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Posted by admin in Food Policy, General, Nutritional Standards on 11 16th, 2009 | 8 Comments

New Recommendations for Energy Intake...

The official requirements for energy (calories) should be increased for most of the population, according to the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN). The recently released draft report recommends the following changes in the Estimated Average Requirement (EAR): Teenage boys ( increase by up to 9%) Teenage girls ( increase by up to 15%) All adults ( increase by up to 16%). SACN has conducted a thorough evaluation of the latest evidence – there are 785 references to other scientific papers! So although the report has been released in draft and will be subject... 

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Posted by admin in Food Policy, Nutritional Standards on 11 4th, 2009 | 8 Comments

Obesity in Children...

According to a statement just released by the Department of Health, the rapid rise in child obesity may be levelling off (see http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/News/Recentstories/DH_107835) In fact there never has been a ‘’rapid rise’’ in child obesity. Official figures for the changes in the BMI values for school children are shown in the table below. It is immediately obvious from these data that the BMI values for children aged 15 has remained essentially steady over the period 1995-2007. Presumably the current DoH position is based on the conclusions in ‘’Tackling Obesities... 

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Posted by admin in Food Policy, General, Nutritional Standards on 10 21st, 2009 | 7 Comments

Let the Children Eat Cake...

Eating a slice of cake to celebrate a birthday has been banned because it conflicts with the Healthy Eating policy in a Rotherham school (The Yorkshire Post 17 October 2009). The mother of one of the pupils sent a cake to the school so that her daughter could share it with her friends. This incident illustrates the absurdity of the government approach to Healthy Eating in schools. Although it has been established that diet is related to health it is difficult to devise guidelines which can be used for the population as a whole. This is because there is such a wide variation... 

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Posted by admin in Food Policy, General on 09 8th, 2009 | 12 Comments

The Obesity Crisis...

According to the Government obesity/overweight is a major problem and it is getting worse. Here a few quotes from recent official publication entitled ‘’Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives: A Cross Government Strategy for England’’. ‘’Britain is in the grip of an epidemic.  Almost 2/3 of adults and 1/3 of children are either overweight or obese’’ ‘’We are facing a public health problem the experts have told us is comparable to climate change in both its scale and complexity…’’ ‘’…….there has been a clear rise in obesity rates, probably accelerating... 

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Posted by admin in Food Safety, General on 07 27th, 2009 | 5 Comments

Food Safety – Another outbreak in ...

July 2009 Dough used to make cookies has been found to have E.coli contamination.  As a consequence at least 69 people in 29 different states have been infected, 34 of these required hospital treatment. The dough was prepared at a Nestle plant in Virginia.  It has just emerged that when it was inspected by FDA officials in September 2001, a number of deficiencies were noted.  More worryingly, the inspectors were refused access to important food safety related documents. These include : ·         Complaints records ·         Pest control records ·        ... 

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Posted by admin in Food Safety, General on 07 27th, 2009 | 6 Comments

Salmonella outbreak in the USA...

July 2009 Recently there was a major outbreak in the U.S.A. which was caused by peanuts contaminated by Salmonella.  At least 9 people died and an estimated 25,000 became ill. The peanuts were from a factory in Georgia owned by the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA).  Investigations have shown that the company repeatedly re-tested product until negative results for Salmonella were obtained, distributed product that it knew was contaminated and failed to act on FDA recommendations. Bill Master, the attorney who specialises in food safety has estimated the costs that are likely... 

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Posted by admin in Food Policy, General on 07 27th, 2009 | 6 Comments

Colorectal cancer and processed meat...

July 2009   The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) has recently released a report on “Iron and Health”.  The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) advocates that the intake of red meat should be restricted to 500g per week and that very little if any, should be processed.  This advice is based on an evaluation of the scientific evidence which was published in the Expert Report “Food Nutrition and Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global perspective in 2007”.   However the SACN report has done a separate evaluation of the evidence and is... 

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