Nah, poverty generally causes shit food and significant evidence to show this - lack of access to better food, expensive local shops with poor choice, poor education re choices, and peer/family pressure. Leads to poorer health and people trapped in crap housing, unemployment/crap jobs, which is then effectively passed on to their kids. Cycle of poverty. That’s why the majority of malnourished (can be over or underweight) people I see are from deprived areas. It would be an oversimplification to think that giving people better food would take them out of poverty - multi factorial issues. Oh, and we still regularly see Irn Bru in baby bottles in West of Scotland - missing front teeth and high rates of full ‘baby teeth’ extractions under general anaesthetic.
Hmmmm... whilst I agree with some of what you say, there’s a difference between causation and correlation and you are linking diet to academic achievement without considering any other factor. I would also suggest that the swinging of the pendulum the other way (promotion of low-carb, high fat diet) to see equally as damaging as I would expect the associated levels of strokes and cardiovascular disease increase accordingly (and there is a causative link). Where will the loud voices that advocate extremes of diet be in 20-30 years? Strangely quiet or already pushing the next food fad. What the current dietary recommendations actually say is somewhere in the middle - but that’s not exciting enough and you can’t sell it (do you see a trend yet?). Furthermore, human behaviour is such that you can show people what they should be doing - but they probably won’t do it. Eg, no one in healthcare advocates a high sugar breakfast cereal but that’s what people eat (horse/water). Remember, commercial advertising budgets are likely higher than our public health allocations and government could do better to curb inappropriate advertising - but then you of all people Andy, might see that as censorship and restriction of choice by the nanny state? ;-) So, yes, it’s bad that people have poor diets, but to suggest that the actual, evidence-based recommendations are incorrect is ... er ... incorrect.
Nah, poverty generally causes shit food and significant evidence to show this - lack of access to better food, expensive local shops with poor choice, poor education re choices, and peer/family pressure. Leads to poorer health and people trapped in crap housing, unemployment/crap jobs, which is then effectively passed on to their kids. Cycle of poverty. That’s why the majority of malnourished (can be over or underweight) people I see are from deprived areas. It would be an oversimplification to think that giving people better food would take them out of poverty - multi factorial issues. Oh, and we still regularly see Irn Bru in baby bottles in West of Scotland - missing front teeth and high rates of full ‘baby teeth’ extractions under general anaesthetic.
Hmmmm... whilst I agree with some of what you say, there’s a difference between causation and correlation and you are linking diet to academic achievement without considering any other factor. I would also suggest that the swinging of the pendulum the other way (promotion of low-carb, high fat diet) to see equally as damaging as I would expect the associated levels of strokes and cardiovascular disease increase accordingly (and there is a causative link). Where will the loud voices that advocate extremes of diet be in 20-30 years? Strangely quiet or already pushing the next food fad. What the current dietary recommendations actually say is somewhere in the middle - but that’s not exciting enough and you can’t sell it (do you see a trend yet?). Furthermore, human behaviour is such that you can show people what they should be doing - but they probably won’t do it. Eg, no one in healthcare advocates a high sugar breakfast cereal but that’s what people eat (horse/water). Remember, commercial advertising budgets are likely higher than our public health allocations and government could do better to curb inappropriate advertising - but then you of all people Andy, might see that as censorship and restriction of choice by the nanny state? ;-) So, yes, it’s bad that people have poor diets, but to suggest that the actual, evidence-based recommendations are incorrect is ... er ... incorrect.