Scare stories about products that will kill you are not uncommon. Alcohol, cigarettes, soda and junk food are never out of the headlines for some discovery or other about just how bad they are for you.
But you can now, apparently, add more offenders to that list: the humble roast potato, and its associate, the slice of toast.
January is always the month the whole world seems to go health crazy. It’s an understandable part of the post-Christmas comedown, where you make (and promptly break) resolutions to give up drink, quit smoking, exercise more.
That’s all fine, of course – it’s your personal choice. What not fine is that this is also the time of year in which governments ramp up their interference in the lives, and lifestyles, of their citizens. Particularly if you’re poor.
It’s never enough for people to make changes themselves – for health lobbyists and government busybodies, your diet suddenly becomes their business. The papers fill with scare stories about the dangers of everything from vaping to fad diets, under the pretext of safeguarding your health.
This week, perhaps the most bizarre story has emerged from the UK, where the Food Standards Agency (FSA) announced that “browned” and crispy foods like roast potatoes and toast can – maybe – give you cancer.
But this time the Government warning was based on seriously dodgy research. Acrylamide, the alleged cancer chemical, is indeed present in burnt toast. But the “cancer risk” is based on studies of mice, given enormous doses, with no concrete link to human disease, according to the American Cancer Society.
This kind of scaremongering is wicked in that it is based only very loosely on fact.
It is also typical that the FSA has targeted foods that are cheap, and make up the staple part of diet for literally millions of the worlds’ poorest people. Even if potatoes and bread did give you cancer, what are the alternatives?
Earlier this month, there were fears that legislators in several US states were trying to ban food stamps given to the poor being used to buy “junk food”.
Meanwhile public health obsessives in New York City tried to ban super-size sodas for fear people too stupid to know better were drinking themselves obese.
Like the potato-cancer story, it’s an example of government interfering to force people to be healthier – with a disproportionate focus on the poor.
What right does the state have to tell people what they can and cannot eat?
Especially when it is the poorest whose food sources are the most routinely savaged by health bodies and government agencies for being unhealthy?
It’s not a level playing field – there are no major campaigns publicising the harmful effects of luxury foods on the body. We’re unlikely to see studies into whether quinoa, avocado or caviar give you heart disease any time soon though.
Of course, what government really wants with this level of intrusion into people’s lives is more control.
Part two of yesterday’s anti-potato campaign were plans to sanction businesses who overcook food.
This is an unwelcome and patronising intrusion into the lives of private citizens, and should not be tolerated. If government busybodies insist on raising your blood pressure by dictating your diet, cancer’s the least of your worries.
Featured image via Flickr/Ben J Gibbs