Annoying adverts again

First up the Gillette one whose many years of shaving study have determined the best way of shaving - surprisingly enough it involves buying probably three times as many products from them as than you would normally. The other small annoyance is one of the actors who having just shaved still looks like he's got 5 o'clock shadow.

I'll ignore the many shampoo adverts who still only feature women and attack those who feature celebrity women who claim their shiny lustrous hair as a result of using Brand X shampoo and conditioner and not from having on-call hair stylists and a ton of cash to spend on said hair. Oh and Head & Shoulders flake-free 'guarantee' based on visual appearance of flakes from a foot away, oh hell very scientific.

My ire has been saved for a disgusting one from the Food Standards Agency on behalf of the water board about not pouring fat and grease down the sink; oh wait sorry it's on behalf of the FSA about not eating too much fat with said sink acting by way as illustration. Hmm now perhaps I'm odd but I'm not for mainlining grease, I don't fill syringes and shoot up with pure Columbian fat; so this illustration is a little simplistic; ah hell no it's a lot simplistic.

Okay quick and dirty biology lesson here - fats enter your blood stream in the form of lipoproteins, think of them as transport agents carrying fat around to where it's needed.

So what's this got to do with clogged arteries, well fat contains the Dreaded Cholesterol and as we all know cholesterol is evil, eeeevil. Well no like so much we're being told is bad for us our body requires cholesterol to function, the 'bad' stuff comes in a particular type of lipoprotein called a Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) and is what is thought to contribute to atherosclerosis, of course it's not bad cholesterol it's exactly the same stuff as 'good' cholesterol found in High Density Lipoproteins (HDL) it all depends on where it's travelling and how. Heck it gets even more complicated than that because some of these LDLs aren't as bad as others, in this instance the bigger the better so having a large number of small LDLs may be considered unhealthy, but a large number of large LDLs is better.

Okay I'm getting a little technical, but the essence is that eating fatty foods doesn't automatically clog up your 'sink'. Sure I won't deny the links between fatty food ingestion and atherosclerosis, but it ain't as simple as so many would have you think and slapping a red traffic light FAT warning on food doesn't give you any information about what types of fat it contains.

Fat, salt, sugar all the stuff we're being told is bad for us, is a required part of our diet; again yes too much of the stuff could be bad for you, but the same can be said for every substance in the known universe it's the dosage that counts along with your own unique metabolism and scare 'scams' such as this aren't useful in informing the public.