High salt levels in ready made Sunday lunch warningI love these articles as the more shrill public health boondogglers become, the more people are going to realise they are quite barking.
However, as this article illustrates, they are very careful not to condemn the Sunday roast itself, nor those who home-cook it. That is too much of a step right now, even for miserable authoritarians such as these. Oh no, it's only 'ready-made' items they are digging at (emphases mine).
Including too many ready-made items in a Sunday roast could lead to excessive salt intake, says research from a health charity.I've mentioned before that one of the prime motivators for the righteous is a deep-seated hatred of big business. This, again, fits perfectly into that agenda.
[...] it found that choosing all ready-made products for a typical Sunday lunch - meat, vegetables and condiments - could result in nearly 10 grams of salt being consumed.
But if people read the labels and buy fresh meat and veg, it is also possible to cook a roast dinner with less than 2g of salt, CASH says.It's only evil companies who add salt for flavour, you see, and it's 'possible' to use almost none at all if you cook at home.
This salt content is almost six times less than the total for the saltiest products.
But is that what actually happens if we want a scrumptious Sunday roast? Let's ask Delia, shall we?
To make the fat extra crusty during cooking, dust the fat surface of the beef with 1 level dessertspoon each of English mustard powder and plain flour – just rub them in gently – then season with salt and pepper.And pork? Well, on the BBC website, ironically, Delia gives us the lowdown.
Now take about 1 tbsp of crushed salt crystals and sprinkle it evenly over the skin, pressing it in as much as you can.How about roast potatoes, Delia?
Thinly peel the potatoes using a potato peeler, then cut them into fairly even-sized pieces, leaving the small ones whole. Then place them in a saucepan, pour over boiling water from a kettle, just to cover, then add salt and simmer for about 10 minutes.And yorkshire puddings?
Make up the batter by sifting the flour into a bowl and making a well in the centre. Break the egg into it and beat, gradually incorporating the flour, and then beat in the milk, 2 fl oz (50 ml) water and seasoning (salt and freshly milled black pepper).And I don't know about you, but Mrs P Snr always taught me to boil or steam vegetables in salted water. What says the nation's cooking treasure?
Pour in some boiling water from the kettle, add some freshly grated nutmeg and salt, then cover and steam the cauliflower till tender – about 12 minutes.Wowser! It would appear that ready-made products are going to have to go some, then, to match the salt content of a typical Sunday lunch as advocated by the country's head cookery teacher.
Despite this, though, one of the hectoring fucknuggets at the root of this hysterical scaremongery ploughs on regardless.
However Professor Graham MacGregor from the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, and chairman of CASH, said they should do more.I think he means 'hidden' in a 'forced-by-government-to-display-the-precise-salt-content' kind of way.
"Unnecessary amounts of salt are still being hidden in our food," he said.
"This puts both adults and children at risk of developing high blood pressure which causes strokes, heart attacks and heart failure, the commonest cause of death and disability in the UK."Fuck me! Really? Call the cops and throw Delia in the slammer for reckless endangerment!
Look, Graham, we're talking a once a week meal here. The clue is in the 'Sunday' part of Sunday roast. Just because you irrelevantly bung death and misery into your sentence, it doesn't make your rent-seeking agenda any less obvious, you know.
"It is the food industry's responsibility to take the salt out."I would comment on this, but I reckon Steve Shark has already done so in an accurate and succinct manner.
Sorry, Graham, but it’s people’s responsibility to monitor their own salt intake, you controlling cunt.Quite.
UPDATE: Note to self - be more thorough.
I looked into CASH a while ago and vaguely remembered that they received paltry income while paradoxically enjoying huge media interest. It also struck me that they were working out of someone's office in Tooting.
That someone didn't concern me at the time ...
Prof Graham MacGregor, of St George's Hospital, in Tooting, South-West London, welcomed the move but added: "Why do they need to put salt on the chips at all? Why not leave them as they are and let customers sprinkle on what they want?"Hmm, interesting.
But the BBC article says he is from the "Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine".
Funny enough, so now is the HQ of CASH.
Principal address:So it would seem that this entire organisation consists of Graham MacGregor and, err, a couple of mates.
Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine,
Charterhouse Square,
London ECIM 6BQ
Voluntary income is from tin-rattling sources such as the Food Standards Agency, Nissan, the Co-Op and OMC Investments. They did raise £717 themselves from selling old stuff, though, it has to be said.
CASH, and dictating the lives of others, is just Graham's little hobby.
Bless.
17 comments:
Try adding up the contents of the CASH example meal and you get to a serving of around 1.4kg - I think I would rupture long before I got anywhere near their ten grams of salt from the suggested food mountain.
