“UK experts” warn that the government target for cutting the salt you put on a baked potato isn’t strict enough.
That’s according to the BBC, whose coverage gives the impression the only dispute among our benign dietary overlords is between whether they should terrify us into near total salt avoidance, or just plain scare us into a slightly less tasty diet.
But there’s plenty of evidence that the whole statist plan to regulate the nation’s scrambled eggs needs to be taken with, well, a pinch of salt. When new anti-salt ads were unveiled in October, The Times quoted Catherine Collins, chief dietician at St George’s Hospital in London: “Advice to cut back on salt really is the poorest of all the dietary messages around.”
So who are the “experts” recommending that the government’s action against pork scratchings must go futher? As so often in these cases, fakecharities.org can help. Here we find that "Consensus Action on Salt and Health" receives substantial donations from the Food Standards Agency, the government agency it is supposedly lobbying for more regulation. Somehow the BBC fails to mention this.
Perhaps we need a new study into whether state-funded charities and state-funded news websites might just have a bias towards deeper state involvement in our choice of crisps.
Marc Sidwell
Comments