Nanny Bans Delia

I see poor old Delia Smith is in trouble again over her latest cookery series "How To Cheat at Cooking".

In this she shows simple recipes using ready made ingredients, such as frozen mash and tinned mince. Personally speaking, as a self peeler/masher of spuds and eater of fresh flesh, I wouldn't often touch ready made stuff with a barge pole.

However, in emergencies I can see the logic of using tinned mince etc.

That being said, the use of ready made stuff was not Delia's crime in the eyes of Nanny. She is guilty of something far worse than that...

Cue a role on the drums...



She uses salt in her cooking!

Worse than that, according to Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash) she uses far too much salt.

Cash claim that a single serving of one of the recipes, carbonara real quick, contained more than a whole day's recommended salt intake (7 metric tonnes, or something like that I believe...I was never very good with ounces and metrics).

Maybe so, but an indulgence once in a while won't kill you.

As ever with Nanny's anti salt obsession she ignores the facts:

1 We are all different shapes and sizes, therefore one person's daily limit is not another's

2 Sweat exudes salt, if you sweat a lot you need more salt

3 Drink water (although Nanny says that is not much use for you now) and you flush yourself out

4 Once in a blue moon won't kill you

5 I ate salt in little chunks as child, as I have told you before, and no harm ever came to me

6 Salt in less affluent times was a prized commodity, like bread, a necessary staple

Ignore Nanny and enjoy that extra salty carbonara!

The Joy of Salt

Nanny Knows Best now contains 958 articles detailing the evils of the Nanny state, the very first article I wrote on the 18th of September 2004 about Nanny's campaign against salt was entitled "Sid The Slug".

Why this little history lesson?

Today I now have incontrovertible proof that Nanny, in her campaign against salt, was talking a load of bollocks.

Salt is, in fact, good for you.

Yesterday I had to go to the dentist, as one of my teeth had shattered and lost a filling (in fact two other fillings had also been lost a few years ago...but I have an aversion to dentists, needles and having tools poked into my mouth, so I have chickened out until now).

However, I took the bull by the horns yesterday and gritted my teeth (what was left of them) and duly proceeded (via a pub) to the dentist.

I was expecting to be told that there was decay in at least two of the teeth that had lost the fillings.

Guess what?

Not a sign of decay!

Why was this?

Simple, as my dentist explained, were I cursed with a sweet tooth then I would be riddled with decay. However, dear readers, I am not sweet toothed I consume a diet based on flesh and salt. It is that diet of flesh and salt that in fact has saved my teeth.

Salt is good!

I would in fact point out that many years ago, when I was a small child, my mum would buy blocks of sea salt (12 inches, by 4 inches, by 4 inches) wrapped in blue paper. She would give me the task of shaving them down with a knife (ooh, aren't knives dangerous), and whilst doing so I would always take a chunk and crunch on it..I like salt.

Indeed my grandfather, on my mum's side of the family, always had a few packets of salt in his pocket which he would munch on. He died aged 84 or so.

Salt is good for you!

Nanny's campaign against salt is therefore founded on nothing but flaky science and a lack of research.

FYI, those looking for a first class dentist in the Croydon area should try bluedental (Eva and I are very impressed with them)....and no, they haven't paid me for giving them a free plug.

Nanny Bans Eating

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.

A Pinch of Salt

Those of you with long memories may recall that my very first article, on this site, was about Nanny's campaign against salt. Dear old Nanny employed the dubious talents of a "bit part actor", called Sid the Slug, to warn us of the dangers of eating too much salt.

Ah, halcyon days!

I have to confess that I found that campaign to be rather hypocritical; given the fact that Nanny happily feeds school children processed muck, that is loaded to the gunnels with salt and other crap.

Ho hum, Nanny never does think things through.

Anyhoo, it seems that Nanny's clamp-down on salt is, as we all knew, utter bollocks.

This week US specialists have described the anti salt campaign as unscientific and ineffective.

Dick Hanneman, president of the Salt Institute, at a conference in London said:

"If salt reduction was a pill and not a policy it wouldn't pass muster our (U.S.) regulatory authorities, and it shouldn't be promoted by your Government..".

He said that efforts to show that cutting salt consumption actually reduced deaths had proved inconclusive. Out of twelve studies; only one had identified a health benefit, three had found potential risks and eight had found that reducing salt made essentially no difference.

David McCarron, a visiting professor at the University of California at Davis, said that evidence was accumulating that the real cause of high blood pressure was the quality of the diet, not whether it contained salt.

Britain's policy is stuck in the past, he said, there's news!

He cited evidence that moving to a diet richer in fruit, vegetables and dairy products had a far greater effect on blood pressure than reducing salt.

Exactly, as usual with Nanny's food fads it is utter codswallop (there's a word I haven't used for a while!) to blame one single food for the Nation's ills.

I would like to remind Nanny that if she were really serious about her anti salt campaign, she would stop feeding British school children the poisonous processed muck dished out in school canteens across the country.

Note the daily allowance for a child's school meal in Britain is 37p.

However, as we all know, improving the diet of school children would cost money; something that Nanny is only prepared to spend on the children of her chums in the European Commission (see yesterday's article).

Sid The Slug

Our "Nanny State", not content with lecturing us about our drinking, smoking and fat intake have now taken to lecturing us on our salt intake.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has just launched a campaign featuring a rather slimy individual (how appropriate), called Sid the Slug.

Sid is appearing on billboards and TV ads around the UK, telling us that we eat far too much salt; and that we must cut down on it.

The main problem with this campaign is that the "evidence" for the damage, that our current level of salt intake does to us, is regarded by some as dubious to say the least.

Another problem that the current campaign has already encountered, is that people find it hard to accept that a green slimy fat slug has a better "handle" on keeping fit and healthy than the average human being.

One final point, MP's are not exactly paragons of virtue when it comes to their eating habits; maybe they should take their own medicine first, before lecturing us on what seasoning we should put on our food.