Good news, research shows you can reduce your exposure to arsenic from eating rice.

Firstly: I want to point out that the Food Standards Agency does not recommend cutting rice out of your diet, and there are regulations about how much arsenic there is in our food. 

They do however make a specific point about not using rice milk as a substitute for breast milk, infant formula, or cow's milk for children under 5.

Go to https://www.food.gov.uk/safety-hygiene/arsenic-in-rice for more information. Or watch this explanatory video.

On to the good news.

In a paper published in Science of The Total Environment (Volume 755, Part 2), researchers from the University of Sheffield and UCLA compared four different methods of preparing rice before using the absorption method of cooking whether this was in a pan, rice cooker or pressure cooker.

The four methods were: not washing the rice, washing the rice, soaking the rice and parboiling the rice before discarding the water.

The parboiling method removed 73% of the inorganic arsenic from the white rice.

The procedure in the paper is as follows

• Into a pan put 4 cups of water for every cup of raw rice, and bring to the boil
• Add the rice and boil for a further 5 minutes
• Drain and discard the water
• Using fresh water, finish cooking the rice using the absorption method.

Finally a huge vote of thanks to HAUS OF PETTY who posted a video on TikTok about arsenic in white rice, that lead me down the rabbit hole of looking to see if there was anything you could do to deal with it at home. 

Prawn Cocktail

In a jam jar combine 2 teaspoons Mayonnaise, 2 teaspoons Ketchup, 1 teaspoon chopped red chilli, salt and pepper to taste.
Add in, a spoonful or two at a time, 200g cooked, peeled, cold-water prawns, stirring thoroughly with each addition to spread the sauce.

Serve on crisp lettuce or use as a sandwich filling. 191 calories.

Saag Aloo

A variation on the theme of this classic dish based on what spices I had in stock (when did Safeways close BTW?).

Add 1 tablespoon of oil into a largish heavy pan, add ½ teaspoon hot chilli powder, 1 teaspoon each of cumin seeds, coriander seeds, turmeric and ground ginger, 2 teaspoons each of garum masala and chopped red chillies, and 3 cloves of garlic. Gently heat, stirring occasionally to prevent catching, until strong smells emanate form the pan and the contents are forming a paste. One at a time introduce 150g chopped mushrooms, 2 chopped medium tomatoes, a bag of fresh leaf spinach cooking each one down then add 2 large tins of new potatoes in water drained, with the larger ones chopped in half. Pour in half a pint of water and gently simmer for 10-15 minutes.

Makes two large portions, 445 Calories each.

Responses four, five and six

My original email with the first second and third responses.

Dear Tony Kennick,
Thank you for writing to me concerning Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Fish Fight campaign to reform the EU fisheries policy.
Labour Members of the European Parliament have been consistently strong in campaigning for proper reform of both the EU's Common Fisheries and Common Agricultural policies. 
We welcome the launch of Fish Fight campaign and the focus Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and others have given to the scandal of dead fish being thrown back into the sea. It is a terrible waste that up to half of all fish caught in the North Sea is discarded due to the perverse rules of the Common Fisheries Policy. In the upcoming reform of the CFP, Labour MEPs will be supporting calls for a policy of regionalisation which will eliminate inefficient central regulation and allow Member States to work together regionally to implement appropriate management measures.
We're delighted to see the campaign encouraging people to make informed decisions about the fish they buy. We are working with our European allies to ensure that fisherman can land a bigger catch while avoiding unnecessary discarding of fish, earn a decent living for their efforts, and be stewards of our fish stocks and marine environment for generations.
Yours Sincerely,
Linda McAvan MEP

Dear Tony,

Thank you for making contact on issue of fish quotas and reform of the Common Fisheries Policy.

It is Liberal Democrat policy to support strong reform of fisheries policy, indeed there is a broad consensus amongst UK MEPs from all parties of the need for reform. There is little doubt that the CFP and the practice of discarding fish beyond stated quotas is neither helpful for fish stocks, nor for fisherman. There are enormously detrimental effects for both the environment and fishing communities in the UK and elsewhere.

