Marketing at its brightest – a food and drink special

A few weeks ago, my grocery delivery included in it a bottle of still water: a sample of a new(ish) product to try to induce me to buy more.

In this case, it was 850ml of ‘Glacéau Smart Water’, which proclaims itself to be: “vapour distilled water with added electrolytes”. “Vapour distilled” should be hyphenated, as it’s a compound adjective, but I’ll stop the grammar pedantry there (possibly).

It claims that it’s “smart because it’s made that way”. And just how is it “made?” you might ask. I mean, it’s Adam’s ale, for goodness sake.

Well, there’s no need to fret for long, as the bottle has a lengthy explanation.

“inspired by clouds

“clean, crisp taste [the absence of capital letters is their idea, not mine]

“sometimes the answer is right under your nose, and other times it’s floating above your head... in our case, it was the humble cloud that got us thinking.

“inspired by the water cycle, we vapour distil our spring water and then add electrolytes to deliver a distinctive, clean, crisp taste.

“smart because it’s made that way.”

The ingredients list – yes, this is a bottle of water, but there are ingredients – reads as follows: “spring water, electrolytes, calcium chloride, magnesium chloride, potassium bicarbonate.”

It’s “Made in GB” and “bottled in Northumberland” – in spite of that “Glacéau” bit trying to give it a spot of Frenchified sophistication.

And reading down through the small print, “Glacéau smartwater is a trademark of Energy Brands Inc”. If you want to get in touch with them, you can write to “Coca-Cola Enterprises Ltd, Uxbridge UB8 1EZ”.

So, how does it taste? Okay: it’s no better or worse than any other bottled water. And no better than the water that is ‘made’ by the filter jug I keep in the fridge.

At 80p for 850ml from the supermarket in question (or 56.8p if you buy a crate of 12 600ml bottles), that doesn’t sound too bad, until you realise that Volvic still mineral water is 60p for 1.5 litres, Evian can be had for 84p for 2 litres and Highland Spring for 33.3p a litre; Buxton Spring Water is available at 60p for a 1.5 litre bottle, Brecon Carreg at 30.6p per litre and the company’s basic brand for as little as 18.8p a litre.

‘Smart water my arse,’ as Jim Royle might put it: ‘smart’ only for global sugar merchants Coca-Cola, who will be laughing all the way to the bank when the gullible buy this new piece of hip marketing – because that’s what they’re buying.

This is water for people who are ‘smart’ enough to recognise the word ‘electrolytes’ from drinks marketed for those doing sport, and who will assume that they’re essential for health and, well, they probably need to ingest some more. They might be put off by buying something from Coca-Cola, which perhaps explains why that global icon doesn’t make more of its name on the bottle.

It’s the same way that much else is marketed these days – not least if it’s to do with health. Some of the claims made for ‘detox’ products are, frankly, every bit as laughable as the description of this ‘smart’ water, but it doesn’t make supposedly-intelligent individuals hand over their hard earned in search of some sort of health nirvana.

There are plenty of products out there that are marketed at people who are trying to be healthy, which prey on that desire and an element of ignorance about health, together with the results of our general lack of a food culture.

Watching TV over the weekend, I was reminded of an advert that had previously earned my attention.

It’s for Bertolli spread.

“Farmers tried many ways to combine olive oil with rich, creamy butter, until they discovered new Bertolli with butter: a delicious blend with butter and olive oil, so tasty they fell in love with it,” claims an Italian-accented voice, over pictures of a happy, rustic Italian couple enjoying bread heaped with the spread in question, after he patently fails to get his cow to understand what an olive is.

“New Bertolli with butter: a delicious blend with butter and olive oil.”

I have previously asked Bertolli brand owner Unilever, via Twitter, for evidence of the claim that at least two farmers (since the plural is used) had tried to blend olive oil and butter before Unilever managed it, but I have never had any response.

But then, why would anyone try that?

The ordinary olive oil I buy (the one I use for cooking) is Spanish, with the following ingredient list: “refined olive oil, virgin olive oil”.

My butter has one ingredient: “butter”.

Ordinary Bertolli spread has the following ingredients: “Vegetable Oils in varying proportions (38%) (Rapeseed, Palm, Sunflower), Water, Olive Oil (21%), Sweet Whey Powder (Milk), Buttermilk, Salt (1.1%), Emulsifier (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids), Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Thickener (Sodium Alginate), Citric Acid, Natural Flavouring, Vitamins A and D, Colour (Carotenes)”.

