Shyam Kolvekar is a late comer to the Bettabanabutter party, but he is in fine Fascist company.

D’you know who really set his one off? Nah! I’m not going to tell you straight off, you’ll have to work harder than that.

The poor old cow has been in their sights for some time now, ever since the Canadians discovered that 72% percent of their greenhouse gases emitted from the rear end of the humble cow and they developed fart-free grass for the ruminants to munch on as their contribution to saving the world from global warming freezing.

In Argentina they loaded the poor cow up with an undignified giant pink anal air bag to capture the methane gas, and claimed a stunning 30% of their contribution to global warming could be cut by eradicating the poor cow. A Minnesota farmer fought a rearguard action to protect his herd from decimation by the killcows by assiduously collecting the cow pats and turning the gas into electricity powering not only his farm but that of 78 neighbours.

How to remove the cow from a western world obsessed with consuming its bi-products? Softly softly catchee monkey.

Naturally the animal rights activists were quick off the mark, claiming that a vegetarian diet was the only way to save the planet. Real men must eat quiche? Nope, quiche contains dairy products, there was still a use for the cow.

The spotlight was turned on that other herd of slowly fattening ruminants, the domino pizza crowd, fast asleep in front of Jeremy Kyle, wondering why DFS were now advertising sofas you could fit 7 jumbo jets on, collect yours now, no deposit needed. Diet was far too judgemental a word to use, it implied they were fat, can’t do that.

They came up with the very thing – food intolerances. You see, getting fat had nothing to do with eating twice as much as you needed to power the daily walk from sofa to scratch card salesman on the corner, getting fat was down to eating the wrong things for your personal digestive system.

How convenient then that food intolerance narrowed down to cow intolerance. Lacto-intolerance, red meat intolerance, ‘anything connected with the humble cow’ intolerance.

This study brings new scientific support to some of the dietary suggestions I’ve been sharing with readers for quite some time. Namely, red meat is bad for you, cow’s milk and dairy products are bad for you, saturated animal fat is bad for you, and vegetables and dietary fiber and good for you. I realize that’s an oversimplification of the research, but it’s also a valid summary of it.

The cattle ranchers fought back. The Lactose Intolerant Can Love Dairy Again!

Mr Kolvekar’s comments were issued by KTB, a public relations company that works for Unilever, the maker of Flora margarine. Naturally.

During World War ll, in the U.S. and the U.K., butter was pretty scarce. That was because it went to feed soldiers. Those on the home front learned (painfully) to eat oleomargarine. In the US, dairy interests forced federal legislation requiring the sellers of margarine NOT to colour the white substance yellow. They included, with the bars of margarine, some separately wrapped colouring that you could apply to the margarine yourself at home…

It was during World War ll that the bettabanabutter campaign really took off in some parts of Europe.

Joseph Goebbels was the first – quickly followed by Herman Göring – “Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat”.

That’s a fine company of butter prats you’re keeping there Mr Kolvekar!

Are we off to war again?