To question the Eat Well plate?

[TheGruffaloMother]

I know it can take an age to filter new evidence down into official advice but am really struggling to fathom why the Eat Well plate hasn't yet changed despite everything I keep seeing in the media suggesting we've known for a while now that eating such a high proportion of carbohydrate isn't necessarily healthy. Is high fat the way to go? High protein? Is the official advice wrong? Do the alternatives offer lasting ways to keep your weight under control?

The eatwell plate isn't perfect at all for the huge number of people out there with prediabetes, or diabetes.

I have always been a healthy weight and take regular exercise - and followed a traditionally 'healthy' diet. But that didn't stop me being diagnosed with diabetes in my early 30's. Now a good few years later, the only thing that has worked for me is going low carb. And yes that does mean cutting out bread, pasta and potatoes to a large extent, because as far as a my body is concerned, they are just as bad as a bar of chocolate. All carbs turn to sugar, it's that simple.

I do believe that we need to stop thinking of a pile of carbs on our plate, in any form, are part of a 'healthy' diet. Because being slim and fit doesn't mean you can smugly assume you will never get diabetes.

The eat well guide has more simple carbohydrates than the Spanish, Italians and French generally eat. Compare tapas with a US/UK coffee bar! Any airport waiting area on the continent shows a big physical difference in the countries' peoples. It is easy to have most carbohydrates from vegetables, and just some from bread, rice, potato etc.

People do not necessarily eat too much, and they may hardly have time to eat. But when they do eat it may in a succession of snacks, cakes, sweets, chips, sanwiches, fizzy drinks. That and stress makes them put on weight and makes them very hungry from the hormones that are stimulated.

Petrie... I've seen that too in a different program and it must be devastating to realise you can't eat a normal healthy diet but must restrict yourself for life. Which is why it's so important to use the eatwell guide to feed children and to reduce the number over overweight children who go on to become overweight adults. I think it's to do with actually making more fat cells that normal people in the overeating phase. It's very sad and explains yo yo dieting to some extent, putting more weight on than previously.

The eatwell guide doesn't recommend sugary cereals anyway and cornflakes is very sugary.

Apparently the eatwell guide should baffle everyone reading it with a lot of media reported science, alter its recommendations weekly and confuse the f**k out of everyone because that actually makes sense to some and no one will even look at it.

Just looking at the NHS eatwell plate. It could easily be tweaked, it's just a guide.

There is no way that that bit of advice has anything to do with the obesity problem we have.

Supermarkets however are jam packed with crap that's cheap and often marketed as health food.

I was in Sainsbury's last night and all the 'health food' was on promotion, weight watchers ready meals, sugary cereals, sugary cereal bars, smoothies.

I've had a look at the NHS suggested breakfasts.
Firstly, why the insistence that everyone should have a decent-sized breakfast? People cling onto that as some sort of universal truth but it's one of those things that's been repeated so many times people assume it's true. Including, it would seem, the NHS.
Now, the meal plans:
Why dump 200ml of apple juice on your porridge? It may say no-added sugar applejuice but it's still basically 200ml of fructose. That should be a treat if you're so inclined, not part of your daily diet.
Full fat milk is fine, no need for semi skimmed.
Why recommend low-fat yogurt? I just checked the ingredients of my full-fat Greek yogurt. Except it was ingredient, singular. And that should be the aim.
Baked beans. A lot of added sugar, which is far more of a concern than the fact that they are "low fat". Again, the low fat obsession being peddled.
The reduced sugar range actually contains artificial sweeteners.
Breakfast cereals. Okay they recommend the lower-sugar versions but still, wholegrain pillows plus semi-skimmed milk will have most people keeling over from a blood sugar crash in two hours in the absence of any fat or protein.
And so on. A quick glance further down their list has "low fat" as a continued feature.
Some products may be able to produce a lower fat version naturally, in which case great. But in many cases you'll be swapping something natural for something processed - loya lecithin, guar gum etc.
And I suspect it's this crap, lurking in all that NHS recommended low fat food, that is messing up people's health and their ability to regulate their food intake.

If people have medical conditions or a genetic predisposition then no one is saying the eatwell guide is right for them. It's a guideline , that's all. It's not right for everyone but it is right for the vast majority if it is a lifelong eating habit.

