The real problem is that in Ireland there is nothing to stop anyone from calling themselves a nutritional expert (eg nutritionist or nutritional therapist) even if they have little or no recognised qualifications. We don’t tolerate this when it comes to doctors and pharmacists dispensing medication, but when it comes to nutrition, we have no way of knowing if the advice we are getting is accurate or even safe. This means that there are plenty of unqualified people giving advice that is incorrect or even dangerous.

Ciara Conway a minister? When did that happen?

Apologies Colm it’s the Oireachtas committee for Health she’s vice chairman of. Being from Waterford we got to hear so much about her having the ‘ear’ of James Reilly and thus better in than out of the Labour party I mistakenly promoted her. Still….. health?

We are eating GMO and lots of us don’t even know this.to avoid GMO eat organic

Hey Eddie,
If you are in the EU you can relax for now. GM is not approved for human consumption and so we do not have GMOs in our food (yet).
Some of the pellet fed animals are getting GM feed, if this worries you it may be best to stick to organic, grass fed meat (and check out the farm to ensure they aren’t using round up on the grass!)

While I’m at it, there’s no need to worry about rBGH (recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone) in our beef or dairy either as the EU banned it. We pay a fine to the WTO for doing so, because this puts a ban on beef and other bovine products from countries which use it. This is unlikely to change as in the EU it is banned on health grounds.

The GM thing may or may not change, but at present, you don’t get GM foods on sale in the EU. By comparison, in the states – a retailer which claims to be organic, “Whole Foods” have been exposed for using GM soy and corn. Hence why labelling should be permitted, to allow customers the choice rather than allowing companies to engage in fraudulent marketing.

Hey shanti
All of the fruit which is seedless is Gm food,corn flakes, cheerios, all kellogs are gm, Nestlé gm, all sold in Irish shops.ireland is now growing gm spuds. If our food contains gm ingredients it should be labelled but it’s not so we don’t know.

Fine example they are too much of the good. Life

Add to that the fact that Low Fat products typically contain more sugar but are marketed as a healthy option!

Yip, and to top that off, processed organic food is generally laced with sugar. I eat a lot of unrefined organic produce now, but ppl need to be diligent with checking ingredients of processed foods, regardless of what the label says – proof; check out the sugar content in organic baked beans!

Yup, fats aren’t all that bad for you provided – like anything else, they are consumed in moderation, and unprocessed. People avoiding fats are also avoiding vitamins A, D, E and K. They are avoiding essential fatty acids (the omega fats), the brains preferred source of fuel, and they will notice that their skin, hair and nails will become brittle and dry.

Then there’s the no sugar option – aspartame, sodium saccharin, Sucralose, and Acesulfame K.. Yeah – because I was designed to run on laboratory chemicals..

Moderation is everything when it comes to diet, and sadly humans are prone to extremes.. They hear something is bad in large amounts and just hear “it’s bad”, they then endeavour to cut it out altogether often leading them to avoid a whole category of food (eg, fats or carbohydrates). On the flipside they hear something is healthy and go overboard on it. The key is in the mantra, “a healthy, BALANCED diet”.

Totally agree Shanti, but I have to say it drives me nuts hearing people say fat is worse than sugar! Every body needs a healthy amount of fats, sugar is something our bodies just do not need! I just have a thing about sugar to be honest! It’s total crap that does nothing good for us only rot teeth, put weight on you and cause diseases!

With regards straight glucose and HFCS I totally agree. Sugar is a pretty vague term though, fruit is pretty much all sugar, but as it’s fructose it affects the body in a different way. On the plus side it doesn’t affect blood sugar levels as badly, because it is sent straight to the liver to be digested. The downside is, if you eat too much the liver gets overloaded and starts storing it as glycogen and that leads to fatty liver – not good.

But yes – we definitely NEED a certain amount of fats – from polyunsaturated, monounsaturated as well as saturated sources. But as I said already – moderation is key. No matter how healthy something is – too much of it will not be good for you. Even water.

