A celebrity chef has called for margarine to be banned from sale on the supermarket shelves.
James Martin, who is best known for his work on Saturday Kitchen, revealed his hate for the product which often used as an alternative to butter.
The 49-year-old said that margarine contains ‘hidden salt and fat’ and contains “two elements away from plastic”, the Mirror writes.
James recently penned a cook book named “Butter”, which has a number of recipes that make the most of what he described as a “comforting superstar”.
He blamed the growth of margarine in the UK due to the number of chefs unwilling to dismiss the ingredient when compared to Italy, France and Spain.
James fumed: “Margarine should be banned. It’s the ready-made food, it’s the packet food, the hidden salt, hidden fat.
“It’s dreadful, dreadful stuff - it’s two elements away from plastic, it’s horrendous stuff.
“I’m a farmer’s kid. We’ve always had full-fat milk, butter, and cream. And that’s what we had. There wasn’t such a thing as semi-skimmed milk in our house.”
“That’s the problem in this country. It’s not the butter in a butter block or butter you put on your toast. It’s the fact that not as many people cook in the UK as they do in France or Italy or Spain.”
James returned to social media last year after deciding in 2020 that the abuse just wasn't worth it.
He became the target of cruel online messages after technical difficulties hampered an online cook-a-long he hosted during lockdown.
It was too much for him but has now logged on again after taking time away.
James wrote before he quit: "Having seen some of the comments posted online regarding last night's cook along and the anger towards me given the technical issues that the production team were having.
"I would like to apologise again for this and I will be chasing up with Live Nation, the production company, IT team and all the people they hired, to find out the problem.
"Having said that, this is small comfort to some of you online who are quite rightly angry at me. I promise I will be speaking to them tomorrow, I wasn't involved in the IT side of things and know little about it but I will get all the issues raised and sorted as much as I possibly can immediately.”
The star added: "It's unfortunate they didn't use my team that makes the Saturday show to do this but, as you can imagine, it was all out of my hands.
"To the rest of you who had a good night, thank you but due to the large amount of vile comments posted directly towards me, this will be my last post as I will be taking a break from posting personally and all social media for the foreseeable future."
