Es Are Bad: Daily Mail Campaigns Against Food Additives
A CAMPAIGN in the campaigning Daily Mail.
“NOW BAN THE FOOD ADDITIVES,” thunders the paper’s placard.
Readers may like to take up their sewing scissors and trim around the letters. They should then embroider the message on a cushion cover, pelmet or tea-towel and join the chorus.
The Mail says demand for an “outright ban” on potentially harmful food additives “were growing last night”. Indeed, the Mail’s offices and night desk was abuzz with little else.
Only, the campaign may not be enough. It turns out that we need the European Union to facilitate a ban.
Gordon Brown wants to spare the little ‘uns from a life-time of Es but the decision rests with the shadowy European Food Safety Authority.
Gordon cannot take on the might of Brussels alone. He needs the Mail. “This newspaper is now launching a campaign to have the chemicals banned completely in Britain,” we learn.
Some additives have been linked to hyperactivity in children. Parents of hyperactive children may care to read the ingredients and not buy stuff containing E999.
But Gordon Brown wants a top down approach to the issue. He wants Britain’s own Food Standards Agency to act. As a source tells the Mail: “He [Brown] believes parents are entitled to expect that the food they buy their kids is safe and that’s the job of the FSA.”
It might also be the job of parents to read the labels, as we have noted.
But the Mail says this is not possible. It asks via a “COMMENT”: “How are parents supposed to check on what their children eat and drink at school when so many foods are awash with additives?” Er… Answer: “It is impossible.”
Perhaps we could stop sending them to school, or stop feeding them school dinners, Jamie Oliver’s or otherwise, and allow the kids to bring to school untainted food, like chips.
“One mother” tells the Mail: “We ban smoking yet allow our children to be poisoned.”
These additives must be banned. The alternative to banning these additives is too dreadful, a collective punishment of loud, animated and impulsive children.
Of course, if fed only on E110 (Sunset yellow) and E129 (Allura Red) the nippers could solve Britain’s energy crisis as they glow in the dark and are hooked up to dynamos.
But that is for another campaign…
Posted: 7th, September 2007 | In: Tabloids Comments (5) | TrackBack | Permalink