Also in agreement on the need for reform, is the European Commission. The Commission is currently preparing policy proposals for reform of the Common Fisheries Policy and they are eagerly awaited by Members of the European Parliament. In the meantime, my Liberal Democrat colleague Chris Davies MEP is forming a cross party group to discuss and formulate a common position on fisheries policy reform. Mr Davies is a substitute on the Fisheries committee in the European Parliament and is hoping to capitalise on the common will to reform fisheries policy. This group, known as 'Fish for the Future', meets on a monthly basis and is already over-subscribed. They are having regular consultation with the Commission, the WWF, major retailers and fish experts, and are hoping to take a science based approach to policy reform. They intend to establish a new common policy, beneficial to both fishermen and fish stocks, which they can take to negotiations with the Commission and the Council of Ministers.

I appreciate your concern regarding the issue of fisheries policy and we also appreciate that the Channel 4 programme drew attention to an issue which urgently needs addressing. In the UK, Richard Benyon the Fisheries Minister is also in favour of reform. I hope there will be sufficient political will in the Council of Ministers to press Mediterranean countries who are less willing to reform the system of quotas.

Yours sincerely,

Diana Wallis  MEP

Dear Mr Kennick
We in UKIP completely agree with you that the current fishing policy is an
environmental and economic disaster for the UK.
There is only one reason for this however and that is the European Union.
The EU controls the fishing policy for all member states and through their
"Common Fisheries Policy" (CFP) it has led to the destruction of the UK
fleet, a massive loss of jobs and traditions in coastal towns and not to
mention the deplorable rules regarding discards which means millions of
tonnes of fish a year have to be thrown back overboard dead.
We in UKIP completely agree with you that the whole policy is an utter
disgrace and would end the practise immediately if we were in government.
As often as we can, UKIP criticises the chaos that the CFP has caused for
Britain and if you would like to click on the following link, here is Nigel
Farage MEP (UKIP fisheries spokesman and party leader) making your voice
heard to the EU Commissioner in charge for fishing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWjG9W0KsoY
UKIP believes that the unaccountable EU has no right to legislate in this
area or any other aspect of our life, as it should only be government
elected by the people that should create and enact policy.
The only real way to change the CFP is to leave the EU so we can restore
proper fishing controls and UK territorial waters, and revitalise a vital
industry.
Yours sincerely
Godfrey Bloom
UKIP MEP

Responses two and three

Two more replies to the email to my MP and six MEPs last Wednesday, first:

Dear Mr Kennick,

Thank you for your email regarding fish discards. Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's revelation that over 1 million tonnes of fish are being dumped annually in the North Sea alone is not news to Conservative MEPs who have fought for years to end this obscenity.

This is not a problem confined to Europe. According to the Food & Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) around 7.3 million tonnes of fish are being dumped overboard by fishermen around the world every year.

There are an estimated 850 million people in the world today suffering from hunger. It is an obscenity that we stand idly by and watch the wanton destruction of global fish stocks and the dumping of unwanted and juvenile fish on this appalling scale. As Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall has shown, the problem is particularly prevalent in the North Sea where around 70% of discards are demersal roundfish (e.g. cod and haddock) and flatfish.

Much of this problem can be traced to the way in which we operate our current system of fisheries management. Under the Common Fisheries Policy, Brussels has imposed a ludicrously complex system of TACs (Total Allowable Catches), quotas and effort limitation (or restrictions on the number of days a fisherman can go to sea). As well as being the primary cause of discards, this mixed bag of controls, introduced mainly to aid cod recovery in the North Sea, has failed to stop a rapid decline in cod stocks and in addition, has led to over 60% of the UK whitefish fleet being scrapped in the past 6 years.

Perhaps the solution to the discards issue is to introduce a land-all policy that then can utilise the undersized or immature fish for processing into fishmeal and fish oil? The Processing sector has confirmed that they would be happy to compensate fishermen for this fish at a rate which is not so attractive as to encourage targeting of these species, but attractive enough to discourage dumping over the side.

I can assure you that the Conservatives in the European Parliament are working hard to find a lasting solution to the problem of fish stocks and discards.

Yours sincerely,
Timothy Kirkhope MEP

Then:

Dear Tony Kennick,

Thank you very much for your email.

A number of constituents have contacted me on this subject and as a result I have added my name to EDM 1123.

With best wishes,

David Blunkett.

First response to ‘Fish Fight’

On Wednesday I sent an email to my MP and six MEPs. The first response came in yesterday and is below.

