Woman's Hour - 09/06/2009

With Jane Garvey. Caroline Flint's resignation as Europe Minister last week followed the exit of other high profile Ministers such as Hazel Blears, Jacqui Smith and Beverley Hughes from the government. In her resignation letter, Flint accused Gordon Brown of having 'a two-tier government' and treating her and several of the other women attending cabinet 'as little more than female window dressing'. These women were amongst the 101 female Labour MPs - or Blair Babes as they were called - who entered parliament with high hopes back in 1997. So what went wrong and where are the female ministers with real weight? Jane talks to Diane Abbott and Anne McElvoy from the London Evening Standard. The food writer and chef Jennifer McLagan is on a mission to dispel the myth that fat is a 'greasy killer'. Her new book 'Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient' has won the prestigious James Beard Award for Cookbook of the Year in America. In it, she explains the health benefits of eating animal fats compared to vegetable and manufactured fats that we often choose - whether it's appreciating a good butter or cooking with that almost taboo item: lard. She argues that for all of history minus the last thirty years, fat has been at the centre of human diets and cultures but now we fear it. She joins Jane along with Dr Helen Crawley, a registered public health nutritionist and Director of the Caroline Walker Trust, to discuss what is a healthy amount of animal fat in our diet. The number of people diagnosed with malignant melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, has increased to more than 10,000 a year after an alarming rise in new cases, according to the latest Cancer Research UK figures. It is now the most common cancer in women in their twenties. But there is also broad concern over the low levels of Vitamin D in some parts of the population, with the reappearance of rickets in the UK and some parts of Europe. If our key natural source for Vitamin D is the sun, then our need for some sun exposure is important. So is there a healthy balance to be found? Jane Garvey is joined by Dr Kat Arney from Cancer Research UK and Dr Gail Goldberg from Human Nutrition Research. Opera singer Christine Rice is about to open in the role of Suzuki in the English National Opera's production of Madam Butterfly. However, life could have been very different for her. She studied physics at Oxford and was working towards her doctorate, researching the way light reflects in clouds, when she decided on a career in music instead. She tells Jane about the variety of roles she has played, including Suzuki, and about how she came to turn her back on clouds.