Who’s responsible for tackling obesity?

Years ago I was appalled to find that a friend’s mother was eating a high fat diet because she was diabetic and that was the recommendation at the time. That was at a time when the public was being told of the dangers of a high fat diet, particularly saturated fats.

Some carbohydrates such as starch are rapidly converted into glucose (the sugar in blood) as you say. Unrefined carbohydrates are much better, so many vegetables (avoid potatoes, which have a high starch content) and wholegrain/wholemeal carbohydrates are a better choice for those with diabetes or want to avoid this horrible disease.

Anyone with diabetes or pre-diabetes should be given dietary advice and I don’t think that will be to eat a high fat diet. There is a good case for making the public aware of the complications of poorly-controlled diabetes.

I agree that general dietary advice should encourage the public to seek specialist advice if they have a condition such as diabetes, where more specific advice is appropriate.

Wavechange,

you say “Years ago I was appalled to find that a friend’s mother was eating a high fat diet because she was diabetic and that was the recommendation at the time. That was at a time when the public was being told of the dangers of a high fat diet, particularly saturated fats.”

Why were you appalled? Did you appreciate the difference between the types of fats, and the differences between processed and unprocessed fats?

Butter and olive oil are fats, but allegedly quite good for you.

Massively processed fats in manufactured pastries, pies etc. may not be nearly as good for you.

Medical opinion keeps changing.
For instance, eggs keep going from being good to bad to good again as the understanding of cholesterol grows.
Red wine is good then bad then good.

Perhaps fats are about to become good again 🙂

littlegrey cat

I certainly know about different types of fats and have given some university lectures the topic. I have some knowledge of what is in foods but know little about the effect of consumption of different oils and fats on humans.

I am not sure that medical opinion is changing as frequently as you may think. The press and those who claim to know about diet select information so that they can present a news story or justify whatever they want to claim. There is a lot of misuse of science. It is difficult for the public to know what is best to do, and even with my scientific background I find it difficult to know what is best to eat or avoid.

One useful step forward was the discovery that trans-fats can be harmful when consumed in large amounts. These are produced when vegetable oils are solidified to produce fats. They can be identified as ‘hydrogenated vegetable oil’ in ingredient lists. Now that the problem is known, manufacturers have decreased or eliminated them from their products.

I would take some of the news stories about diet with a pinch of salt. Not too much, of course. 🙂

littlegrey cat

I realise that I did not answer your question. I was appalled by the recommendation that my friends mother should eat a high fat diet because of repeated warnings that this could lead to heart disease. She did not have any of the complications of diabetes but she did die of heart disease. Obviously that could have been coincidental but it was enough to encourage her obese son, who lived at home, to switch to a low fat diet and lose a lot of weight.

Wavechange

I think we may be in agreement here (ish).
If the diet you referred to above had a high percentage of trans fat then there was every cause for concern.
If it was just “high fat” then it could have been good.

I’ve just been reading some views on Ancel Keys which tends to reinforce the view that a lot of the populist “knowledge” about fats and diet is based on questionable analysis of questionable data.

What was that quote about lies, dmaned lies, and statistcs? 🙂

Baked beans are not junk food. 🙂
For vegetables, frozen is usually at least as healthy as fresh. The freezing preserves the vitamins at the time of picking. During shipping, storage and display “fresh” fruit and vegetables are deteriorating all the time.
Fresh vegetable and fruit should last several days, possibly a week or more.

So really perhaps you should get perishables from a better shop than your current local supermarket. We find our local Lidl and Aldi very good for fresh fruit and vegetables as well as being cheap.

Please don’t equate all packaged foods with being unhealthy.

I only refer to them as junk food, due to the high quantities of sugar and salt they contain. Maybe I should have just said unhealthy.

I will remain open-minded but there has been a great deal of criticism of the Atkins diet, which has been dubbed as the short-cut to heart disease on account of the high fat content.

Many diabetics manage to control their blood sugar well by means of diet or diet and drugs. Monitoring blood sugar, understanding their condition and willpower are essential to success.

Thanks – I note that Wavechange above did not think that diet advice would be high fat (although it used to be).
Hopefully the pendulum will swing back the other way and it will be recognised once again that the LCHF diet has a place in the management of weight and diabetes.

I think there is currently an emotive connection between eating fat and being fat.

We are discussing here the proportions of different foodstuffs within a calorie controlled diet, and the efects of different mixes of food types when eaten in moderation. Eating a diet where the proportion of fat compared to carbohydrate is quite high can help limit the total calories consumed.

NHS (established) advice tends to lag a few years behind the latest information in most cases.

Garry,

simple or simplistic?

If someone already has a weight problem which has compromised their mobility, telling them “Simple, do more exercise” is neither a practical nor caring response.

One solution is to eat a diet which does not encourage you to eat big meals.

Another is to educate the people who are feeding these poor people.
Leaving aside the somewhat murky world of “feeders” and “gainers” most very obese people need someone to actively shop for them, prepare their meals, and feed them.

God knows why anyone would do this, but the only answer IMHO is education, education, education!

At last, someone who appreciates what the real problem is!

It isn’t, as is commonly assumed (by Which? and many others) overeating, it’s underexercising. The average calorific intake has fallen over the past fifty years, so people should be thinner. They aren’t because exercise levels have plummeted.

A reasonable response to this situation is to encourage people to exercise more, in a form that they find easy and convenient to do, and one of the best ways is active travel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_travel. Sport has a limited appeal, and only the dedicated few maintain it for long, and likewise going to the gym.

