By Keith Taylor, director
In the Daily Mail this week leading heart surgeon Shyam Kolvekar claimed that only banning butter could save young adults from heart attacks and clogged arteries.
Educating people about the risks of eating saturated fat is great, but the issue I have with this is the mixed messages. Consumers receive a constant barrage of advice telling us x will kill us or to cut down x or else, and now we have a call for an outright ban on butter. What is the ordinary consumer to make of it?
Scare tactics and the extremism of ‘the food police’ may create media headlines, but it is bound to lead to ‘scare overload’. In a media landscape saturated with health warnings about so much of our food, there is a risk that the message will simply get lost.
And if we really are calling for a ban on a certain foods, we have to differentiate between those ingredients/foods that are clearly bad for people (no matter what diet and lifestyle they have) from products that are bad for people only when eaten to excess and not as part of a balanced diet.
Calling for the total ban of butter is in danger of falling into the ‘cry wolf too often’ drawer and if we are too extreme, too many times how can the consumer prioritise the ‘real evils’ in their diet and act on them? Why then haven’t alcohol and junk food been banned? All of us involved in communicating with consumers on food and nutrition have to be more effective in providing perspective and in helping them make responsible dietary choices, however tempting the dramatic media headline might be.
Butter ban, Daily Mail, heart attack, Shyam Kolvekar