Thursday 20 September 2012

Only Working Class Fat Makes You Fat

It's clear to anyone but the most blinkered that much of current healthy lifestyle advice is driven as much by snobbery as concern for the public, but I've never heard it put so blatantly as today on Radio 5.

Richard Bacon - the less said about his regular barely-suppressed political leanings the better - was hosting Clarissa Dickson-Wright promoting her new book. After celebrating Yorkshire's no nonsense approach to food, particularly the keeping of fat on ham which she described as "very important", she was quizzed by Bacon on the subject (around 1:31:00 onwards).
RB: Does fat make you fat?
CD-W: Does fat make you fat? I think the sort of fat you get in McDonald's hamburger or some other such thing would make you fat.
RB: But the fat on ham?
CD-W: No, it wouldn't make you fat, particularly, depends on how much you eat I suppose, but fat doesn't necessarily make you fat, no.
So there you have it. The food that those less well off eat will make you fat, posh food won't. Clarissa doesn't make things up as she goes along, you know.


Good grief.



10 comments:

A Salvia Diviner said...

The reason that 'diets' like the paleo and primal ( I prefer to consider them lifestyles) are so popular now is because they do work. They have a lot of evidence to back the statement that processed foods containg hydrogenated, vegetable fats/oils cause a wide range of heath issues linked to systemic inflamation. Our more natural dietary fats, saturated animal fats, are not only essential for long term health but advisable in large amounts to thrive rather than just survive.

So yes. McDonalds fat is bad. Fatty meat, butter and beef dripping good.

Just dont put it in a sandwhich or I'll go off on one about how AWFUL grains are for us.

Curmudgeon said...

Isn't McDonald's fat "fatty meat" then?

A Salvia Diviner said...

Very different fats involved. Unless I'm mistaken they cook in vegetable oil. Of course all the preserveatives and grains have a massive effect. I eat bacon and eggs slow fried in butter for breakfast. This primal/caveman influenced way of eating has completly turned my health and life around.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Fair enough, except she had previously snorted when a listener suggested that a place called the "Pizza Cafe" was an excellent restaurant. From that, I didn't take her views to be particularly based in deep health science.

Smoking Scot said...

Ah, but they're the one's who got (and still get) gout!

Jax said...

My God. Can’t these people think of anything new? It’s like they’ve only got one book of “stories” to refer to and so they keep churning them out ad infinitum, each time with just a few wording changes. Wasn’t it on Leg-Iron’s blog a little while ago that he wrote about some CAMRA smoker who said that he thought the smoking ban was OK for all the plebs who, in his view, smoked “low quality” tobacco, but that for people like him – who smoked “good quality” tobacco – it was extremely unfair, because his tobacco smelled much better and wasn’t so harmful …?

JuliaM said...

I think it might be a lot healthier than some of the low-cost burgers, which are mostly made of things that don't have fat on them!

prog said...

The manufacturers of that remarkable camping stool should pay Clarissa to promote it.....

ben said...

"So yes. McDonalds fat is bad"
How do you know? What is the different between beef and beef? Does McDo's beef come from fat cows? Do those cows have McDo labels on their back?
Utter nonsense! An urban legend or maybe even junk-science.

JonathanBagley said...

You are full of shit. Please go away. Wherever it comes from, the Savoy Grill or McDonalds, beef, potatoes, vegetable oil and a bit of salad is fine.