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The UK public has been fairly resistant to health promotion messages encouraging reduced fat intake as a component of the strategy to help achieve the targets for cardiovascular disease risk reduction identified in The Health of the Nation and extended in Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation. This project is designed to test the hypothesis that a more positive message to eat more (low fat) starchy foods would be better received and achieve the desired dietary goals. Newcastle families, in enumeration districts in the middle three quintiles of the Townsend Deprivation Index who do not meet current dietary targets for fat and starch, are being recruited to one of three interventions designed to encourage and enable them to choose diets richer in starchy foods. Dietary outcomes are being measured at three and six months after the interventions. We are investigating the process of change through use of questionnaires and in‐depth interviews with both “achievers” and “non‐achievers”.

REGULAR READERS of this column will have noted, perhaps with relief, the self‐restraint I have applied in recent months in connection with the game of cricket, not a word about which have I imparted to you throughout the summer.