Dear Mr Kennick,

Many thanks for your email regarding this very important issue. Mr Brons also cares a great deal about this issue and continues to campaign on it (e.g. see here: http://www.andrewbronsmep.eu/?q=content/speculation-fish-quotas-putting-fishermen-out-business and here: http://www.andrewbronsmep.eu/?q=content/fight-our-fishing-fleet ).

Mr Brons thanks you for contacting him about this.

best wishes,

Chris Beverley
British National Party

On behalf of Andrew Brons MEP
PO Box 116, Leeds LS27 9WW
www.andrewbrons.eu

Please support the ‘FISH FIGHT’

I am writing this to you from Sheffield on a topic which isn’t an immediately obvious concern from somewhere so far inland, fisheries policy. This is currently a hot topic in the run up to the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) review in 2012 with Channel 4 running a season of programmes about the issues as I write.

I am supporting the Fish Fight campaign against the practice of discarding perfectly good fish as a side effect of the Quota System. This environmentally and economically damaging practice not only affects the livelihoods of our fishing fleets but undoes a lot of the stock conservation efforts that the quota system has been designed for as the over quota fish are thrown back. The only group getting any benefit from this are the crabs who get a free lunch.

Fish Fight is not just a celebrity chef or two but has the involvement of Client Earth, the Marine Conversation Society, the WWF, The Angling Trust, Ocean2012 and Greenpeace. If you want to read about the various ideas that are in the melting pot for fixing this issue they are on the web at http://www.fishfight.net/solutions/.

What is needed now is a Rainbow Trout coalition (please forgive the awful pun) to work towards fixing this problem. I hope you can be part of that effort.

Sent to: The Rt Hon. David Blunkett MP, Edward McMillan-Scott MEP, Godfrey Bloom MEP, Andrew Brons MEP, Linda McAvan MEP, Diana Wallis MEP and Timothy Kirkhope MEP

Is there another way?

There is a standing joke on Titter and other places that the Digital Economy Bill should really be called the Analogue Economy (Preservation) Bill. This is somewhat unfair to large chunks of businesses that are managing to make money in the current climate. Bill Thompson said during an interesting presentation at Digital Lounge Sheffield this week that we shouldn’t use “Dinosaur” as derogatory term as they had a brilliant response to the rise of the mammals in evolving into birds. I think that this argument actually strengthens the term for this use in that anyone (or corporation or indeed whole industry) that watches the birds emerge and decides to stay as a lumbering terrible lizard deserves to be mocked.

So who has got it right and is making money from a product that is freely available both online or shared amongst your friends and has even been reported as having increasing revenues through the recession? Seems if you want to be a success story in this day and age you need to sell cookery books. After a flourish in Late Antiquity they started to re-appear in the late thirteenth century^[1] and have been around pretty consistently since; so the business of wrapping up bundles of recipes in a nice format is hardly a spring chicken, but it is still seems a very successful sector.

Why is this interesting? Well do a little experiment, pick up a cookbook and flick to a recipe or just decide on something you want to make. Go to your favourite search engine and put the name of the dish followed by “recipe” or just pick an ingredient and do the same and you are likely to get thousands of results. You may even find that you find the recipe from the book you looked at or another one by the same author, these people are happily giving away content to you and are competing well against completely free recipes. But despite all these freely available recipes large expensive full colour hardback books full of the things are still selling and getting places in the bestseller lists.

Another difference is that they are not calling for sanctions against their customer base such as taking their ability to buy Maldon sea salt away or suspending their use of pasta machines. Nor are they suggesting that chippies will be banned from providing salt and vinegar if one of the shop’s customers is found to be making knock off batter as there is little to be gained by attacking legitimate value add services that are part of someone else’s business model. The only thing that seems to be lacking these days from the recipe industry is the lack of gigs these days, it has been ages since I saw a live cookery demonstration tour advertised, you have to go sign up to a course somewhere instead.

Now I might spend some time mooching through my library of cookery books or maybe looking for interesting recipes online and wondering where I might find someone who can supply me with Squirrels or calf testicles at this time on a Sunday.