Which is what it purports to be.

They are only ideas. The truth is that there is no 100% proven perfect diet that suits everyone, that everyone will like, that everyone will be able to follow.

The NHS are simply offering guidelines and ideas.

I don't believe that people are obese through following NHS advice, they are obese for a multitude of other complex reasons.

People can pick apart the NHS advice all they want and on some levels may have a point, but it's not the fault of the NHS.

A boiled (or poached, or scrambled) egg with toast, or porridge made with whole, preferably raw, milk are much better breakfasts than cold sugary cereal with supermarket skimmed milk.

They don't recommend sugary cereal and semi skimmed milk.

They recommmend low fat because fats are so calorific.

It's not perfect and probably a vegan diet is a perfect diet but very hard work and not what most busy families want.

They are not the food police and are just trying to find a balance with what's easily available, familiar to most people, fits a busy schedule and, most importantly, using what people will stick with.

They are not going to fresh cook their own cannelloni beans and tomato sauce for breakfast or milk their own cow, but they can follow the advice and choose healthier lower fat, lower sugar options in tins.

Olympia the vegan diet is very, very far from a perfect diet. Humans are evolved to eat animal proteins. It's telling that B12 is only available from animal sources. Vegans do take yeast-based substitutes but a big proportion of them still suffer deficiencies.
Our very evolution was thanks to animal protein. When we began to eat animals as a greater proportion of our diets, our digestive system was able to shrink and our brains grew commensurately.
I'm not arguing that fats are calorie dense, but unless consumed in conjunction with carbohydrates at that specific sweet spot that manufacturers aim for, you are not going to overeat on them, they will keep you full and satisfied, and allow you to absorb all the fat-soluble vitamins and minerals from the vegetables that should constitute the bulk of what you put in your mouth.

Low fat diets are also unsustainable as they are, simply put, fucking miserable. How much better to stop eating because you feel satiated from real food, with it's real fat content, rather than using every ounce of your willpower to not overeat on that frustrating low-fat food that never seems to quite satisfy.

The fact is that most people's diets are far too high in salt, sugar and fat to begin with. Though fat is not bad, it doesn't make it good either. The world health organisation says that no more than 30% of our daily calories come from fat and most of it should come from plant based fats like nuts and seeds. In practise most people get far more than this in their daily diet.

If the NHS started promoting that people ate more fat it would really confuse people and part of their remit is to provide clear and concise advice.

Most people eat too much protein too, there's no need to get people to eat more.

What people don't eat is fibre. The average person could really benefit from eating far more fibre and that is what the info graph pushes.

The NHS knows that most people aren't going to follow that to the very letter, that most people 'forget' their treats or take a good day and say that's their standard day.

You do know that is recommended that meat eaters take B12 supplements too? And that most animals you eat have also been supplemented with b12?

B12 deficiency is not just limited to vegans.

I find it really weird that they are recommendations that anyone healthy and non-pregnant, and living in a wealthy country, take supplements as standard. You should ideally be getting everything you need from the food you consume as it's in a far more bio-available form.
I know people don't, obviously, because many people have nutritionally poor diets. But supplements should simply not be standard.
It's certainly not something any GP has ever suggested to me.

It's because the soil is so crap

Thank god for that..... So my vegan friends can stop making me feel guilty for eating the odd McDonald's? That's made my day

The eatwell guide doesn't not recommend meat and fish and the proportions look adequate. I couldn't eat sausages or bacon or egg in the morning it would make me sick, but I do at 6 o'clock, and eat cheese or egg or similar at lunch. That's all protein. With veg and whole grains mixed in I thinks it's reasonable mix.

The eatwell guide may be aiming at the lowest denominator but its members of society who haven't taken a huge interest or been taught good nutrition, who will say they can manage porridge and fruit, or poached egg on wholemeal toast and feed their family well. If they don't have guidelines they might think low fat sugary cereals are fine. It should be a stepping stone to learning how to use food healthily not an end in itself.

I'm sure people who take an interest in nutrition eat better generally

Well yes, cobalt deficiency in many areas I think?
I don't think that intensive farming as it's practised today is optimal, far from it, either for us as a food source or in animal welfare or environmental terms.
But there are 7 billion of us on planet earth now so I don't think small-scale and sustainable is heading our way anytime soon.
But I'm digressing now.

