What's your opinion of the recommended dietary guidelines?

[Watchkeys]

I wonder how people who are trying to lose weight feel about 'the healthy diet' that's recommended to us, and whether they generally feel that it is, actually, a healthy diet, in terms of ensuring that we get the right nutrients.

I'm a PT, and have my own views on this, but I'm curious about how people feel about it generally, and what knowledge people base their opinions on, re nutrition.

I don't think there's anything significantly wrong with the eatwell plate, or recommended calorie intakes, unless you're very inactive and eating the crappiest options in the 'grains and starches' section.

There's quite a difference between eating porridge, spelt and sweet potato vs cheap white bread, sugary cereals etc.

But let's face it, most people who are overweight and/or unhealthy are not going to be eating within those guidelines are they? Their calorie intakes and amounts of sugar and processed food vs fruit, veg, pulses and lean protein is going to be way off.

A lot of the carbs we're told to fill 55% of our diet with have barely any nutritional value. It doesn't make sense. In the 70s and for 3.5 million years before that, we had nothing like that much carbohydrate. When we started to be advised to, obesity immediately came a problem and has been increasing ever since.

Carbohydrate give us energy to move around, physically. It doesn't nourish us in other ways anything like as well as protein and fats do. So, we're advised to eat all this 'energy-giving' food, and expending les and less energy moving around. We're advised to spike our insulin (the 'burn sugar, not fat' hormone) every day, constantly, before the previous spike has petered out.

It doesn't make sense to me.

@WithIcePlease

My take is that there is more than one way to increase your kcal expenditure, so do it in other ways than exercising, Give your body a higher proportion of nourishing kcal, and don't encourage your body to store them as fat. Exercise will get you in shape, but not because of the increased kcal burn. It's because it alters the balances in your body, and trains it to work efficiently with the fuel it has. Food wise, put simply, eat 3 times a day or less, eat less sugar and flour, eat less foods that need a label.

I'm wondering if anybody here, who is interested in talking about the guidelines, is actually in an ongoing battle with being overweight?

It would be interesting if the only people who seem interested in talking about it are at a healthy weight.

A lot of the carbs we're told to fill 55% of our diet with have barely any nutritional value

Source for the 55%? 55% how? Calories? Volume?

According to the NHS, just over a third (so nowhere near 55%) should be from the starchy foods section, with emphasis on wholegrain varieties and leaving the skin on potatoes for fibre, plus being the main source of calcium, iron and B vitamins.

https://www.nhs.uk/Live-well/eat-well/food-guidelines-and-food-labels/the-eatwell-guide/

To answer your other question, I'm slightly overweight but fully accept that it's because I eat too much and eat the wrong things. However, I'm probably slimmer and more active than the average 50 YO woman, but of course, it's a group that doesn't do great health/weight wise.

@BarbaraofSeville

I said 'carbs', not 'the starchy food section'. It's not the same. The bananas, for example, are high carb. Fibre is a carb. Not all carbs are in the yellow section.

I don't really like the way they section the foods in the first place.

I increasingly think it's about UPFs - and once you start looking at ingredients lists, it's amazing how many things have seemingly random additives, whether recognisable or not - so for example, chopped veg being dusted in potato starch, or ice cream having strange gums being added to it. Also, oils which couldn't be made without industrial processes.

One thing I can't square with this is the way PT's seem to be obsessed with protein powder, which seems to be the only way to get the recommended amount of protein, but is so heavily processed that I don't think it's good for anyone so I ignore that.

Eatwell and macros don't consider food quality, which is I think the great failing of both ways of eating.

I'm still overweight, but I think it's connected to medication at this point.

I think it's great, sensible and evidence based. What hasn't kept up is the general understanding of activity levels - most of us are far too inactive to deal with the recommended 2000 calories per day for an adult female.

What evidence do you think it's based on, @manontroppo ?

Yes, re activity levels; We can deal with the kcal no problem, but not on a diet with that macro split.

@Speedweed

A good diet doesn't need supplements like protein powder. Anybody who tells you that you need supplements to your diet doesn't understand what a good diet is.

Eatwell and macros don't consider food quality

I don't understand this statement. 'Macros' isn't a way of eating, or a 'diet', and no diet guidelines can specify food quality without becoming exclusive. How do you expect them to phrase it, to overcome this 'failing'?

I completely agree that food quality is important.

@Watchkeys I am overweight, with a BMI currently of about 27. At my biggest my BMI was just over 35, and it has taken me a long time to get it down this low. I am trying to lose another 8kg or so to get to a basically healthy weight. I haven't weighed myself routinely throughout my adult life, but I think I was hovering around being overweight as a teenager, then through my 20s gained a lot. I've had periods where I have lost weight, mostly just through temporarily improving my relationship with food. But it's never stayed off.

Ultimately I think UPFs and sugar are the likely problems in most people's diets, leading to the obesity crisis. However my partner doesn't agree, and is very into calories. I broached the subject of eliminating that kind of food and it didn't go well! In fairness I don't think I would have stuck to it.

Over the last few months I have lost the weight just through trying to maintain control of what I'm eating, rather than eating without even thinking about it. I've followed Corinne Crabtree and Lisa Schlosberg, who both talk about the emotional side of things about more. I still eat UPFs, I'm about to have a malteaster bunny, but most of the rest of what I eat today will be balanced and sensible. I feel on the whole really positive about this way of losing weight.

That's not a lot of training then for people who are giving out nutritional advice.