Bertolli Light is made up thus: “Water, Vegetable Oils in varying proportions (22%) (Rapeseed, Palm, Sunflower), Olive Oil (16%), Modified Corn Starch, Salt, Buttermilk, Emulsifiers (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, Sunflower Lecithin), Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Citric Acid, Natural Flavouring, Vitamins A and D, Colour (Carotenes)”.

Is it any wonder those stupid Italian farmers couldn’t come up with the way to combine butter and olive oil? They forgot to think of the modified corn starch or the sodium alginate. Doh!

But hands up – why would anyone want to spread that on their toast and why would anyone think it healthier than olive oil or butter?

Unilever, of course, has come up with such a product (along with its Flora range) in order to profit from the health advice that fat is bad for you – advice that is increasingly being shown to have been bad itself.

But while that’s one thing – and it’s the way in which big food gets away with marketing yogurt stuffed with sugar, by labeling it ‘low fat’, which is viewed as a synonym for ‘healthy’ – it’s another to wonder how companies are allowed to come up with such fantastical claims as this about farmers trying to blend olive oil and butter.

The marketing for that ‘smart’ water is actually quite clever: it makes no claims about any particular health benefits, including for consumption of its added electrolytes; it doesn’t say that it’s the best taste around or anything similar.

It relies entirely on a certain gullibility.

But then, Coca-Cola has been bitten before, when it emerged after the 2004 launch of its “pure” Dasani bottled water, that what punters were getting for their money was simply tap water that had been filtered three times, using “reverse osmosis”, and with ozone injected to keep it sterile.

Bertolli, on the other hand, is marketed partly via a fantastical claim for which no evidence is given, and on the back of an increasingly discredited belief that the saturated fat of butter is inherently unhealthy.

Its claims of contributing to “a healthy lifestyle” and its entire linking to a simpler, Mediterranean lifestyle, are what give it its power.

So there you have it: two sorts of marketing: two sorts of twaddle.

A little pot of, err, sugar

Yesterday afternoon, my hopes were raised of a pleasant mouthful or two of free fodder by a notice in the office tea room saying that there were yogurts in the fridge and anyone could take one.

When I looked, they were gooseberry flavoured – hmmm, gooseberry.

But, my Homer Simpson moment over, I decided – being me – to risk looking a gift horse in the mouth and check the ingredients.

Sure enough, these “low fat” yogurts had a lengthy ingredient list – lengthy for a yogurt with fruit, anyway.

So, what does a Tesco low fat gooseberry yogurt contain?

The following is exactly as listed:

Yogurt (milk) 75%, Gooseberry 8%, Sugar, Glucose-fructose syrup, Gooseberry juice from concentrate (4%) modified maize starch, flavouring, Thickener (pectin), Nettle concentrate, Spinach concentrate, Curcuma concentrate

The last one is related to the spice turmeric.

In other words, as well as the natural sugars occurring in milk and the fruit, it had added sugar, added glucose-fructose syrup and added fruit juice – which, in concentrating fruit, increases the sugar content.

Y’know, just in case you want to train your sweet tooth.

Doubtless the spinach is there for colour, as may well be the case for the nettle too. Thickener is presumably required because the yogurt is left so insipidly thin after the fat is stripped out.

Heaven alone know why the addition of an extra, and somewhat mysterious, “flavouring” is required – doesn’t the gooseberry taste of anything? Or the fruit juice? And that’s without mentioning the nettle and spinach which presumably make some contribution to the overall taste.

And there’s enough sugar in a single, small pot to keep Willy Wonka happy. Of a 125g portion, 17.4% sugars, which is apparently 19% of your daily recommended allowance. In a tiny pot.

On the other hand, that same small pot has just 2.4g of fat – which is 3% of your RDA.

So remind me – this, by virtue of being “low fat”, is a healthy product, right?

Yogurt – healthy.

Fruit – healthy.

Low fat – healthy.

It’s that easy, although this is a perfect illustration of why people are confused.

And it should go without saying that Tesco is hardly the only company marketing in this way – it's a widespread issue.

On the other hand: take some fruit – rhubarb’s in season at this time of year – and cook it down gently with a little sugar and a small amount of water.

Decant into a sterilised container and allow to cool. Pop it in the fridge.

Take some plain, organic, full-fat yogurt with no additives.

