Author, obesity researcher .

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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Kellogg’s Special K Mini Breaks

I saw a full page advert in a Sunday supplement magazine yesterday for Special K Mini Breaks – Chocolate variety. Described as “Mmmmmmmmmm”; “crunch”; “delish”; “biscuit”‘; “chocolate”; “crispy”; “choccy”; “biscuity”‘; “crunch”; “moreish”; “99 calories a bag”; “crunchy, delicious, biscuity bites”. How to get every word possible to tempt a dieter to eat stuff that they [...]

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Kellogg’s Coco Pops Advert

Bit of a long blog this, but hopefully worth it! 1)  I subscribe to the Children’s Food Campaign newsletter and support their campaigns. The CFC got a great article in The Independent, which can be seen here. 2) This was an extract from the Children’s Food Campaign January newsletter: “Ever thought of avoiding Coco Pops [...]

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Guideline Daily Amounts – GDA’s

I thought I’d see if I could find a calculator on the internet anywhere to see what my diet would register on the GDA scale. I imagine it will score very badly, because we are supposed to be following the “Eatwell plate” and I think this is the cause of obesity, rather than the basis [...]

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Lunch boxes with as much sugar as 10 doughnuts

This was widely reported in the UK Media on 16 November: A “Which” Consumer survey found that a child’s lunchbox could contain as much sugar as 10 doughnuts. A packed lunch with 5 items including cheese, biscuits and fruit juice, contained 60g of sugar. This equates to 12 teaspoons making the lunch as sugary as [...]

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Breakfast stubbed out

“More than 1.2 million children begin the day by eating junk food or smoking cigarettes instead of having a proper breakfast”, a survey shows. Regular readers of this blog will know I have little regard for parents who don’t give their children the most important thing they can give them – health. Being a great [...]

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Cereal makers told: No more fake health claims

This was a long overdue article by Sean Poulter, the consumer affairs correspondent. Some cereal brands are promoted as healthy on the back of a couple of artificially added vitamins. Can you believe we spend more than £1bn on cereals each year? The consumer group, WHICH, found that 31 of the top 100 selling brands [...]

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