In fact, the salt police should be reported immediately to the fat police for encouraging obesity.
Great stuff, thanks.
My father who consistently refused to ignore all these interfering busybodies always added plenty of salt to his meals. He died at 87 which is, I believe, above average. Unfortunately, my mother, still alive at 93 is apt to believe the scaremongers to the extent that when I treated my father to cream cakes (which he loved) would say "don't tell your mother!"
I should add that for much of their lives they smoked.
I have followed in my father's footsteps (he treated me to my first cigarette when I was seven years old!
I coughed. But not much since.
I always pout salt into the water when boiling veg and have every intention of continuing to do so. CASH can take a hike. A low salt dies is what's dangerous. Don't these people understand osmosis?
*put* not pout...
KEALGSEO: Have I missed something? Or perhaps the point of '... is a cunt?'
Wasp: Hahaha, nice spot. We are indeed close to a clash of fake charity vested interests. The food area could give us some jollies in the future.
Styx: Mrs P's Grannie is 76 and, I kid you not, disturbingly attractive (it's odd seeing 20 somethings turning their heads in the High Street). She cooked us a Sunday lunch (for 7) a month ago, on her own, using two hobs and an oven. She fair danced around the kitchen whilst cooking, chatting as she did so, and served up a dream meal complete with a bucketload of home made apple sauce.
Then, as she has always done, she sat down to eat and poured - NOT sprinkled - salt on her meal. She's always done so and still has a good 15 years left at least, I'd say.
10g? She does that every meal yet I'd stake a lot of money on her out-ageing this Graham geezer, small-minded twat that he is.
Longrider: There is an Eastern European folk tale running along the lines of the dangers of lacking salt, I'll dig it out one day (it runs along the same kind of lines as an popular English one which I was regaled with in the 70s, too). I'll pull them out one day and do an article. ;)
Dick,
There is no doubt whatsoever that the human body needs salt to survive.
Nor is there any doubt that the human body excretes salt surplus to requirements.
I recall something similar about sweeteners some forty years ago. Lord Beeching(?), who was chairman of Beachams, who made sweeteners, at the time, went on TV to defend sweeteners. There was some discussion with this doctor, and then Beeching made the very simple statement that if one ate two pounds of sugar all at once, it would probably do you a lot of harm. You would have to eat a similar amount of sweeteners.
End of discussion.
It is all rubbish of course (or rather some people with hypertension are salt sensitive). But that's not stopping them!!
http://heartdisease.about.com/cs/hypertension/a/saltwars.htm
Try real, and I mean real Chinese or Japanese food it has more salt than most western pallets would prefer.
Yet - low heart disease.
ps ,
Oh, and AS FOR CASH, how odd they are called CASH, simply because that's what the buggers are after.
Our CASH !
I live in hope that, one fine day, an MSM editor will commission some old-fashioned investigative journalism into the activities of these prod-nosed rent-seeking fucknuggets instead of just printing their ridiculous hyperbole.
I reckon I'll have to wait, though; it's far too easy just to copy and paste their bletherings.
Anon: Very true. Japan also has high smoking rates, but anti-smokers clam it's their diet being brilliant which makes them immune to heart attacks (which cigs obviously cause every day, and all of the time, instantly).
So that's salt against just about every other vested fake charity interest. Someone will lean on them soon for giving the game away.
It won't be hard, they have tiny resources and operate out of Graham's office.
In fact, their office seems to move about as Graham does.
Do you think it might be his little cash-generating baby? ;)
I take my last comment back and apologise. Graham's little venture is nothing of the sort.
He just likes to lecture the country on his day off (update above).
My gran died at the age of 92 and she put tons of salt on her food and I remember her overcooking the cabbage (as was the custom) with loads of salt and her steak pies were flavoured with salt.
Please don't quote Delia on cooking; she can't even boil an egg!
Actually low sodium levels are extremely dangerous to health.
I remember McGregor from when I was at medical school 30 years ago - he was just starting out on his anti salt crusade. Several of my friends went into his trial of a very low salt diet. I've no idea what effect it had ontheir blood pressure but they all felt very unwell and lacking in energy.
There probably are a few people with a particular type of high blood pressure who would benefit from a low or reduced salt diet. The rest of us really don't need to be too bothered.
He has made a career out of this and I don't suppose hw is going to stop or the research grant money will stop and anyway the media lap it up - it's a bit like the AGW scam - there's very little evidence about salt and blood pressure - the effect if any is tiny, but having spent 30 years going on about it he isn't likely to give up now
"The modern salt saga started in 1904 with a paper by Ambard and Brochard who showed an association between salt intake and blood pressure in six patients.
On the basis of these observations they created a salt–blood pressure hypothesis."
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/34/5/972
Rose
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