Last week it was meat.
In the battle for hearts and minds, conflicting reports appeared in the space of a couple of days: first busting the “myths” about red meat increasing the risk of cancer, then suggesting those myths were all too real.
It’s an emotive subject. Witness the rather subversive press release that reached Grocer Towers yesterday claiming one in 10 vegetarians are “secret meat eaters”. Presumably they only pretend to be veggie for the instant popularity and prestige you get from being ordering nut roast in a restaurant.
Today it’s the organic sector in the spotlight, after fruit and veg grown using conventional methods did better in a taste test for Which? (although the magazine admitted the sample size was too small to be authoritative). Nutritionists lined up to attack the health claims sometimes fuzzily put forward by producers in the beleaguered sector.
Elsewhere, the Mail announced that “pesticides on fruit and veg are wrecking men’s fertility” – then on the very same page had a story claiming organic produce is “not as good for your health”. So organic produce is less healthy than conventional stuff, but pesticides give you testicular cancer. Confused yet?
Add to this the return of the cloning debate, which rears its head from time to time like an undead Frankensheep, boring and terrifying in equal measure.
Food minister Jim Paice yesterday said he had no problem with meat from the offspring of cloned animals appearing on shop shelves, while a furious Soil Association responded that it was “unacceptable” for the government to have “come to this conclusion without adequate evidence”.
Needless to say, you’d never catch fans of organic making unsupported claims in a month of Sundays.
Mind you, The Sun takes the biscuit for double standards. It headlined yesterday’s welcome news about Cornish pasties getting PGI status under the banner “EU bans Cornish pasties”. Sometimes you just despair.
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