There is a wealth of evidence about the beneficial role that our intestinal bacteria play in keeping us healthy. Not only do they play a vital role in digestion, they also produce essential enzymes and vitamins, help us to fight infections, they can even create chemicals like serotonin which support our mental wellbeing. Some studies have suggested that the increased prevalence of conditions such as obesity, diabetes, irritable bowl syndrome, […]
A recently published study has confirmed a link between the consumption of sugary drinks and increased risk of bowel cancer. The study involved a cohort of over 95,000 women, whose diet and health were monitored between 1991 and 2015. It found that women under the age of fifty who regularly consume more than a pint of sugary drinks per day have double the risk of developing bowel cancer compared to […]
A recent study entitled “What are the barriers to eating healthily in the UK?”, led by the Social Market Foundation, concluded that 10.2 million people resident in the UK are living in what the report calls a “food desert”. It defines a food desert as an area where residents have severely limited access to fresh fruit and vegetables, usually in the form of a local supermarket. The findings of this […]
Fewer and fewer of us are cooking our food from scratch. In some cases this may be due to a lack of skills or confidence. In many cases, however, it is down to a distorted attitude to time. We are in the grip of the “convenience” food industry, which encourages us to regard any time we spend preparing and cooking food as time wasted. Anything, it seems, which short-circuits time […]
A recently published study by the universities of Newcastle and Glasgow suggest that Type 2 diabetes can be reversed by losing weight and undertaking a healthy diet regime. The trial combined a programme of strict calorie control with counselling, a gradual increase in exercise and a stepped reintroduction of a healthy diet. 90% of those who took part in the trial and who lost 15 kg (30 pounds) or more […]
For many of us, as we head into the new year, this is a time for resolutions. One of the most common involves “doing something” about our diet. I’m not a fan of diets, not least because so much of the diet industry is owned by the same food industry that makes us fat in the first place (for example, Slimfast is owned by Unilever, Lean Cuisine is owned by […]
We are all going to die one day, one way or another, but there is a growing chance that for many of us it will be as a result of the biggest cause of death in the developed world today: so-called non-communicable diseases. These include cancer, heart attacks, strokes and diabetes. And the biggest principal cause of death from non-communicable disease is obesity. According to calculations by the World Obesity […]
Last week the UK Conservative Party held its annual conference. Most of the British media’s coverage focused on the various tribulations which haunted the Prime Minister, Theresa May, as she attempted to deliver her keynote speech. But a coughing fit, an interruption by a prankster and a collapsing set weren’t the only causes for embarrassment at that conference. As one newspaper, spotted, the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt managed to deliver […]
The past decade has witnessed a rise of almost 25% in the number of children in England being admitted to hospital to have decaying teeth extracted. To make matters worse, increasing numbers of our children are officially obese by the time they leave primary school (this figure now stands at 20%). If nothing else does, these startling facts should cause us to examine closely what our children are consuming. It […]
Perhaps it’s laziness. Perhaps it a belief that we simply don’t have the time. Whatever the reasons, British people have an enduring relationship with fast food, spending almost £30 billion each year on the stuff. A UK Parliamentary research paper, “Barriers to Healthy Food”, published last year suggested that the average Briton consumes 200 to 300 excess calories per day, in large part linked to fast food consumption. Characterised by convenience, […]
Britain leads the rest of the world in consumption of ready meals. Our trust in the manufacturers of processed foods and drinks would be touching if it was not so harmfully misplaced. Time and again, those processed food and drink manufacturers have been shown to be far more concerned about maximising and protecting their profits than they are about the health of their customers. Their most profitable ingredient is also […]
According to a 2015 report by the Health and Social Care Information Centre, nearly one in five UK children are obese by the time they leave primary school. That is a shocking and scandalous state of affairs, which to my mind is evidence of a new type of child abuse. Without a drastic change in their circumstances, most of these young children, already obese at age eleven, will go on […]