Abandon sugar?

ACCORDING to the latest research (that is to say, this week's fashionable opinion), it's not fat and salt that's killing us - it's sugar and protein. If you want to live a long and healthy life, I can only advise you to avoid eating anything containing food.

FOR what it's worth, I gave up soft spreads a month ago and returned to the simple pleasure of butter. I have lost 5lbs.

THE experts are gradually turning on its head all that dietary advice they have been preaching for the past 40 years about the evils of saturated fats and the benefits of carbs. The low-fat message was supported by the vast majority of scientists and doctors and yet it seems they may have been wrong. Why do I find myself thinking of climate change?

THE new advice to cut back drastically on sugar should surely come with a health warning. Only a few weeks ago Horizon (BBC2) gave us a reminder that our bodies do not always behave as we might expect. Identical-twin doctors, Alexander and Chris Van Tulleken put their identical DNA to work on two very different diets. Alex went on a zero-sugar diet while Chris went on an extremely low-fat diet. Alex assumed that avoiding sugar, the cause of much diabetes, would be good for him. In fact, after a month, his body stopped recognising and processing sugar, and he ended up almost diabetic. Alexander concluded: "Any diet that eliminates fat or sugar will be unpalatable, hard to sustain and probably be bad for your health, too." Food for thought.

WITH so many medications producing unexpected results, I suggested a while ago that the motto of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society ought to be "Suck It and See." At the weekend, while preparing for my epic voyage on Loch Lomond, I discovered that one of the most effective anti-midge lotions was developed without anyone even considering midges. It is a moisturiser made by Avon.

PS: If a doorbell just went "Ding-dong!" in your head at the mention of the word "Avon," this is a perfectly normal response in anyone aged over 50. In much the same way, no-one over 60 can hear the word "Crackerjack!" without shouting "Crackerjack!" in response. When it comes to conditioning humans, telly beats Pavlov and his dogs hands down (and paws down, too).

LET'S hope Tony Blair gets involved in sorting out the Crimean crisis, which began with the invasion of a sovereign state on a dodgy pretext. He has some specialist knowledge of the subject.

ONE image from the latest Paedophile Information Exchange scandal will not go away. It is that advert, "Join the National Council for Civil Liberties" which the NCCL paid for to be included in Magpie, the PIE magazine in the 1970s. You know how it is when you put an advert in a newspaper; you always check to make sure they've got it right. So there must have been a moment when the right-on Lefties in charge of NCCL picked up the edition of Magpie and found their recruiting advert, right next to the image of the little boy in very short shorts with his legs wide apart. Did anybody complain? We should be told.

CALLING their journal Magpie was a stroke of genius by the Paedophile Information Exchange. It not only combined Pie with Mag but had the same name as the popular ITV children's programme. Would the NCCL would have been so keen to advertise in the publication if Pie had called it Molesters Monthly? We will never know.

OUR local branch of Wilkos is advertising for employees whose job description includes monitoring both store standards and "brand behaviour performance." Russell?