Another day and another set of shock tactic images from a saturated fat campaign. This time we've got cheese in a human sized mouse trap and small packs of butter scattered with razor blades. The images have been developed for the World Heart Federation's "open your eyes to saturated fat" campaign for World Heart Day. Other images from the campaign show steak cooking on a barbeque that looks like an animal trap and snakes crawling on croissants. Are such extreme negative images warranted and do they really help consumers? Experts believe that excessive saturated fat consumption is one of the many factors that increase the risk of heart disease. In the UK saturated fat intakes are above recommended levels. The saturated fat working group of the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD), on which The Dairy Council was represented, recently published a report which showed that consumers don't understand the basics about saturated fat. They don't know that saturated fat and saturates are the same thing, or that saturated fat/saturates are part of total fat. To help people reduce their saturated fat intakes it's clear that consumer education is needed, but in developing educational campaigns on saturated fat and heart disease it's important to learn lessons from what has gone before.
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