Monday 27 July 2009

Dieticians, IMHO...


...belong in the eighth circle of Dante's Inferno. Along with 'Health & Safety' operatives, and those people who work in so-called 'security' at the airport. It's the circle reserved for The Fraudulent. Which probably requires little further explanation...but in essence, these are all groups of people who pretend a function which is effectively specious.


I'm not alone in my thinking, either. If you look online for references to Dr Jean Munro, for example - the dietician who supplied all 'the science' in Raymond Blanc's 'Blanc Vite' - the breadth of negative criticism is quite breathtaking. And I heard another one recently, who's comments displayed a level of witlessness which was really quite depressing, given that she too gloried in the title of 'Doctor'. This one was called Judith Bryans; she's on the payroll of The Dairy Council, and was speaking on Radio 4 about the quality of British cream. Cheerily, she wittered that the average weekly consumption of cream within the UK is less than 30 ml per head of population. Quite apart from anything else, given that 30 ml represents less than two tablespoonsful, this is a pretty depressing image. But in practice, and more importantly, it's an entirely silly figure to quote - completely irrelevant and worthless. It has the same validity as though one were to divide the total consumption of cigarettes in the UK by the UK population, which, since so many people these days are non-smokers, would almost certainly produce a wonderfully healthy average. Which of course is a total nonsense for those people who are on sixty a day, with incipient lung cancer.


And in case anybody might think from that last riff that I'm anti-cream, then nothing could be further from the truth. British cream is wonderful stuff. Incomparable. Fantastic. Nowhere else in the World have I found cream to compare...not in the States, nor in France, and certainly not in Italy. In this household - please note, Dr Judith Bryans - average weekly consumption per head is around a litre (mousses, sauces, posset, parfaits...) and no sign of any ill effects whatsoever. No, what I'm railing against is the sheer lack of intelligence in play in the sort of comments which are produced by these people, and to which an entirely spurious validity is given by the fact that they have 'Doctor' in front of their name. To be taken with such an enormous pinch of salt that they are rendered in practice and on any level whatsoever unpalatable!


Tonight's Dinner:

Ratatouille with Poached Egg.

Grilled Rump Steak, with Anchovy Sauce; Green Beans.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh well said! How I hate those people, supposedly educated but without an ounce of common sense! Cream is an entirely natural product that, along with butter should be celebrated.

Sandra said...

Well said, Pomiane.