Spoon some into a bowl. Add some of your fruit compote.

Consume with pleasure.

Oh, and I declined the offer.

Pill-pop nation

They're not sweeties

One of the big news stories last week featured reports of a study by Imperial College, London, showing that statins have almost no side-effects.

It came hot on the heels of a report from NICE – the National Institute for Health and Excellence, which among other things, provides guidelines on medical treatments in the UK – announcing that, in order to reduce death from heart disease further, the threshold for prescribing statins should be lowered from a 20% risk over 10 years to a 10% risk over the same time.

Now: a disclaimer. I am not now nor ever have been a scientist or medical expert. So what follows are merely the personal conclusions of someone who might be judged to fall within the latest category that NICE is talking of.

And after the disclaimer, a statement.

I have never had a cholesterol test (I haven’t been near a doctor in years) and, on the basis of what I have read, I do not believe that cholesterol is the big problem or that high cholesterol is the cause of the UK’s rates of heart disease – and I would not willingly take statins myself.

Cholesterol is a vital building block in the body. Evidence suggests it is actually dangerous to drive it down – especially after the age of 50.

Mind most doctors have big doubts about the latest NICE announcements. According to other research by Pulse, the GPs’ magazine, of 511 GPs polled on a variety of issues, 57% opposed the NICE proposal, and 55% would not take a statin or prescribe one for a family member based on the new NICE-proposed lower threshold.

What we seem to be seeing is what Dr Phil Hammond – GP and comedian (and do see him if you get the chance: he’s very good) – has described as the “medicalisation” of society.

Statins have made vast profits for Big Pharma over the years – due to patents and stuff running out, those have reduced of late, so the NICE advice must be, err, nice for these same corporates.

However, it’s worth noting that eight out of the 12 members of the NICE panel that recommended the change have declared ties to the manufacturers, including Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

On only a very slightly different note, a quick glance at thelist of the NHS website’s partners-in-public-health list – (hat tip to Zoë Harcombe o Zoë Harcombe) – gives an indicator of just how much the country’s health has become utterly tied in with corporate interests and, therefore, with the search for profits.

As I explained three years ago, the current government decided to involve more Big Food representatives in making public health policy – and one of the earliest examples of this sawgovernment health ‘advice’ effectively providing free advertising for branded, processed foods.

It’s not difficult to begin to see where problems lie – or where they can be seen or suspected.

Last week’s research from Imperial College was a meta-analysis: in other words, a meticulous survey of previous surveys – in this case, 29 different studies.

But while the meta-analysis itself had no corporate backers, who knows who backed all those other studies?

Not only do we know that research is often produced that has been financially supported by the industry, but it’s also known that Big Pharma is most secretive with trial data – it doesn’t like sharing it with anyone, even in the medical profession – and there are plenty of people around who will assert that the same companies skew trials to start with by using ‘pre-trial trials’ to weed out anyone who obviously shows signs of side effects.

So the ordinary GP has little chance themselves of knowing all the details of any drug – they have to rely on the companies who sell them, just as we have to rely on our doctors.

The thing with statins, though, is that there is no substantial evidence for the big claim that levels of cholesterol cause heart disease.

That myth came into being because of the American researcher, Ancel Keyes.

After WWII, heart disease among men in the US reached epidemic proportions.

Keyes thought he knew why – that a diet rich in saturated fat caused high cholesterol caused heart disease – and he set out to prove it.

After a small study in the US, using men only, he looked further abroad and eventually produced what has become known as the Seven Countries Study, which bore out his great theory.

The trouble is, Keyes didn’t study seven countries. He studied 22 – and ditched most of the findings because they did not tally with what he wanted to find.

This is not a natural product

It ignores the French ‘Paradox’ – only a paradox if you believe Keyes – that sees the French eat more dairy produce than anyone else on Earth, never mind all that foie gras and duck confit, and yet still have far lower rates of heart disease than exist in the UK or US where the low-fat mantra has been so willingly churned out and gobbled up.

Yet Keyes’s work became the foundation for the health and diet advice of the last 40 years: cut out fat and fill up with starchy carbs.

It’s almost certainly been a contributory factor in the rise of obesity, but on a positive note, it’s provided Big Food with wonderful opportunities for creating and marketing as healthy, artificial fats and fat substitutes.

We now have a position where the British Heart Foundation has links not just with the NHS – see that previous link – but also directly with Unilever, which produced Flora.

