By Bill Oldfield

TOOTLING along on my way to work, bored with the commute and just looking for a fight. And then there it is, a message right in front of me. “If you can’t see my mirrors then I can’t see you”.

Well it seems logical at first, but then, given a little thought, it’s actually misleading. It made me want to pull up beside the driver and yell at him that if I, in my right-hand drive vehicle, were to drive really, really close to the back of his lorry, but slightly over to the left, I wouldn’t be able to see anything but his rear axle while he’d be able to see my car’s left headlight as if it was attached to his rear left mudguard. So, if we’ve now established that his mirror sign’s conveying rubbish, what about the advert for his company splashed down the side of his truck? Is that rubbish too? All the money and time and manpower spent on design and paint had been wasted because someone hadn’t bothered to think through... what was actually meant to be a well-meaning notice. Which, in truth, didn’t actually say he wouldn’t be able to see bits of my car; just that he couldn’t see me. So he was right after all.

So, I tootled on my way, having calmed down a bit and turned on the radio only to listen to a discussion regarding the latest mantra about how sugar is the new fat and we’re all obese because we’ve been putting fructose-filled low fat yoghurts in our lunch boxes in the vain attempt to live longer by becoming thinner and more attractive because that’s what we’ve been told to do for decades.

It seems obvious, doesn’t it? Eating fat must make you fat. The clue’s in the word "fat". But it now seems that that’s as logical as saying if you eat sheeps’ brains you’ll become as intelligent as a sheep.

This was driving up my blood pressure again. I needed some chocolate. Apparently dark chocolate is now good for you because it acts like a natural anti-inflammatory that reduces blood pressure. Yes, that’s sugar-containing chocolate, which reduces your risk of heart attack while, of course, making you fat. This was getting really confusing and I needed something to calm me down.

Perhaps a glass of red wine? Certainly not while driving. And anyway, its resveratrol content, long-thought to protect against heart disease, is no longer considered to extend your life as was previously thought, so that wasn’t recommended. I could have nibbled on the natural accompaniment Wensleydale because cheese, once seen as a contributor to heart disease, is now thought by some experts to reduce the risk of diabetes – despite the extra diabetes-inducing weight I’d have acquired from stuffing my face with chocolate in order to calm down.

Funnily enough, I find that cooking’s one of the easiest ways to relax and calm down. Cooking is therapeutic, especially once you get the hang of it, and therefore must contribute towards your good health. But you may never have got the hang of it, especially if you’re under 50, because it’s unlikely you were taught to cook at school. And that’s therefore even more unfortunate because while it calms you down, you’d also be able to use your common sense and recognise if you’re putting buckets of fat in your cooking or shed-loads of sugar or, perhaps, salt.

But we’ve been told, by those that know, that we don’t need to learn to cook in school; that fat was making us fat but now it’s not; that red wine did make us live longer but not anymore; that chocolate’s a baddy but now a goody; that cheese will kill you while making you live longer. And it’s now being suggested the assumption that the devil salt causes higher blood pressure is overstated.

What on earth should we do? Who should we believe? Well it’s obvious we shouldn’t trust the diet experts. They’re in the same club as those well-informed experts who decided that cooking lessons weren’t necessary at school, resulting in a couple of generations of cookery ignoramuses.

You could stop reading or listening to the news. Or you could stick to common sense. Me, I’m having a glass or two of red wine when I get home; maybe accompanied by a little cheese. And on the way there, keeping the lorry driver’s mirrors in view.