Author, obesity researcher .

24,000 diabetes deaths a year ‘could be avoided’

This news story broke on 14 December 2011. There are 2.3 million diabetics in the UK. The vast majority (c. 90-95%) are type 2 diabetics – all will be explained below. The remainder are type 1 diabetics. A recent (the first ever) audit on patient deaths from diabetes notes that approximately 70-75,000 diabetic patients die [...]

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England’s Obesity Strategy (not)

On Thursday 13 October, 2011, the Department of Health issued this press release, optimistically called “Government calls time on obesity.”  The government has done anything but. We need to remember that the UK health service was devolved in 1999, with England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland managed separately from this point forth. Hence, this Department [...]

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Denmark Fat Tax

In March 2003, Denmark became the first country in the world to introduce laws to severely restrict consumption of trans fats. This has been reported as a ban on trans fats, but the law is on ingredients rather than final products and the limit was placed at 2% of fats and oils to be used [...]

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Who’s teaching our children about ‘nutrition’?

I came across a school book for GCSE in Home Economics: Food & Nutrition recently. As someone who has studied nutrition extensively – and found virtually everything being taught to be wrong – I was naturally curious. Kellogg’s & Coco-pops I picked up the main textbook “Examining Food & Nutrition” by Jenny Ridgwell (1996). The [...]

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MyPlate – the new American USDA food pyramid

The new American Food Plate was launched on Thursday 2nd June 2011. Here it is – or you can see the original on the USDA web site. Let’s start with the positive: 1) It’s much easier to understand that the current American Food Pyramid (2005): This was so complicated (and seemingly needed to be individually [...]

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Five-a-day – is it enough?!

Five-a-day – is it enough?! Zoe Harcombe comments on an article in The Independent about 5-a-day and heart disease, cancer and bad science.

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Red meat & cancer & very bad journalism

I am struggling to think of a diet & health story, which has been reported worse than the one dominating the press this week – and there tends to be at least one in the press every day. The newspapers seem to think that “artery-clogging” is an adjective to precede either, or both, of the [...]

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The White Paper on Public Health (Andrew Lansley)

The long awaited White Paper on public health has been published (30/11/2010). As someone working exclusively in the field of obesity, I had expected the paper to address the single biggest avoidable health crisis in the UK – obesity. The word obesity appears a dozen times in the 98 page document, but only to describe [...]

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Social workers took son into care because mum wouldn’t feed him junk

This is a horrifying story, which will send shivers down the spines of loving, law abiding parents… Zak was a fairly typical two year old – more interested in the world around him than in getting food inside him (my niece is the same). The caring parents took him to their doctor for some advice [...]

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Wales to get two new teams to tackle eating disorders – Western Mail

Well done Edwina Hart, Health Minister for Wales, for announcing a team in South Wales and one in North Wales to help with eating disorders. £500,000 has been set aside this year to develop the service and this will rise to £1m each year to keep the initiative going. This is a really important development [...]

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