And Flora is now able to be marketed as ‘heart healthy’ – watch out for the link between the foundation and the product in advertising. Unilever is also on that list of NHS ‘partners’.

In recent months, an increasingly desperate-sounding British Heart Foundation has taken to making statements on health stories that have the ring of a siege mentality about them.

When Sweden become the first country in the West to ditch the low fat diet advice last October, the foundation was sticking its fingers in its ears and claiming that low fat was still best.

With each new piece of research that is slowly rehabilitating natural saturated fats, it does the same.

The cynic might speculate on how, were it to do otherwise, that relationship with Unilever could become strained.

An increasing number of doctors are voicing concerns about medicalisation, just as increasing numbers of doctors are also stepping away from the diet mantras of the last four decades.

We’re starting to see the issue of sugar being raised much more, in terms of the serious damage that high consumption can do.

And it’s worth noting that, in the case of sugar, much of it is hidden.

I was in M&S a few weeks ago, looking for a yogurt for breakfast. I couldn’t find one that didn’t have sugar in it – not least the ones that are sold on the basis that they are ‘low fat’; healthy, in other words.

This IS a natural product – and it will not harm you

And then there’s high-fructose corn syrup that manufacturers have taken to shoving into all manner of processed foods to make them more palatable and to make the consumer buy them again and again.

Again, this is not obviously sweet foods we’re talking about. High-fructose corn syrup is used in breads, cereals, breakfast bars, yogurts again and soups.

Who thinks of sugar in soup or in bread? Cereals have been sold to the public for decades as a healthy breakfast, and breakfast bars come into the same category.

This is what hidden sugars means.

As an increasing number of people raise the issue of these hidden sugars, and as an increasing number of comparisons are made between the attitude of Big Food and that of Big Tobacco, the industry is fighting back.

Those links with the likes of the NHS and the British Heart Foundation should make us skeptical of any defences of what has become the status quo on health and diet advice.

Just as those links between NICE members and Big Pharma, and between Big Pharma and disease, should make us equally skeptical.

What is needed is far greater transparency in all these cases – and far better regulation, properly enforced.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with profits. But when the search for profits trumps people, then it’s a sign that something is very wrong.

And what is also needed is an honest and thorough approach to dealing with the problems caused by a national approach to food that includes using takeaways and ping food to the extent that the UK does, not taking time to eat properly, constant snacking, the demise of cooking skills, a prevailing attitude of food as fuel, vast amounts of media space given over to faddy diets, new homes built without proper kitchens etc etc – and not just a rather lame sense of correcting it all my medicalising the populace.

That won’t be as easy as sticking fingers in ears and endlessly intoning the low-fat mantra, irrespective of the body of evidence against it, but it would be a damned sight more effective than the equivalent of the three little pigs inviting the wolf to join them for dinner.

Further reading:

The Great Cholesterol Con by Dr Malcolm Kendrick

Although now dead the Cholesterolosaurus will march on by Dr Malcolm Kenderick

Bad Pharma by Dr Ben Goldacre

Bad Food Britain by Joanna Blythman

Worth following on Twitter:

@KailashChandOBE

@JoannaBlythman

@bengoldacre

@DrAseemMalhotra

@zoeharcombe

@drbriffa

The above-mentioned may not agree with all I have written here, but are all very much worth reading and following on the matter raised in this post.

Put some squeak in your bubble

Bubble & squeak balls, with sausages & mustard. Yummy

Bubble and squeak may not be a dish of great visual beauty, but by gum, it’s a treat for the taste buds.

And it should, by rights, be an absolute doddle to make.

After all, what could possibly be difficult about some leftover spuds, some leftover veg and a pan with some melted fat?

Well, that’s the stage at which mine gets problematic – the bit where, after heating the fat, you squish the squeak into the pan.

Okay – that’s not the problem: the problem is turning it over or out. It won’t. It simply collapses. I don’t know why – I have followed the recipe in my Two Fat Ladies cookbook to the letter, but it never turns out properly.

Now I have no idea whether this is a universal culinary enigma, but I have found a solution – and it’s every bit as tasty as any other.

But before we get to that, let’s discuss a related issue: sprouts.

What is it with the British? We eat loads of these delicate, gem-green cabbages – not least at Christmas – yet so many people detest them.

Is it a condition of national masochism? ‘Oh, I don’t like them but you have to have them at Christmas.’ Why – not least at that time of year – would you eat something that you don’t like?

