[Personal Trainer Glenn Hill, Durham exposing the eatwell guide]
I have blogged about it before and the fact that following the Eatwell plate or NHS pyramid is hugely detrimental towards your health..... no arguing here, its all the wrong foods for health.
Unbeleivably the Director of health & wellbeing at public health England who honestly hasnt got a clue knows it works because...
The eatwell plate has been around for years and recently has changed to the eatwell guide, over its life I would argue that it has contributed to millions of individuals becoming obese and being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and premature mortality rates.
I dont know any health professional working at grass roots helping individuals to get fit and healthy who would promote this guide. In fact the only thing I woud agree with is that individuals should have more water....
I would argue that some saturated fats are much better for our cardiac health than low fat oils and spreads... coconut oil for example is mazing for our health and is a saturated fat.
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The Eatwell Guide was formulated by a group appointed by Public Health England, consisting primarily of members of the food and drink industry rather than independent experts.
The above reason could be one of the explanations why we have an epidemic growth in type 2 Diabetes and Obesity. I was on a plane just the other week en-route to a holiday destination, myself and my partner where the only non obese passenger on board(unbelievable i thought). Clearly the food industry would like you to eat certain foods to improve the industry.... for example breakfast cereals and grains that help farmers but ruin our health.
The Eatwell Plate became the Eatwell Guide; the knife and fork disappeared; the segment names were tweaked and the images on the plate became drawings, not photographs—looking even less like real food. None of this would have any positive impact on epidemics of obesity or type 2 diabetes.
The segment proportions changed: starchy foods increased from 33% to 38%; fruit and vegetables from 33% to 40%; ‘milk and dairy’ became ‘dairy and alternatives’ (soya) and almost halved from 15% to 8%; non-dairy protein stayed at 12%, but was renamed as ‘beans, pulses, fish, eggs, meat and other proteins’ (the incomplete vegetarian protein listed first and an ignorance of the difference between a food group and a macronutrient demonstrated). The purple segment (previously foods high in fat and/or sugar) became (unsaturated) oils and spreads.
Fruit & veg + Starchy carbs (both sources of carbs)= total recomended carbs around 78% or most of your diet..... this is ludicrous and a sure fire way of putting on loads of visceral fat.
Unilever's response was to place adverts in national newspapers to celebrate their ‘dedicated section’.
The indefensible can of cola was removed. The biscuits, sweets, cakes, crisps and chocolate remain, however; moved from the purple segment to be given prominence on the bottom left of the diagram, along with ketchup and ice cream.
Its crazy how in this day and age our (impartial unbiased) government still promote a diet that makes us unwell as doesnt even consider macro percentages, IE percentages of fat, protein and carbs. It just goes to show that our government have been lying to us for some time now, promoting ill health by using a guide that makes the food industry rich and the population poor in terms of health.
Please check out my other blogs, one is talking about the eatwell plate in detail.
Thanks for reading
Glenn
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