FOR years government experts have been advising us to eat a low fat diet.

Saturated fat was the killer. So we gorged on pasta, trimmed the crispy bits off our bacon and feasted on low fat yogurts, many of which were loaded with sweeteners and artificial flavourings (don’t get me started).

Semi skimmed milk was the choice – skimmed if you were hard core.

Many of us tried to toe the government line – low fat good, high fat (dairy and meat) bad. Except it clearly didn’t work as huge increases in obesity and diabetes have proved.

Now a government health policy review in the BMJ journal Open Heart has declared that the 30-year-long campaign of discouraging full fat milk and butter “not merely needs review, it should never have been introduced”.

Furthermore, the eminent Professor Ian Broom who led the research has said governments in the UK and the US had actually increased obesity by encouraging low fat diets, higher in sugar and carb content.

So where does that leave us, the confused consumers? Can we dust off the frying pan and throw in the sausage with reckless abandon? Or dive into a KFC bargain bucket without having to share?

Well, erm, not really. Without getting technical on the dangers of transfats (man-made, incidentally) and the benefits of good fats/oils, it might be wise to point out the government continues to recommend a daily fat allowance of 70g.

A tablespoon of butter is pretty much like a tablespoon of any fat – it contains around 14 grams of fat and, of this, about 8 grams is saturated fat. There’s 30 mg of cholesterol.

So, because the recommendations for a healthy diet are to keep saturated fat to around 20 grams, using butter can add up the fat grams fast. So common sense says, use less butter, but don’t abandon it altogether. Simples.

A bit of butter on your toast, a layer of crackling on your Sunday roast and cream on your milk is not going to kill you. Eating your body weight in ready meals, crisps, cakes and washing it down with a giant cola or a litre of wine probably will eventually.

Mums of kids born in the 50s and 60s didn’t know what low-fat meant because it didn’t exist. Shepherd’s Pie came with a layer of melted lard oozing through the mash and bread and dripping was given to kids to stave off hunger until dinner time. If government guidelines are to be heeded, most of that generation should be dead.

The government owes it to us to get its act together as far as nutrition is concerned. And I’m not just talking about fat, but pesticides and food production methods.

It’s already too late when a massive deterioration in the nation’s health is the catalyst for change.