Fat, that three letter word, is the topic of the moment.
According to the Fat Panel's website (www.thefatpanel.org.uk), "we are a nation obsessed by fat". This site is a mine of useful information about types of dietary fat and the diseases they cause.
Only a small proportion of the population are likely to have seen this. They are more likely to have seen the media reports of the Fat Panel's criticism of cookbooks by celebrity chefs whose recipes, in the panel's opinion, contained too much fat. The Daily Mail, in its usual hyperbolical way, went so far as to trumpet that the chefs were "exacerbating the nation's obesity crisis by encouraging people to eat fatty dishes"
For heaven's sake, how many people follow these recipes frequently enough to affect their diets? I would eat my fat-free hat if there were more than a few hundred, if that. I own two Nigella cookbooks but could count on the fingers of one hand the number of her recipes I've used. Why? There's too much fat in them and most take too long to prepare.
There was a quadruple page spread in the Independent (March 16) about the rise of fast food consumption. Did you know that a foot-long spicy Italian sub contains as much saturated fat as a Big Mac, nine chicken McNuggets, large fries and an apple pie combined?
My stomach heaves at the prospect. But a Big Mac without adornments contains 490 calories. That's okay, isn't it? It's not the retailer's fault if customers can't resist having fries too.
Confusingly, a new cookbook - Fat: An appreciation of a misunderstood ingredient with recipes, by Jennifer McLagan - moved the Independent to say: "Fat is back: rediscover the delights of lard, dripping and suet"
The book's first line declares: "I love fat". It celebrates the virtues of cream, butter, bone marrow and other fatty animal parts.
But it was particularly interesting to read that, according to this author, there were only two scientific reports linking saturated fat with heart disease. One, published in 1950, involved feeding rabbits a cholesterol-forming diet that furred-up their arteries. But McLagan points out that this may be because rabbits are vegetarian and possibly not adapted to digesting unfamiliar foods. Food for thought, maybe?
More recently, other eminent people and organisations have found no link between diet and heart disease. Some believe US dietary guidelines have worsened the obesity epidemic over there.
Oh dear! So where do we go from here?
Clare Cheney
director general
Provision Trade Federation
clare.cheney@provtrade.co.uk