A Place to Stand

The media are full of this story about how we are in danger from carcinogenic dye

The Food Standards Agency has issued a warning advising people not to eat the products but said there was "no need to panic" because of the "very low risk".

The full list of products can be found on the website www.food.gov.uk.

Premier Foods said it had been assured the powder did not contain Sudan 1.

"It must be stressed that the product withdrawal is a purely precautionary measure, and the levels at which Sudan 1 occurs in the products concerned presents no immediate risk to health," Premier Foods said in a statement.

How do they determine if a material is carcinogenic. Well basically they force feed a solid diet of the material to rats for years at about 5,000 times what you & I could manage to eat.

This stuff formed only a part of the chili powder - lets be generous & say 10%.

Worcester sauce is not pure chili powder or anything like it - lets say 1%.

The sauce is only a small taster of most most of these products - I'd say 1% would be high.

So the amount of this "poison" is 1/5000 X 1/10 X 1/100 X 1/100 = 1 part in 500 million of what sometimes causes cancer in rats. By the theory that there is no lower level on poisons that might mean 1 death in 500 million or 1 tenth of person here. In fact that is a rather silly political theory with no evidence behind it - the older theory is that "the dose makes the poison" which is fairly obviously true since many trace elements we need to survive are dangerous in large quantities.

homoeopathy is a medical theory that even if you dilute a substance so far there are less than 1 atom of it it will still cure you. It was believed by the royal family, congenital idiots, hysterical women with more money than sense & nobody else.

And now the entire UK media.