- When it comes to 'healthy eating' are there any things that you feel particularly confused about? If so, what are they? Why are they confusing?
I find it confusing that despite plentiful and credible evidence to the contrary, the government's main messages on healthy eating dictate that low-fat is optimal for health. A recent leaflet that came home in my 4 year-old's school bag advised me to switch to semi-skimmed milk, for example. GPs regularly spend NHS funds on subsidising obese patients to attend Weight Watchers or Slimming World, which in my opinion exist to keep their customers yo-yo dieting and miserable on their low-fat high-carb regime. It's becoming more apparent that sugar is the root cause of the weight problem in the UK so why the misinformation that high-carb (i.e. high sugar) regimes are the way forward?
- Is providing your family with a healthy and balanced diet something that you feel confident about? If so why, if not, why not?
I feel fairly confident that my family get a balanced diet. Lots of green veg, good clean protein and natural fats. I hold pretty strong views on fat vs. sugar but I'm realistic enough that chocolate and cake etc is widely available, attractive to children and my boys are going to have a certain amount in their diets. I don't want to be the po-faced mum that whips birthday cake off their plates at a party, but I do try and educate them that it's not an ideal source of nutrition and should be eaten sparingly (I don't use the word "treat" to describe sugary snacks to them however)
- Please share your experiences on how you go about sourcing the right nutritional advice on providing a healthy diet for you and your family.
I read a fair bit about low-carb and paleo nutrition, particularly from Briffa, Taubes and resources such as Mark's Daily Apple. I find
Eat Like A Dinosaur a good starting point for a healthy diet for children that doesn't include loads of grain and sugar. I'm certainly pretty cynical about "healthy eating" messages from either the government or the big food industries (who are too closely linked for comfort in my humble, slightly tin-foil-hatted opinion..)