Maxwell

Salt isn't the evil demon it's made out to be. We all need salt otherwise we would desicate and die. There is far too much salt in processed stuff. But adding unprocessed salt to natural foods in cooking is fine. Cities in ancient times were built on salt routes because it was recognised as indispensable for survival.

I'm not saying it's evil, I'm saying most people eat too much of it because most people eat processed food.

Sorry very late to reply Mummy - there's a book called Gut by Julia someone which is good on that (and it tells you how to poo properly)

Thx ACubed.

For anyone who is interested in reviewing the scientific studies for themselves, this website has helpfully summarised over 1500 studies with links to the original papers to assist you in making up your own minds. But there are lots of studies out there on many websites and books, and plenty of writers and researchers who present the evidence in a sensible, compelling way.

It's pretty easy to avoid quackery if you're alert to its style.

I've read enough for me to be convinced about the scientific merits of high fat/ low carb. I've been eating low carbohydrate for most of the last year. I hope to continue this indefinitely. I'm no zealot, but it has made a huge difference to my general health, and my rationale for following this way of eating is focussed on the long term benefits.

Prevailing public health advice can be very very slow to turn around, even under the weight of tremendous evidence suggesting an about turn is needed. Having said that, the evidence has been around for decades and continues to build. I imagine we will eventually see a big change in nutritional advice, but possibly not for several more years.

The key to solving the obesity crisis is discovering how lost weight, once lost, can be maintained not regained. Most diets will bring weight loss in the short term but the body is physiologically designed to protect itself against weight loss hence the statistic that 95% of dieters will regain the weight and a little more besides. This is not laziness, greed or lack of willpower. It's a biological truth.
Exercise and active lifestyles are a bit of a red herrring where weight loss is concerned. Exercise is crucial to keeping your mind and body healthy but has been proven not to have any impact on weight loss. In my experience there is even a small gain as exercise builds muscle and tends to make you hungry. The perception that the obese are fat because they have less active lifestyles is the wrong way round. The obese move less because they are heavier, they're not heavier because they move less.

The answer is somewhere in the screwing up of hormones that has happened over the last 40 years through a combination of obscene over abundance of processed foods and the use of constant dieting to cope with the effects.

Been on my latest diet 11 days now. Lost 9 lbs so far through eating only natural non processed foods. Lay awake till 4 am last night with the most awful cravings so hard to explain to non dieters. It was a strong feeling of anxiety, like life wasn't worth living if I couldn't eat some crackers and cheese that minute. When I woke up in the morning, it was gone and I wasn't even hungry, but it will be back. There is only so long you can carry on fighting these urges till your body becomes stronger than your mind and gains the weight back. Cutting back on portion size too tends to lead to cravings in the long term.

I will carry on eating natural, non processed foods high in fat and protein and green veg , keeping carbs to a limit of 125 g and let my hunger determine what and how I eat within those food groups. Let's see if my body can reset itself naturally because I've tried every weight loss diet under the sun and nothing has worked long term.

The eatwell plate is a basic guide, and seems pretty much in line with how people used to eat pre obesity crisis. Anyone who thinks the average Brit used to eat a low carb diet is wrong.
It's kind of common sense to reduce the bread/potato portion and increase the vegetables, if you need to lose weight or do very little exercise.
I've lost over a stone during the last 3 months without even thinking about it, basically just through being skint, having to eat bread and pasta, eggs, cheese, baked beans, the sort of cheap filling food I grew up on.

Littlepleasures, if you like nuts, try having some high fat nuts like macadamias in a reachable place. In the early days when I was switching my metabolism over to fat burning I would just grab a handful of nuts or a hunk of cheese to curb any cravings.

I consider myself pretty well "fat-adapted" now and never have those must-eat-carbs-or-die-trying cravings now. My hunger has been very effectively suppressed by the change in metabolism. If I do feel hungry I eat something high fat while I think about what I should make for a proper meal. I refuse to suffer. I eat.

I was advised to drink marmite or bovril when I switched to low carb high fat. It helps with cravings. And replenishes salt, which the body needs more of when eating this way.