^[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_book

Lamb faggots

Lamb faggots

In a food processor whiz up 400g lamb's liver, 250g lamb mince, 2 small heads of roast garlic, 1/2 a tube of anchovy paste, 1 bunch of spring onions and a good grind of black or mixed pepper.
Combine the mix from the food processor with 750g of lamb mince and 150g of breadcrumbs, shape into balls and put in the fridge for 30 minutes to an hour. Cut three large onions in half reserve one half and quarter the other five, place them in a roasting tin with some oil into an oven pre-heated to 180^oC, after twenty minutes place the faggots on the onions and cook for 40 minutes.
In the meantime, blend 500ml of lamb stock, 50g of pea shoots and 28g of fresh mint to make a risotto with the reserved onion half, 200g Arborio rice, 150ml of vermouth, 60g of parmesan cheese and some butter & olive oil.

Winter warmer

Winter warmer

Chop 500g of back bacon and place in a lightly oiled lasagne dish or Pyrex roaster, put this in the oven and turn it on to 180° C. Peel and slice to varying thickness 1Kg of Maris Piper or similar potatoes and bring them to the boil in a saucepan of water, meanwhile slice and soften 1 large leek. When the potatoes  have been simmering for 5 minutes, drain them and leave them to steam. Gently warm 600ml of double cream in a saucepan and drop in 500g of ricotta cheese and season well;  as this slowly melts (don't worry if this isn't a perfect process, some of the cheese being left un-melted is fine) wizz up 150g of breadcrumbs, 150g of grated mature cheddar and 5g grated parmesan. Pull the dish of bacon from the oven and pour off any excess water (if there is too much of this consider a new brand of bacon) and mix in the leek, then layer over first 225g of washed spinach then the potatoes, pour over the cream and cheese mix then sprinkle over the breadcrumb mix. Bake in the oven until the topping is golden brown on top the sauce is bubbling up from underneath.

Variations: use white fish fillets instead of the bacon (will need to be watch much more carefully while you complete the remaining steps) or just use more leeks plus some peppers and courgettes for a vegetarian alternative.

Bam! Lets knock it up a notch

I am not a fan of 'bog standard' even if I am using time saving ingredient from the supermarket I like to add something to them to bring out their best.  Unfortunately none of the mustelids on earth have yet evolved into a Spice Weasel, so what to use instead?

My first port of call is a pepper grinder that contains a mix of Bristol blend pepper^[1] and crushed dried chillies. I use this pretty much anywhere I am using black pepper (including making pepper crusts) and it adds a nice smidgen of extra pep when going to full on chillies isn't required. It gives that something extra even when all you are doing is personalising a pizza by adding extra toppings or trying to enliven some pasta and pesto.

Next is mustard and horseradish, any sane omnivore will have these in the house for roasts etc but I find for day to day usage I am more likely to put them in things than on them (to the extent that while having cooked with Colman's mustard flour for probably 2 decades I have only recently used it to make mustard). Both go well in mash, potato or otherwise, and while I have always used mustard when turning Béchamel into Mornay I have found recently that if I am going to be putting that over vegetables then horseradish goes lovely in there as well. They also are part of my salad dressing armoury when I break all good rules about how to make a Vinaigrette^[2]

There are many other things that in their place liven up stuff but that is some of the generic and besides I dread to think what the food police would think of my pickled cabbage products in toasted sandwiches habit.

^[1]black, white, green and pink peppercorns with added pimento
^[2]That reminds me I need to right up my Caesar salad and seafood sauce recipes.

Variation on a theme

I have been a fan of the River Cottage pumpkin/squash baked with cream recipe since I first saw it. Tonight I tried something a little different. Inspired by a the success of a fondue at a recent party instead of the usual filling I went for fondue –like mix of wine and cheese with a little garlic oil.

It worked really well, it shows off the squash if anything better than the original and while it won’t replace the cream version for me, I will make it again.

My current favourite steak sauce

• 250g chestnut or other mushrooms
• 150ml double cream
• 1/2 a good sized red onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 25g Parmigiano reggiano
• heaped teaspoon of wholegrain mustard
• good splash of brandy
• butter
• olive oil
• copious seasoning

Gently heat enough butter and oil to cover the bottom of a good solid pan. Very finely dice the onion and garlic and slowly start them sweating. Finely slice the mushrooms and add them to the pan and put on a lid. Keep an eye on the pan while you do everything else for the meal, agitating occasionally and for a minimum of 15 minutes if you are doing something real quick. While resting the meat, take off the heat and stir in first the brandy then the cream and finally the cheese and mustard. Season to taste (I tend to a little salt and quite a bit of pepper, most from my black pepper mill set to cause, some from the bill with a mix of Bristol 5 pepper blend and dried chilli flakes). Return to a gentle heat to warm the sauce back through and melt the cheese.

