Caveat Eater

‘UNACCOUNTABLY, we forgot to congratulate Vanessa Feltz last week on being crowned Radio News Journalist Of The Year at the Ethnic Multicultural Media Awards (the EMMAs).

Contains 90% fat

Vanessa has long been a favourite of us here at Anorak Towers – in fact, a full-size poster of Nessie covers a multitude of sins on the fetid walls of our editorial dungeon.

And so we don’t want to hear any jokes about her having the perfect face, or physique, for radio.

Nessie is a woman of many talents and twice a week Star readers are all the better for the pearls of wisdom that she casts before her fellow swine.

For instance, this morning Vanessa has plenty to say on the subjects of diets – something you would imagine she was uniquely qualified to discuss.

(Who better to talk about hospice care for the elderly than Harold Shipman? Who better to warn against the dangers of tanning than Robert Kilroy Silk?)

“If we are what we eat,” she says, “we’re in very serious trouble.”

True – Vanessa herself, for instance, would at this moment be two fried eggs, five rashers of bacon, three sausages, four rounds of toast, a tin of baked beans…

“Yank virtually any food out of your larder,” she continues, “bother to have a butcher’s at the label and you’ll be shocked, angry and plain panic-stricken.”

No, not because your last tin of deep fried Mars bars is past its expiry date – but because some of the labels on the tins can be misleading.

Shocked? Angry? Panic-stricken? Like us, you’re probably a combination of all three.

It appears that those nasty food manufacturers prefer to advertise their products as “90% Fat Free” rather than “10% Fat” and “Reduced Fat” rather than “Added Sugar”.

What’s more – there is ice cream on sale which contains no dairy products whatsoever, barbecue flavour crisps which may never have seen a barbecue and egg plants that have never been near a chicken’s backside.

“Time was,” Nessie concludes, “label-reading was strictly for anoraks. Now, it’s only pillocks who claim to be too busy to make the effort.”

Or those who are too fat to grab the tin of the shelf in the first place…’

Posted: 3rd, June 2004 | In: Tabloids Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink