Harcombe Diet followers will immediately spot the error – either in this write up from the Daily Mail Science reporter (Fiona MacRae) or from the press release itself. Food allergy and Food Intolerance are seriously different – potentially fatally. Food allergy absolutely is not in the mind – ever! If you suffer an anaphylactic shock after coming close to a peanut, you have a peanut allergy (and likely problems with many, or all, nuts). If you are like a friend of mine, who has a life threatening allergy to kiwi fruit, you know about it and it’s not in your mind – if it gets near your body, let alone inside you, it can kill.

Food Intolerance is the ‘too much/too often’ problem and the body literally becomes intolerant to this over-consumed substance. It’s the body’s way of saying “I can’t tolerate this substance any more“. (Sadly the withdrawal symptoms that accompany intolerance mean that you will crave the very food(s) to which you are intolerant).

What’s the most likely food intolerance in the UK? (USA and Australia also)? Wheat. Why? Because we eat it several times every day as a general rule: wheat toast or wheat cereal for breakfast; wheat muffins, wheat biscuits, wheat cereal bars etc for mid morning; wheat sandwiches or wheat pasta salad for lunch; more wheat snacks in the afternoon; wheat pasta, or wheat pizza or wheat pies or wheat pastry for dinner and then more wheat snacks in the evening.

The Flour Advisory Bureau statistics tell us “UK flour consumption per capita reached 73.3kg in 2002.” That means 1.4 kilograms of flour consumed per average person in the UK per week. I can’t find a single ingredient that we eat more of .

So – back to this study: researchers at the University of Portsmouth blamed internet searches and celebrity food fads for “make-believe allergies and intolerances” (that allergies mistake again) and said that, as a result, millions of people are unnecessarily restricting their diets – starving themselves of their favourite (interesting choice of word; try ‘addictive’ also) foods and of key nutrients (no nutrients in sugar and bread/cereals need to have added vitamins to be worth consuming, so clutching at straws here nutritionally).

You read on and find that the report was written by Dr Carina Venter – a dietician who specialises in allergies (allergies or intolerance? This is quite important). Then you get to the point in the article where I break out into something between a smile and a grimace – I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. The study was funded by the Flour Advisory Bureau. Now what was the most common food intolerance again?!

Dr Hilary Jones (love him) answered a question in the News of the World Sunday supplement (love it) in the October 2009 issue and said “About 45% of people suffer from food intolerance“. Personally, I have yet to find someone who does not feel better and lose weight faster when they avoid wheat. Sugar and flour are still the two products that I rarely consume – even after over 10 years of being in Phase 3. Has my health suffered in any single way? Quite the opposite.

Sadly in this world of conflicts of interest and food interested parties sponsoring diet advice – you are better off being your own judge and taking charge of your own health. If you do Phase 1 (it’s only 5 days) and feel better and then try the advice on food intolerance -  reintroducing foods and testing and keeping a diary -  you will see what makes you feel well and unwell. Your body will tell you – if it can be heard over the conflict of interest advice!

Good luck – Zoe x

The estimate goes that eating the government recommended saturated fat intake (which by definition means eating more carbs – because that’s all that is left to eat) could save 3,500 lives a year. I really cannot recommend highly enough Dr Malcolm Kendrick’s “The Great cholesterol Con” , where he goes into an example of these lives saved claims…

The British Heart Foundation, Heart Protection Study is the study Dr Kendrick tears apart: The study claims that if an extra 10 million  high-risk people were to go on statins (the drug companies must have loved this report), this would save about 50,000 lives a year. First of all – lives can not be saved. Life can be prolonged, but we’re all going to die! The issue then becomes – for how long can statins possibly prolong life/delay death – if at all.

Kendrick:  “If one in two hundred more people are alive after one year of taking statins, this means that if you wait another two-hundreths of a year (plus another little bit) the statin group will have caught up on the ‘placebo’ group in total number of deaths.” Kendrick works out that there is an increased life expectancy of slightly under two days. Then “50,000 lives will be saved” becomes the slightly less sensational “If 10 million people, at very high risk of heart disease, took a statin for a year, they would all live – on average – two days longer“. They would have to take statins every day for two hundred years, from the date of diagnosis, to live an extra year! Or, if people take statins for a (pretty long) thirty year period, they may buy themselves approximately two months.

That’s just heart disease stats remember. The largest study of cholesterol levels and overall mortality (Honolulu study) shows that you are more likely to die from one of the many overall causes of death if you have low cholesterol. Low cholesterol and high mortality are the correlated factors in this study (and others looking at overall mortality). So – you may gain 2 months, you are more likely to die of cancer or some other cause and you may have some pretty nasty side effects from statins during the 30 years.

Anyway – back to the butter. Here was my response to the article on the Daily Mail blog this morning:

“This is verging on medical malpractice. I don’t know what is worse – a doctor making such an outrageous statement or the fact that Unilever PR are behind it . Unilever being the makers of low fat spreads and the co. represented on the board of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Nutrition – advisors to the Food Standards Agency, Dept of Health etc.

Fact – butter is a real food, delivered as nature intends us to eat it and naturally solid at room temperature.
Fact – man made spreads are processed foods, delivered as food manufacturers intend us to eat them and goodness knows what has been done to them to make them solid at room temperature.

The UK National Food Survey tells us that we eat 39 g of butter per person per week. As compared to 731 g of sugar (World Health Org) and 1.4 kilos of flour (Flour Advisory Bureau) per person per week. Which substance is more likely the cause of  heart disease (obesity) or any other modern illness?”

A study done by Carnegie Weight Management (fat camp for kids, basically) found that an average Christmas dinner can contain 956 calories and48g of fat. Who cares?! Turkey, carrots, sprouts, parsnips, even roast potatoes and a bit of stuffing are not going to do anyone any harm. What will do the harm is the sugary cereal for breakfast on Christmas morning, any mince pies and Christmas cake in the afternoon and the mountains of selection boxes, sweets, chocolates and total sugar junk that the children get and eat on Christmas day and the days afterwards.

Real food at mealtimes does not make us fat. It’s the sugar and flour we eat at other times that does this.

However, I have just compared some of the yr 2000 DEFRA figs last night with some 2002 stats on the two ingredients we consume the most of – that’s flour and sugar in case you were wondering:

1) The flour advisory bureau confirms that our flour consumption was 73.3kg per person per year in 2002.

2) Our sugar consumption was 38kg per person per year in the same year – 2002. (World Health Organisation statistics).

That means we were eating 730 flour calories and 416 sugar calories per person per day in 2002 (and I bet it hasn’t gone down). That’s 1150 calories per person per day with whatever nutrients are added to flour by law (fortified) and no nutrients in sugar whatsoever.

Another way of looking at this is that we eat 1.4 kilos of flour per person per week, 731 grams of sugar per person per week and just 39 grams of butter per person per week and 1.75 eggs per person per week. Does anyone really believe that the eggs and the butter are a) making us fat or b) giving us heart disease?! Or could it be this enormous quantity of refined carbohydrates that we consume, which we have had no chance to evolve to adapt to?

p.s. is it also any wonder that wheat intolerance is getting so common? This is an extraordinary amount of one ingredient being added to everything from Pizza to bread to sausages to biscuits to cakes to pies to pastries to sauces to cereals and much more.