So Eton, everything I expected and more

[JoanBias]

My DS is at a private school, so I have experience of private schooling, but my word Eton was like another world.

Not just the school, but the people there.

There was one prep school being shown around, all in tweed jackets, and to a boy the spitting image of Draco Malfoy (well there was one Chinese boy, but otherwise....).

One of the mothers doing the tour was not quite right in some respect, I'm not sure how but something wasn't wired up correctly or something. She was immacuately dressed, 6-inch heels (pretty daft considering the confirmation letter warns about having a long walk), but she was just bizarre. The admissions tutor said 'we have a waiting list of 80 boys and typically 35% of these will make it through', and she asked afterwards 'so 80% of the boys from the waiting list make it through?', and it was then explained again, but you could kind of hear the cogs going round and she clearly didn't get it. She had asked several other similar questions; e.g., it was explained that some Houses are catering and others go to a central cafeteria, so she then asked 'so they all eat in the cafeteria'? She pointed at the Fives Court and asked me 'what do they play here?' I said 'Fives' 'Is it squash?', she said. 'No, Eton Fives.' 'So is it squash?' It seemed as if this woman had had the benefit of the 'Finishing School for the Terminally Dim', because she was otherwise every inch the presentable upper middle-class wife.

Another family had a son who looked the prototypical pre-Etonian, and sure enough Daddy spent the tour braying on about his House when he had been there.

The facilities were extremely impressive, although they didn't bother to show us any of the academic parts, and basically the impression was 'if your son is incredibly pushy and self-motivated, send him here and we will teach him to be entitled'. They said 'every year we reject about a third of the highest performers on the test', essentially because they aren't pushy enough. (The House Mistresses seemed quite nice though.)

Fantastic training for future managing directors and whatever, but not for us.....

Well worth it to sign up for a tour, very illuminating. They take about 100 a day from what I can see, so obligation at all....

You don't need to meet a person to know the science behind depression and to know about seratonin, dopamine and beta endorphins nor to know how they are raised and what is the contents of prozac. No one is diagnosing and treating anyone where. We are just saying latest research in mental and physical health including epilepsy, diabetes, obesity, MS etc is all coming together from different directions to the same conclusions - eat as we used to eat and move and be ni the sun as our species was for 2m years and you cannot go far wrong and it may well help. This is not nutters suggesting a diet mainly of processed foods, alcohol, sugars will make the blind see (although even there diabetes is a huge cause of blindness) and the lame walk at all. It is just basic we are what we eat stuff.

Plenty of people on these boards Dx and Px for people they have never met then call medical professionals reductive and unseeing of the person......

In front of the bio chemistry, pharmacology and psychopharmacology is a person. And they cannot be reduced to 'knowledge' or 'research'. We are far too physiologically and psychologically complex. Let's face it, if we ate as 'we' used to, moved around more and stayed in the sun then the rate of mental illness (which is not that different in morbidity rates, just different names for conditions and other symptoms maybe culturally determined) and the death rate and life span in parts of the developing world should surely be much better than ours? And they certainly are not.

I mean, if that's all it takes? How reductive and ignorant of the complex psycho-social milieu of our world.

As I said, (and you are arguing against somebody who agrees in part with you) we are not disagreeing that the ELMAM lifestyle should not be adopted and that it is beneficial to all aspects of health, just that psychiatric drugs are frequently life savers.

And it is not so much 'how somebody was raised' as 'what do they think and feel about it' that affects how we function psychologically. and for that, you do need to speak to a person and develop a rapport, hard won over time.

Of course. No one is dismissing those involve in the process of treating a patient but there are universal truths many of the fat badly eating never exercising UK diabetes sufferers prefer not to hear or just cannot put into practice unless imprisoned I suppose so that what they ate were controlled or moved to a country where there were no processed foods.

I am sure everyone involved in healthcare knows the importance of sunlight, exercise and diet. I don't think we are really disagreeing.

In fact to turn this back to boarding schools that's something else for parents to check. I have teenagers (at home). I can see what they eat and when they exercise. You have less control if someone boards but if the school has levels of sport and good foods you like and you trust their smoking drink and drugs policies then you may well kbe happy to oursource that.

You need to differentiate between Type 1 and Type 2.

at outsourcing comment. Yes! That is indeed what is being done...

Absolutely. It is type 2 which is growing and amongst children because of how badly people eat though so diet will help with that.

Type 1 diet certainly might help a bit too paleohacks.com/questions/127905/type-1-diabetes-paleo-help#axzz2BXAdNki7

Mind you, my Mother is type 2. She weighs about 50 kilo's and always has, is a vegetarian who eats very healthily and plays tennis/rides several times a week and always has. Sometimes, it is not related to bad diet and to be absolutist on this is to offend those who have looked after themselves and still develop this condition.

And there is no other FH of Diabetes either.

I do think meat, fish, eggs and good animal fat are terribly good for people. She might want to try that.

Mordion in response to your comment "I have heard Diabetes UK spokespeople rubbishing it," it clearly states on the Diabetes UK website that they funded the research, In the UK all medical personal have to follow NICE guidelines whether they are treating leukaemia in children, type 2 diabetics in an over weight 3o yr old or advising a elderly person who is continuously falling. This ensures that patients where ever they live receive the same quality off care. The NICE guidelines are drawn up after careful analysis of all the worldwide research by experts. Diabetologists diabetic nurses GPO's have to follow these guidelines other research may be be undertaken into VLC diets Palaeolithic diets or even copying the diets of vultures but until this has been extensively clinically proven to be more effective than conventional treatments then no changes will occur and this is how it should be.
Xenia I dont know if you are a lawyer or a well paid dustman but you are certainly not a doctor in particular a paediatrician it is a well know fact that Type 1 diabetes is increasing in children worldwide.

