for christ's sake NHS

[lolliwillowes]

Why are you still advising people to choose low fat margarine over butter?
The entire food plate thing is a disaster, encouraging people to stay healthy long term by substituting natural fats for Frankenstein-fats.

Surely I am not BU?

YANBU.

I wonder if the plate is “carbs carbs carbs carbs” for some nefarious reason like policy 30 y ago or someone figuring out that you can’t feed the whole population on a diet of meat, fish, dairy and veg so need to bulk it up with cheap carbs.

I nodded and smiled when I was advised to give my kids low fat milk at the 2y check.

My husband had a heart operation and his first meal in the CCU was ham and cheese crumble. Difficult to think of something higher in salt and fat.

I saw the nurse at my practice last week. I am 60, weigh 9st 4lbs and am living with cancer.
I walk 7 or 8 miles a day and swim 3 days a week. I wear size 10 jeans and a size 12 top ( sometimes a 14).
I was told that my ideal weight was 7st 4lbs and to eat lots of low fat foods, fruit and vegetables. And asked if I needed dietary advice.
I was actually really upset when I came out then thought sod it! And not being funny, but when that sage advice is given by a young woman who is at least several stones overweight, it jars.

Theres a similar reluctance/refusal/incompetence when it comes to updating information about COVID symptoms in the fully vaccinated too. Even on the door of the GP there’s the don’t come in if you have a new continuous cough, temperature and loss of taste/smell. There’s going to be a load of people entering the building now who do have covid but have got a runny nose, sneezing and a headache, so understandably don’t have foggiest idea they’ve got it.

Looking at the advice around what we should be eating, the pandemic will have come and gone without any update in what people need to look out for.

@Ratched

I saw the nurse at my practice last week. I am 60, weigh 9st 4lbs and am living with cancer. I walk 7 or 8 miles a day and swim 3 days a week. I wear size 10 jeans and a size 12 top ( sometimes a 14). I was told that my ideal weight was 7st 4lbs and to eat lots of low fat foods, fruit and vegetables. And asked if I needed dietary advice. I was actually really upset when I came out then thought sod it! And not being funny, but when that sage advice is given by a young woman who is at least several stones overweight, it jars.

One thing they just automatically assume is that as we get older, our bone density and muscle decrease so we 'ought' to weigh less. But those of us around 60 who lift weights and do a lot of exercise have very dense muscles and bones which are very heavy, even though we are in size 10 jeans. So weight should never be judged out of the context of exercise. I know rugby players who've been told they are obese by NHS staff.

The decrease in consumption of saturated fat is mirrored by a catastrophic increase in dementia. Brains need saturated fat.

I have full fat milk as DDs physio recommend I keep her on it due to her medical condition and I cba to buy more than 1 type.

I haven't broken a bone since DD was born (despite numerous falls) and when I have it I'm less hungry so lose weight as well.

I do think there's something in having the full fat stuff. I also buy full fat cheese. I find butter too salty (even the low salt ones) so buy margarine but I will definitely keep up with the milk and cheese.

Not sure where people are getting such outdated NHS Diets for diabetes from, sounds like tosh to me.
Recommended are low carb, but anything else is ok, except for sugars of course.
No way do they recommend ww ready meals, in fact it is advised to stay away from anything processed.

I'm an NHS Dietitian and we don't! What food table thing?

No way do they recommend ww ready meals, in fact it is advised to stay away from anything processed.

They do.

YANBU - they are very out of date with their advice. I suspect it's lack of resource to update properly rather than anything else. Butter only for me since about five years ago. Love having it in a butter dish too.

Whip cream/milk, you get butter.

Hardly a processed food, is it?

Both my grandfathers lived into their 90’s, one had a fry up every day, ate real butter but also grew his own veg and ate traditional meals (meat, potatoes and veg), the other had a sweet tooth and lived on honey sandwiches or sugar sandwiches, also grew his own veg and had a very active life.

I do use low fat spread but only because I can’t eat much dairy.

I remember getting an Eatwell book from DS school. It was pretty rubbish. It had advice on swaps you should make like instead of a slice of cake, have a tea cake with margarine. Instead of a chocolate bar, have a cereal bar. But those things can still be packed with sugar. Then there were a load of shit recipes that sounded like they came out of a 70s school dinners menu.