That aside, they may get a bad rap for causing flatulence, but that doesn’t seem to have put huge swathes of the population off beans.

Perhaps it’s a generational thing, where early memories are of so many vegetables boiled to a grey pulp that lacked in texture or taste?

Indeed, it’s worth noting that peculiarly British obsession with cooking vegetables ‘al dente’ – or as it often means on these shores, barely bloody cooked at all.

On the latest series of Masterchef: The Professionals, Michel and Monica have already faced undercooked vegetables at least once – and presumably they have a clue what they’re on about.

But maybe it’s a reaction to that overcooked cabbage.

Personally, I’ve long loved sprouts, but in the last couple of years I’ve found a cooking method that seems to make such a radical difference that The Other Half enjoys them more now too.

So, thanks to Joël Robuchon – another French gastronomic giant who can be assumed to know what he’s on about – here’s a wonderful method.

Take your sprouts, trim the stalk and remove the outer leaves. You don’t need to make an incision at the top though; it makes no difference.

For four people, as an accompaniment, use 400g sprouts and put a litre of water on to boil with a teaspoon of course salt.

Pop them in a bowl of cold water with some malt vinegar – two tablespoons to the litre – and leave for two minutes.

Rinse and drain.

Once your water has reached a boil, pop them in and cook briskly for a minute.

Remove into a prepared bowl of iced water, leave for a minute and then drain.

Bring another litre of water to the boil with the same amount of salt and, when that’s just bubbling, pop in the sprouts.

Simmer for 20 minutes – but don’t let the water bubble vigorously this time: gently does it.

Fill another bowl with iced water and pop the cooked sprouts straight in that, drain and then lie out on paper towels or a clean cloth.

When you’re nearing serving your meal, melt around 15g of butter in a pan, add the sprouts, turn the heat to low, add two pinches of salt and one of pepper, and cook, turning gently, for five minutes.

Now you’re probably going to roll your eyes and say: ‘what a fuss’. But one of the advantages of this rather cheffy way of doing them is that you can prepare them well in advance and then just finish them off quickly – which is particularly perfect if you’re a sprouts-on-Christmas-Day kind of person and are juggling loads of thing in the kitchen for the year’s biggest meal.

It goes without saying that, on that occasion, you can also add some diced bacon or some chestnuts to the final cooking in order to ratchet up the festive taste.

But back to good old bubble and squeak, when all of this will already have been done and the vegetables are sitting rather mournfully in a dish feeling not simply left over, but forgotten (it’s worth making extra in the first place just so you have enough for such a ‘left-over’ dish).

Take your sprouts and your spuds and mash them together, with a little extra seasoning if needed.

Heat a generous amount of lard in a frying pan. Yes – lard. This is no time to think about anything as dreadful as marg or even oil, which wouldn’t give you those wonderful crispy bits. And butter can burn too easily. Lard it must be. Or dripping, obviously, and if you have a surfeit and feel posh, then you could probably get away with duck fat.

So heat whatever lovely fat you choose.

And in the meantime, roll your mashed mixture into balls – around the size of a large plum: make them as smooth and as compact as you can. If the mixture is a little dry, add some melted butter, and you may wish to add further seasoning – plenty of pepper anyway.

If you have time, pop them in the fridge for a few minutes to firm up a little.

Then roll them in plain flour and into the hot fat they go. Don’t roll them around too much or too quickly – you want those crispy bits, after all.

Okay, they’ll still leave a little behind in the pan, but nowhere near as much.

And if that doesn’t really make your bubble squeak, then nothing will.

Marketing at its brightest – the low-fat version

If you ever wanted a single reminder of why, with all its faults, the BBC is still a national treasure, it might well be adverts.

Since, like most other people, I do actually view things on commercial channels, I end up seeing adverts. And while some adverts may be amusing and others merely tedious, some are downright annoying or even nauseating.

Take Flora Cuisine, a relatively new product from Unilever, which is apparently perfect for “frying, sautéing & making sauces”, as well as baking and roasting and probably just about anything else.

It has “45% less saturated fat than olive oil”, proclaims the producer in advertising materials.

Well wow. Perhaps if saturated fat was actually a problem, that might be worth noting. But it isn’t.

And olive is actively good for you (like other natural fats). And, of course, it's actually natural.

It’s equally no coincidence that, on it’s own bragging brand page about Flora Cuisine, the manufacturer includes nutritional data – but not the details of what actually goes into the product.

