Thursday 29 April 2010

Health Scare, Fakecharity & Fakestatistic Du Jour

From The Soaraway Sun (1):

Shops’ balti is more salty (2) than seawater (3)

Worst offenders were Iceland's balti range, with six ready meals saltier than water in the Atlantic... Healthiest option was Birds Eye chicken curry with rice (4), containing just 0.5g of salt per portion... CASH's (5) Katherine Jenner said curries had become a British institution. But she added: "For every gram of salt taken out of our diet, 6,000 lives are saved and 6,000 heart attacks are prevented." (6)


1) Today's page 3 caption was a classic. The two young women were quoted as saying that the Labour/Lib Dem proposed ban on Page 3 Girls restricted their freedom of expression.

2) Of course balti is salty! If if were sugary, then...

3) How salty is seawater? I know it tastes pretty horrible, but that is not really a measure of 'saltiness', is it?

4) NOW that's what I call value for money! For a measly £1,000 donation (see 5) below) they've got product placement across today's MSM, with Iceland's stuff getting a good kicking.

5) According to their 2008 accounts, their major donors were:

Nissan UK Ltd £168,000 (wot? Toyota, I could understand, but Nissan?)
Food Standards Agency £23,500, Heart Research UK £10,000 and British Heart Foundation £2,500 (these three 'donations' put CASH firmly into fakecharity territory, of course)
Marks and Spencer £1,200
Birds Eye £1,000 (see 4) above)
McCain Foods (GB) Ltd £1,000
Walkers Snacks Ltd £1,000


6) Wot? One gram per portion? Per person? Per day? 6,000 'lives' in the UK? Across the globe? 6,000 per day? Per month? Per year? Are 6,000 lives 'saved' because 6,000 heart attacks are prevented? Do the figures add up to 12,000? Where's the evidence to show that countries with traditionally salt diets have shorter life spans? Oh, right...

8 comments:

bayard said...

At least someone in the organisation has a sense of humour - their acronym says it all really.

Unknown said...

Oddly enough the Japanese and the chinese put a lot of salt in their food and very delicious it is too.
So why dont they get the supposed heart thing.
Probably becasue like all FAKE CHARITIES it's just made up trash to con loads more tax payers money.
Listen you Big Government twats ,stop throwing our cash away on rubbish like this.

The Hickory Wind said...

"For every gram of salt taken out of our diet, 6,000 lives are saved and 6,000 heart attacks are prevented."

Going out on a limb here, but that is complete and utter bollocks. The results are impossible to measure in a meaningful way, obviously, but they also depend very much on which gramme you took out. Below a certain point, each gramme removed takes you that bit nearer death.

But hey, there's taxpayers' money to be taken and newspapers to be sold. Who cares about truth.

James Quigley said...

Nice fakecharity find. Sponsor a charity and get free advertising. What next, charities in colusion with government..oh wait

woman on a raft said...

Fake charities cause cancer.

bayard said...

Some time ago I thought of setting up a fakecharity as it seemed money for old rope. I could enjoy a handsome salary for a few hours work a week and work from home, to boot. Looks like Katherine Jenner has had the same idea. Not sure if I'd have had the nerve to call my fakecharity CASH, though.

John Pickworth said...

Walkers Snacks Ltd

A company I know rather well (for at least 40 hours per week) ;-)

For good or bad, a manufacturer that is fully signed up to green, bio-degradable, lo-fat, lo-salt, healthy eating, baked rather than fried initiatives... they have a roadmap and everything.

Worryingly though, and in common with so many other manufacturers and retailers, these initiatives seem to be inspired by Government and professional lobby outfits rather than their customers. The poor customer in fact having little say but to like it or lump it.

neil craig said...

I remember the BBC once stating as undisputed fact that 17,000 children are hospitalised every year by passive smoking. The turth was that that many visit hospitals once in regard to asthma - not only is there no evidence that some, let alone all are related to passive smoking but the fact that asthma is increasing & smoking decreasing proves the reverse.

The BBC naturally refused to alter their lie.

I think before accepting even the possibility that any health fascist claim might be truthful they should be required to prove that they have publicly claimed to be more than 10,000 as truthful as the BBC (10,000 x 0 = 0).