It's a funny old thing, but yonks ago (18th September 2004 to be precise) when I first started this website, my very first article was about Nanny's obsession with salt.
How times have changed!
Errrmmmm, well no they haven't.
Three and a half years on, Nanny is still going on about salt. Yesterday I wrote about saltshakers having their holes reduced in number (wouldn't it be easier just to block a few holes with sticky tape?).
Today I would like to advise you that one of Nanny's special little trolls wants to ban salt from the dining tables of people's homes.
Martin Wiseman, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Pathologists, has said that food should only be seasoned with pepper or herbs in order to reduce salt intakes to recommended levels.
Prof Wiseman said:
"Because salt is added by food manufacturers, there is too much of it in our food before it even reaches our dinner table. By adding extra salt to a meal, you are only making things worse."
Doesn't the "safe" dosage of salt rather depend on:
- how much water you drink?
- whether you are sweating a lot?
- how much ready made food, or fresh food you eat?
- your body mass?
- your age?
I would point out that when I was a wee nipper (about 6 years old) my mum used to buy blocks of crystallised sea salt. They were solid blocks, wrapped in blue paper, around 12 inches high by 4 inches square.
My task was to "shave" them into salt crystals for our salt pots etc.
Mum would give me a knife, and let me get on with the shaving.
Can you see two Nanny dangers here?
1 A child with a knife
2 A child with salt
Call the Nanny police!
I always enjoyed salt shaving, and would take a few chunks to munch on.It never did me any harm, as you can see.
Blanket bans and blanket advice is meaningless.
As a professor he should know that.
Same old story, same old tune from Nanny!
Ken you wimp, I used to munch on raw OXO cubes. That was when mummy didn't catch me noshing away the gravy cubes set aside for tea and Sunday dinner that is.
ReplyDeleteSalt squared to the point of infinity I would guess in those cubes. Why Nanny has not banned them I can't begin to think. Unless, of course Lord OXO is bunging Nanny MCBrown a few bob here and there.
Wiseman? Ermmm...Oxymoron anyone?
ReplyDeleteThe Prof. assumes that we all go to Iceland and other supermarkets and buy pre prepared muck...oppps...sorry ready meals.
I buy my meat from a butcher, my fruit and veg from the greengrocer at our local market, my fresh fish from my fishmonger and my bread and cakes from my baker. I season with salt and pepper, the former being a necessity of life....No salt..You die.
As with anything else...everything in moderation will do you little harm...except cyanide I suppose...Why with Nanny, is the answer always to ban things?...Why should some paperhat in a whistle be able to dictate how people must live their lives?...We always give too much weight to those OCD people that only are concerned about a single issue, be it salt or climate change for example?
Perhaps Nanny will put a tax on saly...Kerching...I hear that till ringing again.
Makes you proud to be British doesn't it.
Hmmmm! Prof. Wiseman seems to have a lot to say about banning all sorts of stuff as I seem to remember his name appearing several times before when there have been calls to ban things of which Nanny disapproves.
ReplyDeleteAs for a salt ban, as has been pointed out, what if you don't eat vast quantities of ready made and pre-prepared muck. Like Tonk, my wife (am I allowed to say wife nowadays or is it 'Non-specific gender life partner' ? ) and I buy our meat from a butcher, fresh veg from a greengrocer, fish from a fishmonger and the bread we eat is either from the local baker or homemade. A small amount of salt is added during cooking. My father does similar but very rarely adds salt to his home cooked fare and as a result has recently been informed by his GP that he has a Sodium deficiency and should consider adding a little salt to his meals. Thus a ban would have the effect of being detrimental to fathers (and others ) health.
Once again Nanny and her minions jump in without any consideration of the effects.
The kaptain says,
ReplyDelete"...Once again Nanny and her minions jump in without any consideration of the effects".
In other organisations, this often results in the appearance of a phenomenon called, 'The Law of Unintended Consequences'. Broadly speaking, this dictates that every time you make a hasty decision about something positive; a negative - and usually much more serious - effect also follows.
While I would normally agree with the kaptain, that this seems to be the case every time Nanny opens her stupid mouth; I'm beginning to suspect that Nanny knows full well what the negative consequences of her actions will be - not in detail of course, Nanny is not that competent.
Screwing up everything she touches means that there will always be jobs for her minions - putting right(?) things that have gone wrong, so that when their solutions to their original cock-ups also go wrong, they can then find another solution for the solution that went wrong (which will also go wrong) and then a solution for the solution of the solution and so on - ad infinitum. Those who are reliant on the system can easily be persuaded that this is evidence of Nanny's commitment to 'making life better'.
Given that Nanny can always nick some extra tax from somewhere, employing large numbers of otherwise unemployable cretins at 50-60 grand per annum, to perpetuate this sort of bollocks; is, in her terms, an easy, and cheap, way to buy re-election.
I hope I'm wrong (but I suspect I'm right).
Revolution now?
We need an armed guard on the salt mines in Cheshire.
ReplyDeleteThe output is only used on roads in winter apparently but it stands to reason that anything they put on the road MUST get back into the food chain, probably via cattle. So we should STOP salting the roads NOW.
Of course in winter this might result in more accidents and a few deaths but that is a price worth paying .. oh, er, well, um.
Well, a few less people, especially motorists, is probably a good thing. Ah, yes, well, elderly pedestrians could slip on the ice I suppose ... um .... AH! but not of we keep them locked safely away in care homes! Brilliant!
But if that won't float with the public we can fix it by installing some more speed cameras.
Or maybe satisfy the new demands for an extra public holiday by making all 'ice' days public holidays. Spreads the load a bit, though people won't be able to go anywhere 'cos we will ban driving in ice and snow. and the trains will be out of action anyway.
And the possibility that there will be several dats a year like that is not real loss to productivity since we don't produce anything anyway!
Who says we don't do joined up thinking in this country?