Leave Stilton alone

While I was away in the USA,  another example of pointless over-regulation made the news.  The Food Standards Agency is trying to force food manufacturers to cut salt content to 2% in all products.  A fine idea in principle you might think but for some foods,  such as Stilton cheese,  salt is integral to the recipe.  Stilton has a salt content of 2.5% and the cheese makers say that it would be almost impossible to produce it with less.

Now I have a vested interest here.  I grew up in Stilton country and I have been eating the stuff since I was a youngster.  While I wouldn't say that I am an addict,  I am capable of eating large quantities of Stilton at a single sitting, as I did on New Year's Day.  It's more than just a tasty cheese though.  Stilton is part of my culture and heritage.  It is only made in six dairies and has a 'Protected Designation of Origin',  meaning that it cannot be produced outside Nottinghamshire,  Derbyshire and Leicestershire.  Three of the Stilton creameries are within ten miles of my parents' house.  I therefore take it personally when the King of Cheeses is threatened.

On a more rational level, though,  the regulation will not do much to restrict salt in our diets anyway, as it only applies to UK made products.  Foreign blue cheese,  most of which contains more salt than Stilton, will still be sold in Britain along with any number of other salt-laden foods.  The only way to ensure a low salt diet would be to have an EU-wide ban on products containing more than 2% salt.  And that would never happen would it? 

I can't imagine something like this happening anywhere else in Europe.  If anything,  the French tend to do bureaucracy and red-tape more than we do,  but they would never come up with a regulation that threatened one of their historic cheeses.  Even the health conscious Danes would not do anything to mess up the flavour of Danish Blue.

No,  this is a really stupid idea.  If the FSA bureaucrats have any sense they will back off on this one,  or risk upsetting a lot of people,  destroying part of our heritage and damaging a key UK export. 

I wonder if we could invoke human rights legislation,  claiming that Stilton is an icon of a threatened indigenous culture.  Now there's a thought.....

Comments

[Jeremy Reynolds]

Funny thing this - the government seems to want to take the flavour out of everything we eat. Take the salt out of Stilton and it's not Stilton. Take the salt and sugar out of a biscuit and it's not a biscuit any more. Believe it or not, I buy Stilton because of its flavour. People buy biscuits because they taste nice. Government food policy is driven by dogma driven and forgets that people buy food for flavour. Of course many people eat too much salt and sugar, but people who have seriously bad diets will still have seriously bad diets no matter what government does to our salt in our food. Anyway - soft drinks are a far bigger threat to our nation's health.

[Clairwil]

I accept that people's health is important, but why is the government incapable of putting out a few health warnings and leaving everyone to get on with things? Does the average conversation in Whitehall run
'oooh look at the funny poor people trying to muddle along without us. Oh dear they'll only get it wrong and break things'?

For what it's worth I love a slice of Stilton and I have my waistline to tell me when enough is enough.