Food for thought

Ruth Mansfield asks whether the increase in food scares is just media scaremongering or should we start to worry?

By Ruth Mansfield

*It seems that in every news programme we watch, paper we read or supermarket aisle we walk down, there is always some new finding on what is best for us in our diet. *

Whether it is to eat porridge for breakfast, cut out carbohydrates after 6pm or to choose Tesco healthy living over normal brand, constant media attention to which foods are best for us and which are just plain evil have turned us into a diet and health conscious society.

This hasn’t been helped much either by the increasing number of food scares which we seem to be made more aware of these days. From salmonella to BSE and, more recently, avian flu, cases keep appearing to put us off consuming our favourite foods. But are they really worth worrying over or do we worry too much? Well, while you tuck into your ready-made lasagne with extra cheese sauce, let me give you an insight into the history of food scares.

Early food scares were usually linked to the use of pesticides and weed killers such as the cranberry scare of 1959, when it was discovered that aminotriazole, a weed killer used on cranberry crops in America, could produce cancer of the thyroid. This led to cranberry sales being banned in several states, just two weeks before Thanksgiving.

Moving into the 1980s and the then junior health minister Edwina Currie resigned after revealing that most of the UK’s eggs were contaminated with salmonella. This led to four million hens being slaughtered, 400 million eggs being destroyed and, unsurprisingly, demand for eggs slumping.

Coming into more recent times and mad cow disease scared the nation in 1995 as the increasing feed of meat by-products to cattle led to more than 100,000 cattle being diagnosed with Bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE). This was found to be linked to the deadly human disease Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and in 1996 all beef exports to Europe were banned. This was lifted in 1999.

However, while food scares have been occurring over the past few decades it appears to be in more recent times that the number of warnings we receive over our food has increased. 2005 bought us the Sudan 1 dye, E-coli and avian flu scares.

The Sudan 1 dye, which was found to encourage the development of tumours when tested on rats, led to a mass recall, last February of food products contaminated with the substance. This was despite the Food Standards Agency stating the risk was “very low”.

E. coli has always been a problem affecting thousands of people every year. However, the recent death of a five year-old boy in South Wales from the disease, and the consequent closure of two schools, again bought media interest to the problem. E.coli, found in foods such as red meat and dairy products, has been linked to 42 schools across South Wales and led to pupils being tested in order to remove all traces of the disease.

The end of the year saw the emergence of avian flu and poultry imports from Turkey, Romania and the Greek island of Chios being banned. Although Tim Bennett, the National Farmers’ Union President stressed the case is ‘not a food safety issue,’ the media and government warnings have still created public concern about the disease.

These cases are just a few major examples of the many scares which we have been exposed to over the last few decades. It appears that, as time has moved on, society has changed to become much more conscious of the possible dangers in our food. This could be down to many factors such as the increase in the number of ready-cooked meals being consumed which are more likely to cause food poisoning than fresh products.

Another simple reason for the increase in food scares though could be due to the media and its increasing reporting on the subject. The media is highly influential, and by constantly raising awareness on the possible food scares, the public naturally becomes increasingly concerned.

So how has this affected Britain? Despite all the government publicity and media coverage, the Food Standards Agency still draws the conclusion that around 5 million people in the UK have some case of food poisoning each year. Yet Britons still do not seem to be overly worried on the possible dangers in the foods they eat.

A survey by the Food Standards Agency indicated that people felt that many of the references to food scares were “exaggerated …and scare mongering,” as it led to worries over illnesses when extremely large amounts of the food would have to be consumed for a person to be affected. The Food Scares and Food Safety Regulation Consumer Research Unit did, however, show one worry in that people felt that with any food scare, there was little that could be done until after the disease had affected a person. They therefore felt that more checks should be made on more foods.

Overall however, Adrian Pickett, Head of Marketing at Geest, a food export company, sums up the feelings on the increasing food dangers, when he describes Britain as suffering from a ‘food scare fatigue’.

“Brits don’t like to be constantly told what they can and can’t eat,” he said, and a Geest poll showing that more than one in four Brits stick to their favourite foods despite the latest scares proves this.

It seems that while Britain is more aware of food and its contents today than ever before, this hasn’t put everyone off their food.

Media coverage – the likes of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and the film Super Size Me – may have put some people off consuming turkey twizzlers and Big Macs, but even as food scares start to hit fresh products, it seems that it’s going to take more than a few government warnings or poster campaigns to make Britain rethink its current diet.