Food Survey

Please click here to take a quick survey on food shopping and welfare.

No such thing as a free lunch

I had an opportunity to eat for free today, the combination of being an unrepentant omnivore and seeing I am off to see the film it is currently tied in to tonight I decided to try the Dark Whopper^[1] for lunch. My nearest BK is in the station and along with all other Select Service Partners outlets it has signs telling you that you get your food for free if you don't get handed a receipt, which in this case I didn't. I thought for a moment but decided not to mention it, partly because I disagree with the policy on environmental grounds (I know that merely eating that kind of food has it's impact, but they don't need to kill the extra trees).

The biggest reason I didn't was they nagging suspicion that while it would mean a free lunch for me, it would be a world of pain for the lad serving me. I must at this point stress that all this is supposition, I have never worked for SSP, so none of this is based on observed facts of their employment rules. Having worked in the service industry, those serving the public are under a lot of pressure from management to make the most from each customer through up-selling, cross-selling etc and to minimise waste. That pressure is applied as in most arenas using carrots and sticks, cooperative ladders and voucher incentives for those that do well, harsh disciplinary penalties for those that are considered to be failing or cannot balance their till at the end of the shift.

In that moment contemplating I thought about the possible scenarios for the person in question after I had my money back, a black mark on the record or even having the money deducted from their wage packet all for not handing me something I didn't want or need. It was this last one that definitely stopped me, I wasn't going to risk that he would have worked for more than an hour during the lunch rush for no pay to feed me.

^[1]If you want to know, not anything to write home about, probably why I can't really compare it with last time they did it it just doesn't stick in the mind. Not as disappointing at the Angus 6 pack, or as tasty as the angry whopper and no-where near the excitement of walking in and asking them to Kong my whopper!^[2]
[2]Note to self: I must remember to finish tweaking that footnote plugin.

Grrrrrr

Very tired today so my apologies if this turns into more of a rant than I intend. My favourite moderate newspaper has been running a campaign to bring back the death penalty. I'm not going to have a go at the paper for pandering to their readership, or that readership for being who they are. My bile is reserved for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, who while is happy to rail against embryological research and campaign against abortion can't bring himself to say that the death penalty shouldn't happen full stop. What kind of spineless wet is the man? What constituency is he worried he will alienate if he does? What part of "Thou shalt not kill" does he not understand? Has he never in his fifty-two years in the church read the Sermon on the Mount?

The other thing that caught my eye this morning was this piece from Iain Dale about an email he had received. On one hand I agree about the nanny state, there is far to much proscription in schools as was show over the child who wasn't allowed to ware her faith based ring a while back. On the other very little of the discussion is about the most important line in the original email: Of course, they ripped the kitchens out of this school years ago. We shouldn't be making rules about chocolate or going to the chip shop to get the kids to eat healthily, we just need to give them the old the cardinal points of fingering a murder suspect, motive, means and opportunity. Opportunity means a canteen in every school serving a good selection of balanced meals, means means they should be priced to the market^[1]; motive is the difficult one, I would hope that if we get a generation of children growing up under the previous two conditions they may develop a taste for wholesome food on their own. That is almost certainly rank optimism, it may even be just as gullible to suggest that teaching this generation domestic science may catch their kids but I just fear that there are some people that consider obesity like benefits as a right.

While I'm probably not going to go as far as Dizzy and say that Jacqui Smith's new seizure plans are "quite possibily the most anti-liberty, anti-justice policy ever", since I can think of a few that could well be considered worse including most of the anti-terrorism measures, anything that makes peacefully protest less lawful, compulsory or even effectively compulsory by hanging essential services or benefit entitlement on them ID Cards, I do think that (almost miraculously) she has continued the tradition that each Home Secretary is more fascist than the last, this runs all the way back to Kenneth Clarke (it is fair to say he wasn't to the right of Kenneth Baker).

