Why isn't DSister's diet making her ill?

[sandradailey]

She is 24.

Breakfast - Ready Break

Lunch - Soup. Any soup, so vegetable soup, carrot, Mexican soup. Etc etc

Dinner - A 66p pizza laced with salt. She puts a little pile of salt next to the ketchup and dips both in

I'm curious to know why all her blood work is all okay?

She was in hospital recently for another twisted bowel episode. Luckily avoided surgery.

She was in surgery 6 months ago when she had her gallbladder removed due to gallstones

My question is when will this start to impact her? I'm really worried as it's so horrifically bad for her and she has a disabled DC to care for so can't afford to be unwell

She's probably getting the same amount of vitamins per day as the average Brit between the fortified ready brek and the vegetable soups. Better than chocolate cereal and a ham sandwich.

66p pizza every night - is she very hard up?

I know someone in their sixties who seems to exist primarily on Cadbury chocolate, diet Coke and Macdonald's yet who recently had a health check that was apparently ok. The mind boggles!

It will impact at some point. My sister had an awful diet. Didn’t seem to affect her until she had a stroke at 52. She’s 60 now & has pancreatic cancer.

Porridge good.

Soup good.

Pizza plus excess salt bad.

However turn that into:

Bacon roll with butter for breakfast
Packet crisps for snack
Prepacked sandwich for lunch - thinking ham, bacon, sausage....
Afternoon snack of more crisps or toast
Back home and order takeaway pizza/curry/Chinese or pop ready meal in.
Open bottle of beer/wine.

Your sisters diet is way healthier than what some would consider the norm. Hopefully she takes vitamin supplements, but honestly it's not that disastrous. Clearly she needs some veg or fruit, but both can be obtained through pills.

Have you spoken to her about your concerns?

If she is 24 and already been to hospital then that's not good!

I’m just not really bothered about food. I do eat other things but mainly bread and cheese. I feed the rest of the family properly. .

Have you discussed her diet with her? Why does she eat like that?

I don't think it's that bad? It is quite bland, it could be that her previous bowel and gallstone problems are making her eat that way. I'd cut her a bit of slack to be honest. If she ate a few bits of salad with the pizza her diet would be pretty good.

If you’re not fussed about what you eat, then why default to bread and cheese as opposed to salad or something? Particularly if you’re cooking anyway.

I know a few people who will eat whatever is on offer but default to beige if left to their own devices. I’ve always wondered about it.

Can you help her modify what she already likes?

Aldi do a really good frozen breakfast topper with fruit, seeds etc. You just chuck a handful in before microwaving your porridge.

We have a soup maker. She could make one lot in 20 minutes and use it all week but it would then be full of fresh veg.

Pizza you can buy ready to roll bases and just chuck a bit of passata on it with a bit of ready grated cheese and some frozen peppers and onion.

Would probably do her two nights.

It's really only the salt but if she's not snacking on crisps etc it might not be so bad. Not ideal but a take away curry is probably worse and plenty of people do that more than once a week

I'd be far more worried about what sort of diet she might be feeding her disabled dc.

The porridge and soup are fine. The pizza is rather odd but it could be worse. Some people just don’t eat very much.

24 is very young to have gallstones but two key factors that play their part in gallstone formation - saturated fat intake and being overweight - don’t seem to apply.