Monday 27 July 2009

Shock, Horror: Cream is fattening!

If you were to go out to dinner, would you expect a menu to detail the calorie count of a slice of Black Forest Gateau? How about if you fancied an ice-cream with cherry sauce and a flake, would you be surprised at the fat and sugar content?

I suspect that, for the vast majority of people, the answer to both these questions is no.

So how about if you fancied an iced coffee drink? Perhaps one made with full fat milk, cherry flavoured syrup, chocolate and cream? Wouldn't it strike you as obvious that it's not going to be the most slimming drink ever? If you had one a day for a month, wouldn't you expect your trousers to be a bit tighter?

For these reasons, I was surprised to see
this news item on the BBC News website today. The World Cancer Research Fund has examined the nutritional tables available from the main coffee shops and decided to highlight that creamy drinks can lead to being overweight and a higher risk of cancer.

Now I'm sure the charity does a lot of good work in it's day job of "funding cutting edge scientific research" into cancer but there are a number of responses that sprung to my mind. These ranged from, "it's not exactly rocket science" to " No sh*t, Sherlock".

I'm all for people making informed choices - particularly in a retail environment - but surely some things are blatantly obvious? Sugary, Creamy drinks contain lots of calories. Large Sugary, Creamy drinks contain more. No-one buying a
Large Dark Berry Mocha Frappuccino is going to think they've gone for the healthy option.


Andrew

P.S.... In case you're wandering, a
large McDonalds milkshake contains almost as many calories. Look out for a story regarding the dangers of those - coming to a "News" outlet near you sometime soon.

1 comment:

Stephen Chapman said...

Bloody journalists ruining my day. And there's me thinking that pastry was mostly air.