Nanny, seemingly, never stops telling us what particular food stuffs are bad for us.I don't know, maybe she gets some form of sexual thrill out of trying to scare and worry people about what they eat.
Anyhoo, yesterday red meat took centre stage; as Dr Elio Riboli, from the little known European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition, said that their study found that those people who eat 3kg of red meat every day are likely to suffer from indigestion and flatulence.
Dr Elio pointed out that they had to issue a fatuous report every few years, in order to justify their existence.
Well, I can tell you, Nanny is outraged she is really mad now!
There seems not to be a day go by, when another horror story about food does not appear on her desk.
Remember these scare stories folks?
-Eggs are dangerous because you can get salmonella, and they raise your cholesterol
-White bread is bad because it is white
-Brown bread is bad because it prevents you from absorbing calcium
-Beans make you fart
-Beef on the bone turns you into a mad cow
-Sugar...don't get me onto the subject of sugar
-Salt, well Sid the slug can tell you all about the dangers of salt
-Salmon contains mercury
-Chicken can infect you with SARS
-Ham contain nitrates and other nasties
-Chili powder is a definite "no no"
-School meals turn you into the working classes
-Milk, butter and cheese contains fat; and we all know what that does to you
-Carrots turn you into an Antique Roadshow Presenter
-Vegetables and fruits contain pesticides
-Genetically engineered foods are dangerous, because Prince Charles says so
Oh dear! The list simply goes on and on.
Well Nanny is fed up, and bored, with constantly telling us about the danger of what we eat.
Therefore she is going to ban eating altogether.
She believes that not eating at all is the safest way forward for her "charges". Not eating is perfectly safe; after all, it hasn't done Michael Jackson any harm has it children?OK, maybe I am making a little bit of this up (not the list though). However, there really was a report issued yesterday about the dangers of red meat. Seemingly if you eat too much, you increase the chances of getting cancer by 30%.
Now think about that for a minute.
Increase the chances by 30%, what does that actually tell you?
Bugger all!
The study doesn't tell you what your chances of getting cancer are, if you don't eat red meat; eg they may be zero, in which case a 30% increase is still zero.
The report is useless.
Here is another useless report. In 2003 the WHO World Cancer report said that tobacco and diet accounted for 43% of all cancer deaths.
Well think about that fatuous statement for a minute.
We all die of something, be it cancer or heart failure; doctors like to have a reason to put on the death certificate.
Following that reasoning of causality, doctors need a rationale for the cause of cancer. Since they don't know, they use food and fags as a convenient excuse.
All people eat, drink and some smoke; yet we don't all have cancer. However, WHO are stating that because we eat and smoke that this is the cause of cancer.
Their reasoning is unsound.
The human race has been in existence for around 150000 years, and has eaten its way through all manner of noxious substances.Yet it has flourished.
Nanny, despite being around for only a few years, seems to think that she knows better than 150000 years of evolution.
Nanny and her food fadists should be ignored, and should be treated with the contempt that they deserve.
Enjoy your life; after all, you only have one.
"Their study found that those people who eat 3kg of red meat very day" Assuming that the typo should have said every day, doesn't that show how desperate they must be? Who eats 3kg of red meat a day, your average Lion maybe, but a person? Do me a favour - this is complete rubbish.
ReplyDeleteSteve
ReplyDeleteSorry about the typo, "very", I will correct.
However, re your comment about 3kg, if you read my article again in full you will see that I have admitted that I am taking the piss.
Thanks
Ken
Hi Ken,
ReplyDeleteyou may have been taking the piss by saying 3Kg, but the report itself doesn't seem to be far off a piss take.
They seem to have combined red meat with processed and take no account of cooking technique. Properly cooked free range, organic beef is counted the same as a microwave burger.
They are, by their own admission, talking about a LARGE daily intake. From my own unscientific samplings; sit on the sofa and shovel junk into your body and you may die sooner.
The ultimate piss take; they spend my money to come up with unscientific nonsense.
Exactly Chris
ReplyDeleteThey make no distinction between shite and quality.
The actual quantity the report says is bad for you is 160g; which to my view is tiny.
A steak is around 250g after all.
Ken
ReplyDeleteSecond glance and yes you're right on the quantity, but I still think it stretches things when you combine that with daily.
A large steak a day may work for some people, personally I like to vary my diet a little.
And that is assuming that steak is actually the dangerous component
I despise these media scare stories, and that is exactly what they are.
ReplyDeleteWhy else would they tell us our risk of getting cancer can increase by 30% without telling us what the original absolute risk was?
See, saying it has increased by 30% is scarier than simply saying it has increased from 0.01% to 0.0133%.
I agree about the lack of pointing out the difference between different types of red meat - one quick example, standard mince is 20% fat, steak mince is 10% fat, if eating this every day this means one person eating virtually the same thing as another will eat not far from twice the fat, surely increasing their chances of a heart attack.
ReplyDeleteNor is a rump steak the same as a Big Mac.
As has already been pointed out, every day is a pretty significant commitment, I eat more meat than anyone else I know, yet rarely will I have beef for 3 days in a row, never mind a span of several years.
A statistician friend of mine once told me a brilliant bit of statistical jiggery-pokery that puts these studies in context.
ReplyDeleteNamely: Eating rice is fatal.
How ? Well, if you ignore the time variable, it can be statistically proven that all the people who ate rice in 1654 are now dead. Therefore eating rice must be fatal. Okay, it's a bit simplified but at the end of the day the fact remains that you are going to snuff it one day no matter what you consume.
Oh and the findings claimed that the 'safe' amount of red meat was 'less than 20g'. That's about equivalent to a single small slice of ham a day.
Hahaha. very drole. Remember you do need to drink 3 litres of water a day. But not tap water, which is cancerous. and not bottled water, which contain nitrates and not rain water which is acidic. Toilet water it is then. Don't drink too much though or your brain could swell up.
ReplyDeleteAlso I loved the one the other week about how people throw food away too soon, just because it's past its best before date... Don;t put those dates on there if you don't want people to abide by them!
10 million years of evolution have taught our bodies to know what is and isn't safe to eat. How about the government stays out of it?
Railwayman,
ReplyDeleteas you say our fishing industry killed by the same nations whose fleets we destroyed at Trafalger.
and you might care to note this is a European report, from an organisiation based in Lyon France. So maybe that explains where we think we ought to buy the fish from!
All the atention grabbing studies suffer from the same thing and that is some claim that A causes an xx% increase/decrease in B. The question that is never asked or indeed answered is "xx% of what?"
ReplyDeleteBy way of example the background incidence of lung cancer in non smokers is about 1 in 10,000. In smokers is is 20 in 10,000.So smoking icreases your chances of getting lung cancer by about 1900%. The 1900% figure alone conveys no information (except the perception of instant death)without knowing the 1 in 10,000 in the first place.
Which makes another point, percentages are just fractions multiplied by 100 and can make even small numbers look big and scary. For example if someone claims that A increases the chances of B by 15% what they are really saying is that A increases the chances of B by 1.15 times. So,if we asked the question "15% of what?" and the answer was "1 in 10,000" then we could conclude that there would probably be 1.15 incidences of B in 10,000 if A was present, up from 1 in 10,000 if A wasn't.
So, always ask the question "of what?". Without it you are being told nothing.