What I was told to stop eating by my practice nurse: cheese

What I in fact stopped eating: sugary processed crap

Family medical history I told her about: osteoporosis

@MarleneDietrichsSmile

Nobody pays any attention to the nHS guidelines anyway

Not a soul

Also, people won’t die of a bit of low-fat spread, many regularly eat junk/ takeaways with 100x the fat

Nobody heeds their advice anyway (just look around you)

The Eatwell plate is still being taught as gospel in school. My 8 yo daughter is currently making my life a living hell with her ‘nutritional advice’; I try and kindly point out that as someone who had a lifelong weight problem and T2D, I have painstakingly acquired a lot of knowledge about food in the last few years, and NONE of it accords with the NHS advice. Don’t know why I waste my breath though, because “Miss says…”

@Ratched

I saw the nurse at my practice last week. I am 60, weigh 9st 4lbs and am living with cancer. I walk 7 or 8 miles a day and swim 3 days a week. I wear size 10 jeans and a size 12 top ( sometimes a 14). I was told that my ideal weight was 7st 4lbs and to eat lots of low fat foods, fruit and vegetables. And asked if I needed dietary advice. I was actually really upset when I came out then thought sod it! And not being funny, but when that sage advice is given by a young woman who is at least several stones overweight, it jars.

Is she a actual qualified dietician? Or just the HCP lumbered with the annual checks ticking of a check sheet when looking at areas outside their expertise?

Unless she is a dietician she will have had precious little training in diet and nutrition, especially for specialist areas such as cancer care. I would hope your cancer centre as actual dieticians and advice available for people in your situation.

I agree OP, the NHS must have a dire lack of nutritionists

The NHS mainly employ Dietitians (which is a protected title unlike "nutritionist") who have been trained on NHS bursary courses at uni. As a PP said, anyone can call themselves a nutritionist which is worrying. The NHS do recognise, and sometimes employ, those who have an Association for Nutrition registration (requiring at least a BSc on a science/evidence based approved course), and I can tell you they are taught to critically appraise any dietary recommendations, even the NHS's. Governments are often slow to change with the science unfortunately, and Dietitians have to follow government advice.

Butter all the way...I make my own and have done for years

I disagree.I think if something irresistible is in the house or fridge, it will get repeatedly dipped into…..and there the problems begin. The problem is that most people CANNOT moderate very well.
My grandparents ate a diet of saturated fats (butter, dripping to fry), they also grew vegetables and walked a dog. Grandfather has angina at 40 and was on massive heart tablets for years before having a heart attack at 70. Didn’t smoke.
I’m sure saturated animal fats had a huge part in this. Today we should be trying to learn from the past and not have such a dependence on big farting, burping dairy cows tbh.

Rats won’t eat margarine. They do not recognise it as food as it’s is basically plastic. It was developed by the (French?) army as they wanted a foodstuff that would not go off (and presumably not eaten by rodents or maybe that was an unexpected benefit). And it doesn’t. Ever. Butter all the way for me.

YANBU

I had to go to A&E once with an ear infection because no one does ear clearances yet and I hadn't figured out about private micro suction yet.

I was told I need to stop eating cheese.

No it turns out I have genetically small ear canals and genetically sticky wax; and if you had bothered to look in my ears you would have known that!

Instead 3 courses of antibiotics before I started ringing private in pure desperation. Apparently the infection never would have shifted unless it has cleared - instant relief and cleared 48 hours later.

But the cheese?!

One thing they just automatically assume is that as we get older, our bone density and muscle decrease so we 'ought' to weigh less. But those of us around 60 who lift weights and do a lot of exercise have very dense muscles and bones which are very heavy

That's such a good point, @leavesthataregreen (and @Ratched).

So many of us around-60somethings have a much better awareness these days of fitness, exercise, bone health, HRT to help reduce osteoporosis, and the importance of calcium etc in our diets.

Our mothers' and grandmothers' generations, on whom these statistics are presumably based, very often seemed to fade away in front of our eyes - they literally shrank.

At my arthritis clinic I got handed a leaflet for 'armchair exercises for the over 60s' (I'm 60) showing a much older person sitting down holding a ball. But at home, I already have weights, shock horror.

I think the pushing of processed seed oils will be a scandal in the future.
Vegetable oil, rape seed oil, sunflower oil…..extremely processed ‘foods’ all pushed on the back of the mistaken policy that saturated fat causes heart disease….these oils destroy mitochondria and lots of research now about how these oils are responsible for a plethora of chronic disease.

If you do one thing….take these processed fats out of your diet. Today.

(Problem is you’ll see how hard it is to do that….they are in EVERYTHING!)