The most is says is that: “Flora Cuisine is a healthy cooking liquid that’s made from a blend of linseed, rapeseed and sunflower oils.”

But that’s not all it contains, is it, Unilever? Let’s look what else is in that curvaceous plastic bottle, courtesy of ocado.com.

“Vegetable Oils (Sunflower Seed Oil, Rapeseed Oil, Linseed Oil), Water, Salt (0.9%), Emulsifiers (Soy Bean Lecithin, Polysorbate 60), Soy Protein, Stabilisers (Guar and Xanthan Gums), Colour (Beta-Carotene), Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Citric Acid, Flavourings, Vitamins (A, D).”

Now, for the sake of being at least a little bit scrupulous in approach, let’s examine the ingredients in a bottle of olive oil.

“Olive oil.”

But,  claims Unilever of Flora Cuisine, “it really is the healthier approach to everyday cooking." Well, Unilever, some would disagree.

It’s at this point that I’m going to ask your forgiveness in advance. Because here is a link to an article from yesterday’s Daily Mail – but it is very much worth a read.

It quotes a doctor – Dr Aseem Malhotra, the lead cardiologist of the National Obesity Forum, no less – on the small matter of saturated fat and health, and artificial fat substitutes.

Most of what he’s saying has been acknowledged by some people for some time, but it’s good to finally see the message finally drifting through into more mainstream media.

People like Dr Aseem Malhotra, together with Dr John Briffa – and many others – would be among those disagreeing with Unilever’s health claims.

According to Dr Malhotra, “the whole saturated fat argument has been ridiculously overhyped.”

He quotes a 2010 review of studies, which “revealed no consistent evidence linking saturated fat and cardiovascular disease.”

Further, he told the Mail: “Really strong data is increasingly showing that the saturated fat from natural dairy products may even be beneficial in reducing heart attacks.”

And he continued: “Other research, by Dr Dariush Mozaffarian from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, found that people with higher levels of the trans-palmitoleic fatty acid (found mainly in dairy products) in their blood were about 60% less likely to develop type 2 diabetes over the next 20 years than those with the lowest levels.”

‘Dairy produce’, you say, doctor? Is that the ‘French Paradox’ we can see coming into view?

Because according to the great saturated fat con, the French should have the highest rates of heart disease in the world, because they’re the biggest consumers of dairy produce in the world and, in the south west of the country, they also produce (and consume) such glories as duck confit and foie gras, which are seriously high-fat foods.

But no, they’re not dying from heart disease more than people in the UK. In fact, the figures are lower.

Anyway, if you think that Flora Cuisine – its very name attempting to imbue it with some class – is bad, then let’s have a look at another of Unilever’s current portfolio; Stork Baking Liquid.

Now, I have grumped about the former since I first saw it advertised. I hadn’t seen the latter until the weekend. Never mind grumping about it, I wondered if I was going to vomit.

Let’s have a look at the ingredients here (again taken from ocado.com).

“Seed Oils (Sunflower Oil, Rapeseed Oil), Water, Salt (0.9%), Emulsifiers (Soya Bean Lecithin, Polysorbate 60), Soy Protein, Stabilisers (Guar Gum, Xanthan Gum), Colour (Beta-Carotene), Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Citric Acid, Flavourings, Vitamins (A&D).”

So, did you spot it too?

The only difference between this product and the Flora Cuisine is in the type of oils used – seed oils as opposed to vegetable oils. Everything else is identical. Mind, the size of the bottle and even the shape of the bottles are too. So perhaps there’s little to be surprised about.

Not that the price is the same.

According to ocado.com, the Flora Cuisine is usually £1.98 for a 500ml bottle or 20p per 100ml. It’s currently on offer at 99p for a bottle.

That compares with £1.59 for a 500ml bottle of the Stork Baking Liquid (32p per 100ml).

So when not being sold under a special offer, the Flora Cuisine will be the more expensive of the two products – now why would that be?

Is that because it’s being marketed as a more 'sophisticated' product?

After all, the marketing is based on health, uses a word like ‘cuisine’ and, in making the claims about saturated fat the way that it does, links itself to olive oil and presumably is intended to appeal to those who would at least consider using olive oil.

Further, via the Flora brand website, we can see that “Michelin starred chef Jean Christophe Novelli has created some tasty recipes for you to try.”

