A TV doctor is telling anyone who will listen that meat causes cancer. STEPHEN LEWIS investigates.

IT'S JUST what confused parents - not to mention farmers - need right now: another health scare. First, we're told that vegetables aren't as good for us as they used to be - they're not as high in minerals and trace elements - and we're all in danger of becoming malnourished. Not true! insist experts at the Food Standards Agency: as long as we eat a balanced diet with five helpings of fruit or veg a day, we'll be fine.

Next mums, after years of being told breast is best, are warned prolonged breastfeeding for more than four months could increase their children's risk of growing up with heart disease. Other experts, of course, disagree.

Now, as if farmers weren't having a hard enough time, medical practitioner-turned-TV doctor and newspaper columnist Dr Vernon Coleman is telling anyone who will listen that eating meat causes cancer. He's even set up a website - MeatCausesCancer.com - devoted to spreading the word.

The good doctor says it is a "scandal of astonishing proportions" that most people still don't know about the links between certain types of food and the development of breast, colon and prostate cancer.

"It is fairly widely known, I think, that cigarettes, sunshine, asbestos and X rays cause cancer," he writes in the introduction to his website.

"But it is less widely known that fatty foods and meat cause cancer. And it is less well known that fibre and green vegetables help protect against cancer."

Now nobody would deny that diet and health are linked - and nutritionists have been trumpeting the message for years that we should eat more fresh fruit and veg and cut down on fat and cholesterol. But simply telling people that if they eat meat they'll get cancer doesn't seem very helpful. Protein, after all, is an essential part of our diet - and meat is an excellent source of protein.

York GP and spokesman for the British Medical Association Dr Tony Sweeney says it is important to be sensible about what you eat.

"There's a saying, everything in moderation - and that's true," he says. "That goes for meat and everything else - including alcohol.

"Most advice is for people to have more fish and more vegetables - the five portions of fruit or vegetables a day. But we need protein and meat is an obvious source of protein."

Dr Coleman's most controversial move is calling on the government and the EU to order butchers and restaurants to print 'Meat Causes Cancer' warnings.

It doesn't require much imagination to guess what farmers and butchers would say to that.

"It's laughable!" says Ian Sinton, who owns Shambles Butchers in York. "Everything causes cancer these days! Meat's good for you. You just need a healthy, balanced diet."

Amen to that, say I. Pass the apple sauce...