President`s Comments
26th February 2006
David Smith of the Welsh Food Alliance writes to "Marketing Public Health" that the rot will only stop when teaching nutrition health and home economics is restored to the National Curriculum.
Today's Sunday Telegraph 26-02-2006 has front page top headlines on the rise in diabetes amongst children. Inside, the ignorance of opinion leaders is fully exposed in the same paper and rams home the need for education of our school children on nutiriton and health.
In a debate about nutrition and health in the Sunday Telegraph and on their web site, the ignorance of some of the participants is clearly exposed. The more sensible say we do not know or admit to having priorities other than nutrition in food production.
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We
can eat strawberries at Christmas time is one example of great
improvements in nutrition. Food is cheaper it is said. Yes it is
cheaper in more ways than one. On
the question of obesity John Humphries is reported to declare that
obesity has nothing to do with food it is stupid mothers.
It is amazing that such a high profile person can flaunt ignorance and sexism in this way.
He
evidently knows nothing about nutrition and the radical changes in the
food we eat that have been introduced through the thirst for rapid
production.
A
chicken
thigh today has 100 more fat calories than its equivalent in
1970. You do not know you are eating these extra calories. Does
that help us to achieve a calorie sensible diet? Does that help us
unwittingly become obese and diabetic?
Whereas
chicken and beef used to be considered as sources of protein and the
former a good, low fat protein, the chickens today provide 3 times the
calories as fat compared to protein. The opposite was the case 50 years
ago. The same is true for the beef carcass although you have to go back
much further before you come to a lean carcass (The beef that the
Drovers
walked from Wales up the Talgarth Road to Smithfield would have
been pretty healthy and lean. Today they stand in stalls - Get no
excercise and eat high energy foods! Exactly the opposite of what the
doctor tells us to do to keep lean and healthy).
So we
now get more calories from fat than protein in the food chain from what
the public considers to be rich source of protein.
Is this
what Humphries wants us to believe is an improvement? Beef and
chicken turned from a source of protein to a source of fat?
His
ignorance is compounded by saying we live longer. Well in 1972 I
published the evidence-based prediction (reviewed with alarm by
Graham Rose in the Sunday Times) that because these sort of changes
were major causes of death from cardio-vascular disease and because
brain development is heavily dependent on a healthy vascular system,
the brain would be the next to be affected by production of bad
food.
Last June the audit of European burden of ill
health concluded that brain disorders, as predicted, had now overtaken
all other disorders at a cost of 386 billion Euros at 2004 prices for
the 25 member states of the EU. Heart disease has now been relegated to
second place. Like obesity, the rapid rise in mental ill health has
been sharpest amongst the young children.
Living
longer maybe but remember those who are 100 today were born in 1906 and
the egg from which they were born was probably made 1880 or there
abouts by the grand mother. So much for knowledge!
The Sunday Telegraph front page describes the rise in diabetes in
children as the tip of an iceberg of ill health.
Humpries'
plaudits are not only ignorant but are dangerous. Because he is a
popular media person, his remarks may lull people into a false
sense of security. That lulling can on;y occur because
these adult people grew up without any education on the most
important issue for their own well being - nutrition and
health.
Yes empower the children with knowledge. It is evidently too late for some of the adults.
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