The Food Standards Agency FSA, UK's food watchdog launched an advertising campaign to promote healthier diets as it said Britons are eating 20 % more saturated fat than they should.

Working via a medium of hard hitting television advertisements as well as posters, the campaign hopes to create awareness as well as suggest ways to cut down on saturated fat in an attempt to reduce the risk of premature deaths in the country from heart disease. The agency said consumers in the country were eating 20 % more saturated fat than recommended by the government and by reducing the consumption 3,500 premature deaths could be saved every year.

"People say they do know that saturated fat is bad for them but they don't necessarily link it to heart disease," said the agency's Chief Executive Tim Smith.

"It's important they make that connection, because heart disease is the UK's number one killer -- one in three of us will die as a result," he added.

Some of the suggestions given by the agency to cut down on the consumption of saturated fat are to grill rather than fry food, trim the fat off the meat, use vegetable oil rather than butter and to grate cheese rather than slicing it. Smith said, "We need to eat leaner meat and a bit less cheese, switch to lower fat milks and eat healthier snacks, cutting down on cakes and biscuits.

"Supermarkets and manufacturers have done some good work so that now when we're shopping there is an increasing range of lower saturated fat foods available and better labelling, and we'd like to see more of this."

FSA conducted a survey of 3219 people and found that only 29 % of people remove the skin from the poultry before eating and only 24 % trimmed the fat off meat joints and only 43 % grilled their meat instead of frying it. The agency said although people know that saturated fat is bad for them they don't connect it to the food they are eating and heart disease.

The survey also revealed that although almost all the people questioned had heard about saturated fat 61 % said they believed they should consume less of it in their diet, yet only 19 % said they actually planned to reduce their intake. 48% people surveyed believed that they did not need to worry about their consumption of saturated fat if they exercised, were not overweight or consumed lots of fruit and vegetables as well.

Working class and lower middle class women aged 25 to 60 are the campaigns main focus as they are believed to be the most likely to change their behavior and also as they are most likely to be the main grocery shoppers in the family.

Dietician Jacqui Morrell said, "Many of our favourite dishes including spaghetti bolognaise, chicken curry and even the humble cheese sandwich contain more than 10g of saturated fat per serving - that's over half of a female's Guideline Daily Amount of 20g.

"Combine that with butter on 2 slices of toast for breakfast, which contains 10.8g and you've already exceeded your limit for the day." The bottom line that everyone agreed to was that people needed to be aware of what they ate, how they prepared it as well as the health consequences.