But, with each of the above, we started to get contradictory findings. It was said that eggs raised our cholesterol levels and we should only eat one a week. Too much sugar, it was suggested, was one of the reasons why people became overweight or obese. Sugar added to many foods, supposedly to improve the taste, resulted in highly calorie–dense food, but was devoid of nutrients, potentially leading to overweight, diabetes and cholesterol problems. Fruit was still fine, but fruit juice may well have contained too much of the dreaded sugar, and cans of fizzy drinks were off the scale. Then the experts discovered that a diet of high-protein food could apparently damage our organs and should also be avoided.
Recent new studies contradict some of those findings! Maybe eggs don’t raise cholesterol levels after all, as we are now told the body compensates; added sugar, especially in its relatively new form, corn syrup, causes even more problems than first admitted; and fats, including saturated fats, may not be the big danger they were thought to have been.
But don't take what I write as the truth, I'm not an expert. So who can we believe? Experts at one time advised us how to be healthy by eating certain foods; then, at another time, other experts said the opposite and warned us against the foods we trusted. Who says these people are experts when they can't even agree amongst themselves?
I find it surprising that nutrition isn't fully understood yet. The body is a miraculous machine, but surely not so complicated that, if studied properly, we can't master the functions and workings of its parts and know how best to feed it.
In England, the majority of the population, some 64%, are now overweight or obese. Overweight is defined as having more body fat than is optimally healthy. Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, with a BMI of over 30. Always needing to find a scapegoat, the Government has given responsibility for people’s health to the local authorities. Why? Why can't individuals be responsible for their own bodies? We shouldn't blame an elected group for our own misdemeanours. Surely, we don't need an expert (or maybe they're not) to tell us what’s healthy and what’s not, and that, if we eat too much, we'll put on weight.
The latest information I’ve read is that the number of fast-food outlets permitted in an area is to be limited. Apparently, there are more overweight people in an area with more fast-food outlets. But is that because people see the outlets and use them more, or because the companies target areas where there are fat people thinking that they'll sell more?
Overall, health problems associated with being overweight or obese cost the NHS over £5bn each year. Yes, this is a problem that needs to be tackled, but let's take responsibility for our own bodies and learn to eat sensibly, without the need for a nanny state deciding for us. We don’t need an ‘expert’ to tell us that a can of Coke and a Big Mac are less healthy than an apple and a carrot, so should be eaten in moderation.