^[1]Of course beanz meanz heinz(scroll down to 1967, I love that factoid)

Food Post

You may have noticed that despite mentioning food in the blurb about this blog I don't post about it that often. This is firstly due to the number one driver for a post here is me getting riled about something and food rarely does that. Secondly I am notoriously bad with recipes. Apart from baking which requires some accuracy, a recipe going in gets done while referring to the cook book, once maybe twice (and even then I tend to riff a bit with the minutiae) and after that it is from memory. In the other direction, when I am trying to create a dish from scratch I never quite manage to note it down. This weekend, while still not creating an accurate account, you will note the use of terms like "some" and "pinch" I at least made sure I set aside jars as I used them so I could make some stab at what I had done. So here is my Prawn Puree.

Before I start a note on chillies. My house mate is a chilli fiend and there are always some interesting specimens, both bought and home grown in the freezer. I usually use a pinch test to work out the strength of any that I get out that I am not utterly sure of. Pinching the fruit under your nose usually gives a fair idea of the pungency, even of frozen ones. This time it failed, what I thought mild was a Bhut Jolokia this lead to a far stronger sauce than I intended especially given the chilli was used whole, seeds and all. Luckily this one was home grown so nowhere near the octane of a hot country/housed version.

Firstly in a dry pan I toasted a large pinch of each of the following, coriander seeds, cumin seeds and whole Bristol blend five pepper; blitz these with a teaspoon of Garam Masala and a table spoon of flour. Into the spicy flour throw all but a handful of your prawns and get them covered well. Put some oil in the pan and gently brown four cloves of garlic, one hot chilli and a quarter of an onion roughly chopped. Into your blitzing device put the reserved prawns, a good squeeze of tomato puree, the browned garlic, chilli and onion, a pinch of salt a glug of oil and some Ginger Conserve (I follow the ways of Ken Hom who dictates that you must always have some sweetening with chilli, using conserve gives this dimension alongside getting some ginger into the sauce) and blend to a fine paste. Gently fry the prawns (timings here depend on if they are pre cooked or not, but neither take long) then when they are cooked/warmed through add the sauce. At this point I struggle for the word that describes how you know you are done, but when it smells right you know you are done. Serve on warm chapattis I buy mine but if you want to make them, finding a recipe for these is an exercise left to the reader.

If you think that is vague, my recipe for my idea of an excellent omelette is

More than enough eggs, too much cheese, a sufficiency of bacon, an uncomfortable amount of garlic and one tomato.

Chickens going cheap

At the end of Hugh and Jamie's week of programmes highlighting the plight of the humble meat chicken there was a faint whiff of optimism. A good chunk of the supermarkets gave indications of targets for reduction or eradication of products that didn't at least meet the RSPCA's Freedom Food standard.
Today's news about Tesco shows that there is still a long way to go. The government has stepped in to ensure that all egg production will have to conform to a minimum welfare standard, perhaps it is time they did the same for meat birds.

Christmas Hugh

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall will following on from his triumphant Christmas special ten bird roast (goose, farmed duck, mallard, guinea fowl, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon, woodcock all wrapped in a turkey) with something even more spectacular. The original was developed by Hugh's butcher Ray Smith as more readily attainable by the average home chef than the original seven layer medieval recipe which required the boning out of each bird.
This years extravaganza is again an attempt to use an old established layer recipe but reduce the amount of highly technical butchery required by cutting fillets of as much of the best meat as possible and creating a forcemeat stuffing with the rest. All of the creatures of course will be free range and where possible organic. So the River Cottage special Christmas roast this year will be "fly, spider, bird, cat, dog, goat, cow and horse (of course) in a boned out old woman."

The end of personal responsability

According to a new report obesity is not the fault of individuals.
Bollocks!
I am overweight, is this due to the governments inaction? No it is because I really like pies and beer and find exercise boring. I'm not even in general that unhealthy an eater, I try and have salads for lunch most work days but on occasions I just want a big juicy burger. When I am cooking at home I again try and have balanced meals, with health ingredients, but there are times when the phrase "pan fried in butter" is impossible to resist. Given that I already read the ingredients, count the calories, lookout for saturates, what do people expect the government to do? Ban butter? I am fat almost because I want to be, I might not like being tubby, but I am the only one who can do anything to change it.
If the government has a role it is in educating parents and putting more money into nutritious school food to help kids get a good start, but they can leave my pies alone.