The McCarrison Society - Feb 2006: Sunday Telegraph and John Humpries expose ignorance on Nutrition and Health.

Feb 2006: Sunday Telegraph and John Humpries expose ignorance on Nutrition and Health.

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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