Our Campaigns

Posted on June 24, 2009 by faculty

The 2012 Campaign

We want SNARES banned in Scotland

These things are cruel and unnecessary

2009 – 2010 - Last Campaign

The Campaign to Ban Trans Fats

We ran this campaign last year. The bottom line is that Dr Richard Simpson’s private members Bill fell in Parliament. The general line of argument used by the Government was that the agency of the food industry – FSA – should regulate themsleves and were moving toward having more suitable levels of fats in foods. That is a far from convincing argument but we feel that we did well in raising awareness about the use of a killer trans fat among people at our school. We don’t think that the issue is dead but for now we have moved onto our new campaign: banning the use of snares in Scotland.

Trans Fats – what is it all about?

Do you eat a healthy diet? You may think you are eating well – avoiding foods rich in saturated fats, cutting back on salt and sugar, and eating your daily quota of fresh fruit and veg. But without knowing it you could be consuming dangerous amounts of the worst fats of all – the ‘trans fats’ found in hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO). HVO finds its way into thousands of everyday foods – including many with a ‘healthy’ image, such as cereal bars, low-fat biscuits and vegetarian burgers. Medical research indicates that these ‘trans fats’ are far worse for health than the saturated fats that doctors tell us to avoid: they raise LDL or ‘bad cholesterol’, while lowering HDL or ‘good cholesterol’. They help gum up our arteries with fatty deposits. They have been identified as a significant cause of cardiovascular disease. Research taking place over more than a decade at the US Universities shows that trans fats have “many adverse effects in health areas such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, immunity, reproduction and lactation, and obesity.” In the UK there are no rules or laws about the labelling of food. We want a ban and proper labelling on our food so we can make informed choices.

Trans Fats meeting v2