Unlike all other forms of exercise, active travel is just the way you get around, and isn’t seen as a chore. It also saves money, is quicker around towns, reduces pollution, congestion and road danger, and quite why our society isn’t promoting it with absolute conviction is beyond me. It would have far more effect than any sporting event like the Olympics, and would cost less.

The main reason that people don’t take up active travel, especially cycling, is that it is portrayed as dangerous, especially by those promoting cycle helmets: after all, if cycling wasn’t dangerous no-one would bother wearing a helmet. In fact, cycling is, by any measure, safe, and the risks are about the same as walking. Nevertheless, organisations promoting helmets deliberately portray it as a very risky activity, with propaganda suggesting that it is extremely reckless to ride a bike without a helmet. Just check out publicity from BRAKE, BHIT, and Which? which recommends helmets for cyclists but not pedestrians, based on irrelevant laboratory tests. There are also individuals like James Cracknell who produced that frightening video without mentioning that he is sponsored by the helmet manufacturer – I wonder how many helmets they sold after that.

Perhaps Which? might like to investigate the best buy in health terms between a “healthy” diet and active travel?

Apologies if this is a repeat, but the first attempt doesn’t seem to have gone through.

Patrick, I think you’ve misunderstood: I wasn’t talking about activity holidays, I was talking about active travel, making all local journeys on foot or bicycle, totally different.

Regular cyclists live longer and are fitter, healthier, wealthier and slimmer than the general population, and estimates of benefit to risk vary from between 20 and 80 to one. It is much more dangerous not to ride a bicycle than to do so. Whilst I’m not aware of any similar data for walking, the effects must be beneficial.

Getting people to integrate active travel into their life would have more effect than diets, exhortations to eat less and exercise more, and more effect than the olympics. It would also reduce pollution, congestion, noise and road danger, whilst improving public health. I am completely baffled as to why our successive governments and local authorities continue to plan for the motor car and only include active travel as an afterthought, if at all.

One of the major reasons given for not taking up cycling is the danger from other road users, and this attitude comes largely from helmet propaganda and promotion, but as I stated above, it’s more dangerous not to ride a bike than to ride one.

It is unfortunate that so many agencies which should be promoting cycling for the public health and many other reasons, seek to deter it by portraying it as dangerous to justify their obsession with cycle helmets e.g. BRAKE, BHIT, RoSPA and Which? itself, which happily promotes helmets because they pass utterly irrelevant laboratory tests.

Perhaps Which? could test the effectiveness of active travel compared to going to the gym or dieting?

Check out cyclehelmets.org for the facts about cycling and helmets.

Hi Richard – it’s a really interesting area, and one which I fully support. I don’t like forking out money for a gym membership when I can get exercise by walking or cycling (if I’m brave enough – am a bit too scared to cycle in London). Also, I enjoy the feeling of getting somewhere, without having to sit in a stuffy tube.

As it’s primarily focused on health, I suspect research along the lines that you suggest would be best done by a health charity rather than Which? itself, although I like the idea of the test. If you’re interested, sustrans is a charity that focuses on encouraging more people to take up active travel, and it has collated some interesting research on the benefits etc, here: http://www.sustrans.org.uk/resources/research-and-monitoring/related-academic-research

I pressed disagree by mistake and it wont change but yes drinking water is important but that is only half of the problem. It is a magic cure to many symptoms but it will not cure everything

I think you were right to click ‘disagree’, Vanessa, as others have done.

I have had a quick look at Dr Young’s website and here is a small quotation: “According to Dr. Young, water with a pH between 9 and 11, molecularly structured for optimal hydration, and electron rich, is most beneficial. ” I’m not sure what that means and I have a degree in chemistry.

The real benefit of drinking tap water is that it is cheap and there is no plastic bottles to make or dispose of, making it better for the environment.

I have not read the book but I know water is important but it is never going to be the B all and end all. Water is better for you than fizzy drinks as some people will find they are drinking their calories instead of eating them. Obesity must ultimately be down to the indivitual, But in saying that education is also important their are so many fad diets out there through the net and some times overweight people do not know where to turn to. I run a group that educates people in what they need to know about food labels how to read them, what type of foods to avoid e.g transfats, hydrogenated fats, what the differing names for sugars are and many other topics but it will still be up to the indivitual to eat better. As long as there are cheap foods available and VAT is put on the healthy foods and suppliments then people will choose to eat what they can afford to eat.

I very much agree with you about the fizzy drinks. I don’t buy them, except for visitors.

There is general agreement that diets should focus on eating less food in conjunction with taking more exercise. Some of the fad diets could damage health.

Trans-fats should not be a major problem nowadays. Reputable manufacturers have decreased or eliminated them and a small amount will do no harm.

I urge you not to take or encourage others to use supplements except on medical advice. Making and selling these products is now a huge industry, selling people products they do not need. It is usually a harmless waste of money but some supplements (e.g. vitamin A and vitamin D) are harmful if taken in excess. The purveyors sometimes misuse science to convince people that they need these products. It is a disgrace.

Education is very important but I strongly advise you avoid using any books or websites that promote nutritional supplements. The NHS advice is good and any books used in school or university teaching should be fine.

Without any effort from the government our parents could have been drunks, heroin addicts, heavy smokers and criminals. Helping people to behave themselves without unnecessarily interfering with their lives is a delicate balance.

What has changed in the last 60 years is that most people can afford to buy more food than they need to eat, many of us have a more sedentary lifestyle, supermarkets sell an enormous amount of pre-prepared food, and using take-aways or eating out have become more common.

We don’t just need to educate children into healthy eating. Many adults need help too.

Totally agree with Wavechange, a nice summary of the situation nowadays and the tightrope our government has to walk on. It can’t let us sink or swim. It can’t take away our freedom. And with this freedom comes our own responsibility.