The Eatwell plate development is covered here:
https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2016/05/24/healthy-eating-advice-must-be-based-on-the-best-evidence/

and:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/579388/eatwell_model_guide_report.pdf

This also has links to the primary literature, and refers to the Dietary Reference values from the DoH.

There is an editorial by someone suggesting that the Eatwell plate is not evidence based, but none of the other aspects the editorial (note:editorial, not primary literature) suggest regarding fat and carbohydrate intake have any more evidence to back them up. This same editorial bemoans the lack of RCT evidence but an RCT is never going to be achievable for.

There are a few basic problems with your question.

1. you haven't defined which guidelines you are referring to
2. you haven't defined which 'they' you are referring to
3. you're doing this again, you keep posting threads where you seem to be attempting to get everyone to disagree with each other about diet, I assume your PT business isn't very busy and you have lots of spare time to waste trying to wind people up for some reason.

Anyway to answer some of the other posts you've made 8n this thread.

The key word in all of the Guidelines is "guidelines", it's a generalised set of best practice advice that should help the majority of people. It's not a tailored set of rules, or a personalised plan, it's an overview of what could work for the masses.

If you are a person with normal hormone levels, of average height, with average fitness levels and no special circumstances, then eating a diet like the one in the guidelines will help you to maintain that.

If you are diabetic, have high cholesterol, are very short, very tall, very thin, very fat, very active, very sedentary, have a higher or lower than average metabolism ............... then you will need to vary from the guidelines as suitable to meet your needs.

Pt's shouldn't be giving out detailed nutritional advice, and if they are, they're outside of their scope. The training is 'recommend the Eatwell Plate, and if they want something more detailed, tell them to see someone more qualified.'

@FatAgainItsLettuceTime

Thank for your opinions, and your assumptions about my life. Much appreciated. Sorry if you feel wound up by my threads. Perhaps ignore them?

@Watchkeys so what should the guidelines be?

Last line of post at 10:49

Won't keep posting it as people think I'm trying to convince them of things. It's others' opinions I'm curious about.

The food pyramid is upside down.

Carbohydrates and highly processed food are the way the people at the top feed us poor people - we are like worker ants to them.

The better you eat the healthier you are but the financial cost of eating better is high. Eat natural food, organic food, non-processed food. If your great great grandmother wouldn’t recognise it as food it is likely bad for you.

If your great great grandmother wouldn’t recognise it as food it is likely bad for you

I like 'Avoid eating anything that needs a label', too. Along similar lines, I think.

OP, do you really know what some people eat and drink?

I had a flatmate who drank a 1.25l bottle of full sugar coke every day, along with other cans of Coke, and a whole packet of penguins again, every day.

Some people I know never touch a single fruit, vegetable, or bit of salad.

My brother in law drinks 6 large cans of lager every night.

Some people haven't got the means, interest or frankly the brainpower to prepare much more than a pot noodle or some toast for themselves and their children.

Some people will buy 4 chocolate eclairs and 4 cream donuts in the supermarket yellow sticker section on the way home from work, and eat the lot in one sitting.

As children, some people were never fed anything more varied than Frosties, ham sandwiches on white bread, and potato waffles.

As a teen, I know girls who survived all day every day on an apple and a packet of crisps.

For all of those people, who are normal and numerous by the way, the Eatwell plate is something to work towards. It may not represent the list scientific, up to date or highly-tuned nutritional advice, but for most people in most situations, it's something to aim for.

@VerveClique

Thanks for the breakdown.

I'm not sure that national dietary guidelines should be suggesting something that's 'a bit less unhealthy than' the examples you gave.

You sound indignant, as if you think I didn't know that people eat poorly.

Some people haven't got the means, interest or frankly the brainpower to prepare much more than a pot noodle or some toast for themselves and their children

This is basically 'some people are too poor and stupid to prepare proper food'.

Nice. Really nice. I take a more hopeful view that there might be ways to health for the people you're referring to, but we need to be sending the right message first. People lose interest if the 'healthy diet' recommended to them keeps them overweight and hungry.

@VerveClique I agree. Let's face it-if everyone was sticking to the guidelines no-one would be obese. People complain about 2000 calorie a day guidelines and I suspect that is based on living a healthy lifestyle rather than being sedentary like a lot of people are now. Although at uni many many years ago I started calorie counting to 2000 a day and lost weight on not very much exercise so I'd been eating more than 2000 previously and I expect that's the case with most people who are overweight. If mumsnet is anything to go by then people are drinking a lot of their calories in alcohol alone.

John Yudkin, the physiologist and biochemist, wrote Pure white and deadly, all about sugar. He was vilified, such was the powerful low-fat lobby from the US. He either did, or nearly lost his job in the controversy.

Robert Lustig, the paediatric endocrinologist wrote about the horror that is low-fat food, where the good fats are replaced by starches, thickeners and emulsifiers to give an acceptable mouth-feel. Facing the rising deaths from heart disease the US surgeon general had to make a snap decision. I seem to remember he tossed a coin, and came up with low-fat, not low-sugar.

I knew Dr Harold Shapiro, who worked with John Howard to formulate and test thé vlcd, the Cambridge Diet. His wife told me how horrified he was that doctors got about 3 days of lectures on nutrition. He was also totally against bariatric surgery. Sadly, he was the obesity specialist at Hope, the university of Salford hospital. Now, all they do is the bariatric surgery.
Prof Taylor at Newcastle is getting type 2 diabetics into remission with vlcd diets, and maintaining this with low carb.