Actually, when you click a link or two, it’s clear they’re not actually his creations, but simply ones that he’s picked that were sent in by members of the public and are now in a cookbook.

The marketing approach to the Stork Baking Liquid is different. On the Stork website, there’s a sense of the retro; much more of home baking – all of which ties in neatly with the current trend for at least claiming that ‘baking is back’, plus retro design.

But since we’re being very even-handed about this, let’s check the ingredients in the best possible fat for baking – butter.

“Butter”.

Come on now: hands up who really wants to eat a cake that’s been baked using a liquid fat?

One simply finds oneself wondering whether, like that icon of artificial US fats, Crisco, these two also double as an effective lubricant for anal sex.

The noble porker: a tale of modern Britain

It could be said that the noble pig is a perfect snapshot for the state of British food as a whole.

Once upon a time, long ago, before enclosure took land away from ordinary people, before industrialisation drove millions out of the countryside and into the urban grime to find work, many homes and smallholdings would have had a pig.

It would have been kept through the year, grazing naturally, before being slaughtered as autumn came on and the nights pulled in.

Butchered, it would have been salted and preserved in many ways, nose to tail, offering food for the winter ahead.

If a more personal connection with pigs died along with the connection most of us have to the land, farming continued.

Like so many parts of our food culture, the post-war era saw an increase in factory farming and, with it, a reduction in the variety of pigs that were reared in the UK.

Many breeds died out, casualties of the growing fear – abject in so many ways – of real, natural fats.

Stand at even a proper butcher’s counter today and you may well hear people wanting lean pork.

We seem to have lost the understanding not only that natural fat is a perfectly good and healthy part of a diet – but also that it is essential for flavour.

With pork too, there’s the added importance of fat providing moisture for a meat that can easily become very dry.

But on an English autumn Sunday, what could be better to consider eating than some roast pork?

Precisely because of the ease with which you can let pork get overly dry, it’s not a meat I cook often. Which in turn, also means that I don’t get much practice.

But on Broadway Market recently, although I’d been considering lamb, Matthew had a lovely rolled, boned piece of loin that caught my eye.

To be precise, he had three rolled, boned joints – only one of them, though, had oddles of fat running through it and not just on top.

So with the clear blue overhead and the trees just moving toward a riot of colour, I settled on that – and then began to wonder just what to cook with it.

What I opted for was to use perfect seasonal ingredients to compliment it.

So first, I made up some sage butter – easy enough: a little dried or finely-chopped fresh leaves, blended into some softened butter and then allowed to harden again.

Next, the oven was set to 220˚C (fan).

I took the joint and with a bit of careful knife waggling, made a few gaps for the butter.

The skin (which had already been scored) was salted and then it went into the roasting dish with just a little fat (lard, of course) to start us off.

It then got 20 minutes, before the temperature was reduced to 170˚C, and is cooked for a further 30 minutes to the 500g. My joint was just over 1.1kg.

After that, you ratchet the temperature back up to 220˚C and give it a final 10 minutes, before taking it out and letting it rest for up to half an hour.

That allowed perfect timing to do a few roast potatoes (in lard, in another dish), to which I added a few (rinsed and drained) cannellini beans for the last few minutes. The beans cook magnificently in lard, taking on a wonderfully creamy quality.

I’d also taken two dessert apples, scored them around the middle, removed the top part of the core, filled the small cavity with more of the sage butter and then ‘lidded’ that with the top of the scoop-out core and stem.

They cooked with the potatoes, once those went into the oven after their par-boiling. And, of course, they need around 45-55 minutes.

The juices from the meat were mixed with plain flour, before some decent English cider was added (not the very best, but not Strongbow or Diamond White!).

The crackling was beautifully brittle, with an feather-light pillow of fat beneath it; the meat was tender, perfectly cooked through and delightfully moist.

Everything else worked well – and the gravy was the real deal. The whole combined for a perfect autumn feast.

Now that’s what you do with the noble porker.

A counterintuitive way to eat

Ladies and gentlemen, today, I’d like to introduce you to David T Breaker.

Mr Breaker is a self-described “Conservative Home blogger. Liberty defender. Jeffersonian. Goldwater Reagan type. Winner Britain's Most Boring 2012.”

He doesn’t explain what “most boring” aspect of his existence this year has been accorded such an honour, but then it’s not easy to do such things within the limits of Twitter.

