Each week I read India Knight’s column in the Sunday Times, and each week she manages to annoy me. You might ask why I keep reading it: I think the answer is I enjoy being annoyed. There is nothing quite like the pleasurable feeling of indignation that comes from thinking: how can anyone get paid for writing this garbage?

This week (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/india_knight/article2511945.ece) India turns her thoughts to allergies and food intolerances. She doesn’t like people who pretend to have allergies or food intolerances when they’re just worried about getting fat. It’s bad manners, according to India, to “fax” (but who faxes nowadays?) your food preferences to your hostess before a dinner party.

As you might expect, India gets confused about the difference between allergies and intolerances.

She says:

“I understand that allergies (where the reaction is dramatic and occasionally life-threatening) and intolerances (where the reaction is unpleasant but less extreme) do actually exist; I have a small nephew whose medically diagnosed intolerances are so severe that he is under the care of St Thomas’ hospital in London. His parents carry an EpiPen.”

But actually, the difference between an allergy and an intolerance is not one of degree but one of kind: an allergic reaction is one triggered by the immune system, while an intolerance will make you feel unwell, but won’t kill you. Now if her nephew’s parents are carrying an EpiPen that is because their son has an allergy, not an intolerance: if the child goes into anaphylactic shock, as sometimes happens with extreme allergies, an adrenaline shot from the EpiPen will save him.

India then wanders off the point a little to talk about how terrible food additives are – something of an obsession of hers. People should worry about food additives, she says, not imaginary allergies.

And then she comes out with this:

“As I never tire of pointing out to pregnant friends who are longing for the odd glass of wine, our mothers’ generation smoked and drank their way through pregnancy with no extra folic acid and no adverse effects whatsoever…”

That’s right: “no adverse effects whatsoever.” Never mind the wealth of scientific evidence on the effects of smoking or alcohol on the developing foetus; never mind the evidence that folic acid can reduce incidences of spina bifida. This is what India wants to share with us: E numbers are bad, but smoking and drinking in pregnancy is fine. Stuff the science.

Is it just me who thinks that someone writing a column for a national newspaper ought to check her facts first? Even if it’s just to conduct a little, light Google-based research? Or is it fine to make wild assertions that run completely counter to years and years of hard-earned scientific knowledge?