She eats eggs, dairy, etc but became a Vegetarian when she developed type 2.

May be ditch the dairy and eat a lot of meat, kidneys, liver...
Laughing as I type as people seem pretty keen that I don't express my views on this topic.

I just meant type 2 was increasing a lot - it's one of the biggest issues for the NHS. Type one is indeed also increasing.

There is some research linked in here to possible connection between type 1 and diet. Type one is an auto immune disease. Anyway I am just throwing it out there for discussion

robbwolf.com/2012/05/18/paleo-autoimmune-illness/

Express away. I like a feisty woman .....I like the parry of mental swords and precision of argument. Feel free to pull me up on anything...

I like a feisty woman.....................God that sounded sleazy ....

I'm not gay, sorry.

However I do admire people who can spell feisty - loads spell it fiesty. Sigh. English is so hard for people - " i before e except after c" but then we have a load of exceptions like feisty.

I'd better work now.

Neither am I. Just sounded predatory, regardless of sexual orientation. I'm on call this week so spells of frantic activity followed by fallow periods....

I'm ill in bed at the moment and absolutely loving this thread and the various tangents it keeps going off at - please keep it going for my happy mental health !

Get well soon Puppy. Must admit those last few posts made my head spin-MN threads do not always convey what we mean when we write!

Get well soon! Long may people post- I have said at intervals that it is one of the funniest threads ever! ( but it doesn't beat the one about the nanny feeding the toddler ready made pasta)

I went out to try and buy healthy animal fat yesterday, but these bloody local shops for local people close at 12:30pm on Wednesdays.

The particular butcher I went to had two branches within a mile but both shut Wednesday afternoons.

Was hoping to get some grouse, or mallard, or whatever, but no such luck. Fishmongers were closed too, the bastards.

So I had to go to Asda instead. Bought some halal mutton (I don't particularly care whether it's halal or not, but I always end up buying halal because for whatever reason yer average WASP insists that lamb is tastier than mutton).

And because I had covered about 40 miles on my bicycle, going round schools and butchers shops that weren't open, I was pretty well Hank Marvin, and stopped off at the burger van and got a double beef burger with two rashers of bacon, fried egg, onions, cheese and burger relish.

I'm guessing that latter concoction doesn't qualify as healthy animal fat. Tasty though.

Speaking of which, lunch time.

my son has learned

"I before E except after C when the sound is EE or when the sound is A as in neighbour "

New ABoC is an Old Etonian. Justin Welby.

Thanks Xenia, I have had a look at some of the links on Paleo diets, fab, I discover I am already pretty much eating this way already. I have a problem with cereals/bread etc,,,,,so have been avoiding. I have treated myself to a roast duck! which is dripping in fat!

The only thing with super markets joan, have you noticed the fat on the meat is tied on, often isn't fat belonging to that animal. I am very suspect about meat in super markets.

depends which supermarket, tbh I normally shop in Waitrose and I think they are not too bad, but Asda was on the way home, so I just popped in there.

I'm not sure about eating ducks tbh, I have a suspicion the supermarket ones are mutant battery-farmed nasties. I do like the ones they do in Chinatown hanging up in the windows though. I don't eat salmon generally for the same reason, all those dodgy farmed fish fed on god knows what.

Mallard is fab though, it doesn't leave you all bloated like farmed meat does, one thing I like is to cut off the breasts, marinade them in juniper berries, thyme and cassis overnight, and then chuck the rest of carcass in a pot with a couple of onions and carrots and boil it all up, then just sear the breasts in a red-hot pan and finish them in the oven for about five minute so they are still nice and pink.

I saw in Sainsburys pheasants, £5 each, or two pheasant breasts for £5, seamed a bit ridiculous to me. I don't know what the brown stuff inside the carcass is exactly, but that's always the best bit, shame to throw it away.

I think I read Michael Winner saying that he has his butler cook him roast partridge for dinner, for health reasons.

Seems like a plan to me.

Venison is good stuff too, venison loin about the same price as fillet steak but much nicer and probably doesn't give you arse cancer like what beef does.

I suppose the main thing is to avoid the standard processed diet of British people. If you do that then I don't think you need to be too worried about whether you eat your meat rare and it's from particular farms and the like. You will already be doing much better than most British eaters. It's quite hard to get fatty meat. Coconuts and also avocados are rather hard for shops to spoil so they are a pretty good choice if you want fat. I noticed our usual Tesco bacon has just changed to saying "trimmed" in big letters. In fact it has as much fat as it ever had but they obviously have decided if they can pretend it has less more people will buy it.

I eat salmon 4 times a week. I just don't worry too much about provenance as half your battle is avoiding donuts, cakes and sweets. If you can do that you are half way home whether your meat is grown in a particular way or not.

Glad the thread is popular. I am not sure how we can keep it on track to Eton though.

Yes I saw the new Archbishop is an OE. I think he may be an anti gay evangelical. At least he doesn't have a beard I suppose.
This is he

"Welby is married to Caroline Eaton and they have had six children. In 1983, their seven-month-old daughter, Johanna, died in a car crash in France. Welby later explained that "It was a very dark time for my wife Caroline and myself, but in a strange way it actually brought us closer to God." "

How sad.