More Cuts Required For The Good Of Public Health

So today's vitally important 'public health' message from our cash-starved 'austerity' government was about the colour of toast. Yes, really.

The awareness campaign, entitled Go for Gold and backed by athlete Denise Lewis (geddit?) was faithfully shared by state-run Nanny Beeb.

Bread, chips and potatoes should be cooked to a golden yellow colour, rather than brown, to reduce our intake of a chemical which could cause cancer, government food scientists are warning. 

Acrylamide is produced when starchy foods are roasted, fried or grilled for too long at high temperatures. 

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) recommends carefully following cooking instructions and avoiding browning.

If you're a hypochondriac - and/or are gullible with no understanding of risk whatsoever - you will naturally be terrified on hearing this new information. The truth, however, is in plain sight within the article, not once but twice.

"However, Cancer Research UK said the link was not proven in humans." 

"as yet there is no conclusive evidence."

No, and as David Spiegelhalter points out today, it's not for want of trying either; a massive report by the European Food Standards Agency found nothing worrisome in 16 studies and 36 publications they analysed. Spiegelhalter also went further and questioned the wisdom of the FSA publishing such advice in the first place.

Reactions to Go for Gold may range from the extremes of encouraging obsessive concern in the worried-well, to irate editorials on yet another intrusion from the ‘nanny state’. More worrying, people may just consider this yet another scare story from scientists, and lead them to dismiss truly important warnings [...] the FSA provide no estimate of the current harm caused by acrylamide, nor the benefit from any reduction due to people following their advice. To be honest, I am not convinced it is appropriate to launch a public campaign on this basis.

That didn't matter to The Sun though, who slapped the tale of "killer" toast on their front page as an "OFFICIAL WARNING", no less.

So there we have the UK's most respected news broadcaster and the country's best-selling newspaper both parroting absolute codswallop which will be believed by millions (Mrs P tells me that some of her white collar office colleagues did today).

Those of you with long memories might remember a similarly hysterical Sun headline from August last year - also a result of irresponsible junk science - which was equally devoid of truth, an original of which has been kept by Professor Peter Hajek who waved it at a South Bank Uni audience last week as an example of "total nonsense".

Now, there are quite a few things to note about the increasing absurdity we are seeing from 'public health' studies and campaigns.

Firstly, it is very easy to dismiss The Sun's front page today as gutter journalism, except that the BBC also prominently covered it over all platforms despite the health risk being so negligible as to be unworthy of comment. The cult of self-perpetuating 'public health' is now so entrenched that supposedly respected news sources will vomit it out as pliantly as derided red top rags. Irresponsible clickbait in journalism is now endemic.

This moves us onto the second point. I find it quite ironic that the 'public health' industry is packed full of lefty ideologists who consider The Sun and the Daily Mail to be abhorrent shitsheets which will print any old garbage, yet they are in the front line for spreading ignorant junk science. This should, surely, flag up a message as to how corrupt and shabby the output of tax-sponging 'public health' professionals really is.

Thirdly, we are living in an age where brows are being furrowed at the prevalence of "fake news" and how so many gullible individuals are susceptible to it. Well, when you have supposedly credible authorities such as the FSA producing contemptible and evidence-free arse-gravy reports of killer roasties, anything else is possible, isn't it?

Fourthly, while the media's attraction is the page views they will gather, it's quite clear that the FSA is guilty of confusing the public with the similarly selfish motivation of pursuing salaries. The NGO is state-funded, with a gov.uk web address, but on this evidence seems more concerned with being seen to be doing something than actually weighing up if the information will have a beneficial effect on public health and well-being.

Which leads us onto the final point, that if the FSA has time and resources to waste on such trivial crap, we need to see far more cuts to public sector spending. There has been no benefit gained for the public's health today, all that has happened is a bunch of overpaid rubber band-flickers have panicked many people and caused a large proportion of the public to make choices which make their lives just that little bit more miserable for no reason whatsoever.

More cuts required please Mr Chancellor, the public's health and enjoyment of life depends on them. 

"Only Just Getting Started"

If you are one of the honking seals who happily claps along with anti-smoker sentiment - safe in the knowledge that the insatiable grant-ravenous 'public health' industry will never come after something you enjoy - you're either a monk, or you should never play Chess because you're so dim you'd probably fail to predict that your opponent might move a pawn first.

