The UK’s broken nutrition policy is endangering a generation – it’s time to fix our failing food system
Government nutrition policy is developed by civil servants, who direct the Scientific Committee on Nutrition (SACN), a committee of supposedly independent experts to find evidence to support UK nutrition policy.
An article last year in the British Medical Journal (the BMJ) caused something of a flurry in the nutrition world. It highlighted links between the members of SACN and the global food and drink industry. For example, someone in the subgroup on maternal and child nutrition is being paid over £5,000 a year by an American company that makes infant formula.
Someone else in the main committee is getting paid by Danone, the Almond Board of California, Alpro, Nestlé, the Dairy Council, The International Nut and Dried Fruit Council and Yakult, and is also a member of the American Society for Nutrition which is funded by companies like Kellogg’s, PepsiCo and Hershey. The potential financial conflict of interests suggest that the experts are not necessarily either ‘independent’, or unbiased.
This is why people in the UK are getting fatter and fatter like the people in the USA
And the civil servants themselves seem to be terribly attached to old theories and debunked ideas. They continue to demonise saturated fat, despite a growing body of evidence that it does not cause heart disease.
About that ineffective policy
Between 1996 and 2020 the UK government implemented 689 policies intended to tackle obesity. Not a single one of them has had any beneficial impact; obesity (and the bad health that goes with it) has just gone up and up and up.
Then there is the Eatwell Guide, updated from the Eatwell Plate in 2016. It’s supposed to show what everyone should be eating. Most of the ‘experts’ that worked on the Eatwell Guide came from the food and drink industry rather than the supposedly unbiased civil service.
It continues to promote the high carbohydrate, low fat diet that UK policy has been based on for several decades, even though it is probable that that policy has been a key driver in the obesity epidemic
Eat more carbohydrates, Eat more carbohydrates, Eat more carbohydrates, Eat more carbohydrates,.
Here is where the promotion of the ketogenic diet needs to sit.
start with: The Magic Pill (2017)
watch and learn: how to cure obesity, diabetes and epilepsy. How the big food corporations have promoted fake and false information on diet.
youtube link:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/tqGMZWMhjUo
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