However, in the midst of an online exchange the other day about the NHS (he hates it, unsurprisingly) he objected to the idea of obesity as ‘a disease’, even though at least some medical practitioners describe it as exactly that.

“You can't catch obesity!” He tweeted, shrilly. “You cause it yourself. It’s self harm.”

Not, quite apart from the fact that you can’t “catch” cancer either, the rest of his comment is utter, simplistic nonsense.

Not, I hasten to add, that he is the only one to believe such rubbish.

Quite coincidentally, I have just finished reading Escape the Diet Trap by Dr John Briffa.

In it, the author (a British doctor) starts by detailing what, for many people, has been their experience of trying to lose weight.

In effect, it has meant going on a calorie-controlled diet, with exercise. Seeing some weight loss – then putting it back on. With interest.

The popular view – presumably believed by the likes of Breaker – is that the eventual outcome is doubtless down to a lack of self-discipline, laziness, greed and probably a few other similar failings.

It is quite something to read a doctor saying that this is not necessarily the case.

Briffa highlights the way that diet advice has centred on a mantra of combining calorie reduction with cutting fat and increasing complex carbs (bread, rice, pasta, potatoes etc).

Yet as he shows, this is counterproductive to weight loss.

What the book does is not lay out a ‘diet’ (“this is not a diet book’, says the subtitle), but explains in some detail, and with recourse to countless studies, what happens when we eat different foods and the effect of those foods on us.

So he explains, for instance, about insulin and what this and other hormones do.

He doesn’t limit this weight alone, but also tackles the major health concerns like diabetes and heart disease (which is something else you don’t “catch”).

In essence, Briffa explains that, over some years, he has seen considerable benefits for patients moving to a different way of eating.

He stresses low carbohydrate, high protein – for all sorts of scientific reasons, but also because it sates hunger better than starchy carbs – and higher fat than is usually recommended.

On the latter, he points out that the ‘link’ between a diet rich in saturated fat and heart disease is overstated.

Indeed, in a blog post only last week, he showed some recent statistics to illustrate that the ‘French Paradox’ is really no paradox at all.

For those who aren’t familiar with that idea, the French experience appears to contradict the conventional ‘wisdom’ that a diet high in saturated fat leads to ‘high cholesterol’ leads to heart disease.

Not only do the French consume more dairy produce than anyone else on Earth, they’re hardly reluctant to eat meat – and that’s before we mention the south west, where they create wonderful things such as foie gras and duck confit. And still don’t have the heart disease we and the US do.

Briffa does, incidentally use foie gras to reinforce one of his key arguments: to fatten the duck or goose liver, the bird is not fed fat – but grain.

He also notes the benefits of cutting bread and other starchy carbs from your diet in terms of feeling less bloated.

Now, as I mentioned here, for a few weeks now I’ve been experimenting with lowering carbs – and cutting out bread. It started, as it happened, before I’d read Briffa.

The strangest thing – because however much you read, the opposite has been drummed into our minds – is that I feel lighter.

If I were to attempt to analyse it more closely, I would also add that I frequently feel as though my belly is flatter. I’m not hungry, so I can only assume this is a lack of bloatedness.

Have I really been feeling bloated, on at least a minimal level, for some years?

So, if nothing else comes of this, I currently feel that bit ‘better’.

Back to Breaker: Briffa’s experience with his own patients illustrates just how wrong he is.

But he patently forgets or brushes over other issues that are contributors to the wider issue that the UK as a whole faces today.

Briffa has no time for processed food, and slates cereals as readily as bread.

But just look at cereals: portrayed as a generally healthy breakfast staple, even many of the so-called really healthy ones are laden with sugar and salt.

Advertising is then combined with that conventional wisdom to say that complex carbohydrates are so good you need more of them – and people eat them who are trying to lead a healthy life and eat healthily and maintain their desired weight.

The medical profession and government public health bodies do not have brilliant form in this area: as in the US, the advice has hugely been influenced by the lies of Ancel Keyes about saturated fat and heart disease (he hid more than half the results of his survey because they didn’t tally with what he wanted to ‘prove’).

But it perhaps says something that, for his stance, Briffa received what he described as “an abusive and invective-laden email from the head of communications of the trade organisation the Flour Advisory Bureau”.

Such bodies have a vested interest in people continuing to believe that starchy carbs are the foundation of a healthy diet.

Perhaps Breaker would like to consider that sort of abuse for a change.

And in the meantime, Briffa’s book is well worth a read.