James Hastings-Trew

When cholesterol was demonised, Pfizer sold the statin, and it became the best-selling drug in the history of medicine. When fat was demonised, Roche sold a pill that stops you absorbing it, and the side effect was printed on the box in a way nobody forgets. When salt was demonised, the blood pressure tablet went on repeat prescription for a third of the over-50s. When the sun was demonised, the chemist sold vitamin D in a bottle, for the hormone your skin had been making for free. When liver was demonised, the chemist sold retinol, iron, copper and B12 in four separate bottles. When eggs were demonised, the chemist sold choline, and nobody in the queue knew what it was for. When red meat was demonised, the gym sold creatine and the chemist sold iron. When butter was demonised, the chemist sold vitamin K2 for the arteries, which is what the butter had been doing. When hunger was demonised, the pharmacist sold an injection to stop you feeling it, at £200 a month, for life. Every nutrient the animal carried was declared dangerous, removed, and sold back as a molecule by a company that could patent the molecule and could not patent the cow. The food did a dozen jobs in one bite. The pharmacy sells each job separately, with a repeat prescription and a side effect. The animal never had a sales rep. That is the only thing it was ever missing.