs have no noticeable effect but are popular - not surprising since lots of New Yorkers are getting what amounts to some free cash. Presumably to spend on malt liquor, corn dogs and burgers?

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It's all Peppa Pig's fault isn't it?

Fruit & Veg shop in Radda in Chianti - featuring porcini, of course!

It seem that, in the European "eat up your greens now dear" league, us Brits are languishing near the bottom (or so the European Commission - green scoffers all - tell us):

Britons are not eating enough fruit and vegetables despite nutritional advice being widely available, a study suggests. A review of eating habits in 19 EU countries put the UK in 14th place*.

And, we're told that this is a problem - not eating up our greens puts us at risk:

The EUFIC said that high intakes of fruit and vegetables were associated with a lower risk of chronic diseases, particularly cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and certain cancers.

Apparently the Poles are top (not surprising as the Polish diet does seem to consist largely of cabbage and potato). Which means that they're living longer of course? It would seem not - the average Briton (even with all those Glaswegians keeling over at 55) lives just over 79 years whereas the average Pole only makes it to his or her 76th year.

What about heart attacks then - eating up our greens means we don't get these doesn't it?

According to the latest WHO data published in April 2011 Coronary Heart Disease Deaths in Poland reached 79,036 or 26.93% of total deaths. The age adjusted Death Rate is 122.40 per 100,000 of population ranks Poland #78 in the world

..and the UK? The same source gives our age adjusted death rate as 68.8 per 100,000. More to the point, that is better that three of the four top green scoffers in Europe (Germany and Austria being the other two).

Maybe eating greens is good for us (certainly a diet without fruit and veg would be unbearably dull) but blandly reporting data - it seems pretty dodgy data - on eating greens seems to miss the point. Our life expectancy is rising, our rates of coronary heart disease are falling and yet we don't eat as much green stuff as places with a cultural predilection for cabbage.

Any way it's all Peppa Pig's fault isn't it?


*Most football supporters would prefer to characterise this position in the league as "mid-table" unless, of course, it is the team they hate, in which case it is "risking relegation".

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BHF reveals its priorities...

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Apparently 'No Smoking Day' is a charity - or was until now as it has just been merged into the British Heart Foundation. Apparently they weren't going to get all that lovely government lolly:

No Smoking Day started approaching potential merger partners because it expects to lose half its funding in 2012, when an annual grant of £250,000 from the Department of Health will come to an end.


The move involves two No Smoking Day staff moving from offices in Shoreditch, east London, to the BHF headquarters in Mornington Crescent in north London. Its other employee, chief executive Amit Aggarwal, will leave when his fixed-term contract expires in November.

It seems that BHF will be making up the shortfall using all those donations from good folk who want them to research medical treatments for heart disease.

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