Health Guidelines and Food

While health guidance from government health departments can be useful, the messages are often very confusing. Most people take them with a pinch of salt, that's if we are allowed salt this week.

Last month the UK government recommended that we should only eat 70g of Red Meat per day to reduce the risk of Bowel Cancer. While that's a worthy aim, that amount of meat is just one, thin two ounce burger, or one sausage.

The simple fact is that nutritional messages are complex and we being given overly simplified messages. Further, the messages will change from week to week, depending upon the health advice being issued. The perfect example is Red Wine. In moderation it helps, yet as with all foods it has effects upon the body and health. So for someone very fit that moderate drink will do no harm and may even help, but for someone with other risk factors that same moderate drink may trigger or contribute to a problem.

That is the problem as health messages need to be given to individuals not always to the nation as a whole. After all any person who is normal, healthy and eats a good balanced diet can indulge in foods that are officially deemed to be unhealthy without any effect, while someone that has a poor, unbalanced diet will have some effect from eating greater than guidelines say is wise.

While it is very true that there is a serious problem from obesity and the poor diet of some folks, confusing them with unclear and unrealistic messages just does not help. In fact often the way that the health message is delivered often makes people reject or turn off to the messages. Put simply people just don’t like being lectured and criticised.

But also the health messages are just not always as straight forward as the media would like. Take the “Health Message” regarding saturated fats. For years we have been told that saturated fats are bad. However if you exclude all saturated fats from the diet, your health will suffer as the body needs some to function well. An example of this is that there has been a growth in semi skimmed and skimmed milk here in the UK and Europe. It was a message that I even took on myself. However, new research is showing that if you drink raw milk, unpasteurised milk, in Europe known as green top, the fats, saturated fats, are in the right form to benefit the body. Therefore its the processing of the milk that has been changing the fats to make them less beneficial. In my own case it was a degree of lactose intolerance that has been resolved by drinking, using, raw milk.

Interestingly it is why goats milk is has often been recommended to resolve the problem of lacto-intolerance, as often recommended by natural foods advocates. It is the unprocessed nature of the milk that really matters not the species. So while pasteurisation and homogenisation were introduced for reasons of improving health and hygiene, the effect has been to reduce the nutritional value in a very subtle way and a way that is virtually unmeasurable. The difficulty is that when it comes to health messages, there are real vested interests involved. Milk processes like to maintain the status quo as it maintains their profit margins.

Equally, the valid health messages are frequently undermined by the vested interests of the multinational food retailers and manufacturers. The products that are most heavily marketed and promoted by these companies are the high fat, high sugar, calorific foods that the majority of people should be avoiding or reducing their consumption of. It is no coincidence that these foods are the ones that earn the greatest profits. That is why, in the UK, it really defies logic that the current government has turned to these food giants for advice on healthy eating, health and food policy.

It is just one further example of the fundamental lack of understanding that all governments have regarding food and health. After all the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, had to hector the then government to improve the quality and nutritional value of the food served to children in schools. There have also been similar campaigns to improve the quality and nutritional value of the food served within hospitals, yet even health professionals fail to see or understand that food can help with the healing process.

The major part of this prejudice comes from the lobbying from the pharmaceutical multinationals, who repeatedly reject and systemically “Rubbish” any evidence that shows health benefits for particular types of foods. The main reason always seems to be that the pharmaceutical companies can not patent or otherwise control the use of these natural botanicals.

Therefore the health messages regarding foods are often directly contradictory. On the one hand we are warned that eating to much of one food will cause us some harm. Yet if anyone discovers evidence that a particular food, herb or spice will aid health, these messages are blocked or suppressed. Most often saying that: “You cant say that as it has not been scientifically proved”

In fact in Europe and the US, there are laws in place to prevent anyone from making health claims regarding foods, in particular herbs and spices. Well not for human use, but you can if its for animal treatment and use.

If we really want to get realistic health messages out to people, the vested interests need to be ignored. While we protect the commercial interests of the food and pharmaceutical multinationals, we will all pay much more for good food and directly as well as indirectly for health care.

We really are what we eat.