Y'see, as Snowdon wrote yesterday, it's pretty clear now that vile tobacco controllers have kicked open the gates of the citadel which used to safeguard liberty and free choice and, in doing so, have shown other repellent, self-centred, anti-social vandals how to smash everything else up as well. Of course, parasitical tax-gobbling charlatans wise tobacco control sages such as Debs Arnott and Simple Simon have denied this was ever going to happen but, in global Nanny State HQ Australia, they're all of a frenzy at the possibility of dictating everything you eat and drink from cradle to grave by way of the clunking fist of ignorant government.

Via the Daily Telegraph Oz:

Does junk food need the tobacco treatment?

Just let that sink in for a moment. Food. That you choose to eat.

OK? Right, let's continue.

OBESITY is the leading cause of poor health in this country yet little is being done to make junk food less appealing, affordable or accessible. 

Should we take a leaf from the anti-tobacco lobby?

So what do they mean by a leaf? Well, actually it is more like the whole rotten fucking tree!

[I]nstead of brightly coloured wrappers with mouth-wateringly tantalising descriptions, you faced shelf after shelf of sugary sweets wrapped in plain packaging with images of obese bodies emblazoned on the front. And imagine if adding a bottle of soft drink to your grocery haul meant asking an employee to get your chosen fizz from a locked cabinet behind a counter. Then, you find the bottle comes stamped with a picture of rotting teeth. Still thirsty?

In case you can't imagine that, the article kindly offers you a graphic that the joyless bastards in 'public health' will orgasm over.

Alarmist nonsense, I hear you say? Well not really, no.

“Overweight and obesity is the leading cause of disease and poor health in Australia,” Dr Gary Sacks, senior research fellow at the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention, says. “It’s fair to compare junk food and tobacco and we can learn a lot from what’s been done with cigarettes.”

So much for "the domino theory is patently false", eh Debs? Isn't it about time you publicly declared you were orders of magnitude wrong on that?

But should that include treating junk food in the way we now treat tobacco products? That is: hike prices, make plain packaging mandatory and slap packets with gory images of what obesity looks like and does. It depends on who you ask.

It does indeed. You see, you'll have some 'public health' extremists who won't yet admit that is the eventual goal, and others who feel adequately emboldened already to go 'all in'.

One of the most effective measures for reducing smoking rates in Australia was the introduction of plain packaging and graphic health warnings to cigarette packets. 

Following a similar tack with junk food packaging would cause a significant drop in obesity rates, say some experts. 

“Plain packaging would definitely have an effect,” Ferrie says. “We don’t give much thought to just how much money, research and thinking goes into making those packs as appealing as possible. Chips are my favourite example. You’ll find limes, chillies and perfectly roasted chickens on the label but inside is just salt, flavouring and potato starch. As for warning images, I’m sure companies would do everything they could not to end up in the category that required an amputated leg on their packet, which could be a good thing.”

Yep, these people are actually considering policies which would adorn a packet of crisps with pictures of an amputated leg. Or maybe a takeaway bag with a graphic health warning to punish you for your cheek in buying a Big Mac.

We used to throw people with insane views like this in the loony bin, but now they're apparently called 'experts'.

“From a public health perspective, I would love all these measures to be introduced overnight but we need to stagger our approach,” [Professor Stephen Colagiuri, director of The Boden Institute in Sydney] says. 

“It’s important to remember that it’s taken 50 years to get where we are with tobacco and we’re really only just getting started with obesity.”

"Only just getting started".

Some of us have been warning of this for quite a while, but how silly we all were saying that plain packaging would lead to such barking craziness, eh? Oh yeah, and in case you think this can only happen in Australia, think again.

I've always said that the smoking ban - the true root of this societal cancer - was the most disgusting piece of legislation this country has ever seen; it has directly facilitated this kind of lunacy. Once you pander to the most intolerant and snobbish in a community and make them important, the destruction of calm enjoyment of life on a scale never before witnessed is assured. Never has it been more encouraged to be a revolting no-mark obsessed with poking one's nose into the lives of others; pandered to by an elite, highly-paid bunch of professional extremists who, in an ideal world, should be slapped in a straitjacket and carted off to the funny farm. Or jailed, either is good.

A pox on all of them. Having said that, chalk one up for we jewel robbers on the side of the angels here, because we have been proved right. Yet again.