Over last week there was a great deal of diet chat over the airways in regard to red meat and the regular returning fear of cancer.

This excitement was triggered by a recommendation by SACN (the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition) who had decided in their ultimate wisdom that notwithstanding the fact that we have evolved to eat meat in large quantities, this food is probably bad for us.

Now before we go into the studies that the SACN relied upon to make their announcement you have to remember that this same committee also announced that low fat is good for us and that eggs are bad for us.  Both these pronouncements have been quietly forgotten and no doubt in due course the latest proclamation will also be lost from the website.

When taking advice from any individual you need to look at their track record of evaluating and providing advice and the track record for SACN is poor.  The damage that the low fat message has done to the UK population is beyond calculation and there can be no doubt that the messages released by SACN have directly contributed to the obesity epidemic.

So what are these studies that tell us red meat is going to cause cancer? Are they clinical trials or are they epidemiological and if epidemiological have they been supported with smaller clinical trials…Well you can guess the answer to this.

And what adds insult to injury is that the NHS website also then recommends that we get iron from our cereal in the morning. Well let’s all be clear that the iron found in cereal packets has been added by the big cereal companies. Why don’t we just hand out vitamins and minerals in capsules to the British population to avoid eating whole unprocessed food?

Recommendation by SACN in 2011

Eat cardboard and take tablets for your minerals and vitamins