“sugar is something our bodies just do not need! ”

Not true.. your body needs some sort of sugar to fuel itself and your brain. If you deprive yourself of sugar your body will break down carbs to create its own sugars. The best source of sugar is naturally occurring in fruit and vegetables.
That’s why you have blood sugar levels,

I know that Simon, my point was probably not expressed well. Your body converts carbs to glucose, which is a type of sugar. So no you do not need to intake sugar, even in fruit for that matter, as much of the food we intake converts to sugars internally.

Saying your body will do it if it doesn’t get sugar is infactual, it does it anyway. Diabetics for example have to watch carbs as much if not more than sugar for example. Carbs are broken into sugar internally irrespective!

Great article, worrying that there are so many cases of the unqualified proffering nutrition advice.
Seems like not that long ago I read a good example of just that…

It is safe to assume that a short article on The Journal is not equivalent to a private appointment with a dietician.

A short article cannot possibly discuss the myriad intricacies of health and diet. It can only ever give a brief synopsis and a very, very brief one at that. Expecting such a short article to go to such detail (i.e. subgroups of wheat) is silly and off-topic.

I wasn’t talking about “subgroups of wheat”.

Wholegrain is just that, the whole grain. The way it was intended. It is a complex carbohydrate, a source of vitamins, oil and fibre.
When this is milled it is called “wholemeal wheat flour”, and retains most of its nutritional value.
Bread made with this flour is known as “brown” bread.

White bread (and pasta and cakes and biscuits etc) is made from the same stuff, the difference is the wheat has been *refined*. This means;
• the outer husk – which contains all the good stuff, has been removed, exposing the gluten inside (this causes some people problems)
• it has been bleached white using alloxan (for the record, alloxan is the stuff they inject into lab animals to induce diabetes, it is toxic to the beta cells that make insulin in the pancreas)
• it no longer has any real nutritional value, and is what is referred to as empty calories. It’s equivalent to sugar – in fact technically, that’s what it is classed as.
This is what is known as “wheat flour”, not “wholemeal wheat flour” or “wholegrain wheat flour”, but they are all made from the same stuff.

Perhaps this will explain what I meant? There is a huge nutritional difference between the two – and people get duped very easily. Check out the quantitive ingredients list on the supposed “wholemeal” or “wholegrain” sliced pans.. Many list “wheat flour” (white) as the main ingredient, meaning that it’s really just a white pan with some brown in it, but costs more anyway.

I seriously doubt that you did not know what I meant by “subgroups of wheat”. Lets not get into a pedantic, semantic debate about something typed on a phone in a hurry. I (and most other people) are aware of the nutritional differences between unrefined and refined wheat.

Do you genuinely feel that the above article should feature the level of detail in your reply to me?

I’d feel for your editor if you were asked to write a short piece around 1000-1500 words.

Actually the reason I said it is because no, not everyone realises there’s a difference. And while they may be advised to avoid refined wheat – this doesn’t mean they should avoid wholegrain (unless they are coeliac).

It’s the same as people avoiding fats because they’re afraid that fat will make them fat – humans, particularly humans with limited nutritional knowledge are prone to extremes where they will cut entire subgroups of food out without truly understanding why – or how dangerous it can be.

I’m sorry you failed to understand the concern I was expressing.

You actually seem to be the one failing to see my point. I am not actually engaging with you in a discussion on healthy eating and/or the knowledge of this in the wider public. Are there issues about knowledge of healthy eating? Of course. That’s not something we need Sherlock Holmes on hand to solve. But that is not my point, nor has it been my point. My posts have continually revolved around pointing out that you expect the writer of this article to include far, far more detail than is possible. A brief overview can only ever be just that.

As I said in my first post, a short article cannot cover the range of topics that a one-on-one appointment with a dietician can cover. You don’t seem to have engaged with this primary point of discussion in my posts. Instead you write more condescending off topic posts.

By the way, i use salt to kill the weeds – that tells you all you need to know.

“Salt”, aside from being a very vague term, is not necessarily bad for you. It is just that people use too much.

Sodium and Potassium and a few other trace minerals all count as salts. They are what is known as electrolytes, they help with nerve function, help transport nutrients into the cell, and maintain the water balance – which is critical to hydration. This is why you get a saline drip when you are dehydrated rather than pure water.
Sodium and potassium need to be in balance. It is possible to become deficient in either – it’s just quite rare given that most foods contain one or the other.

So while *excessive* salt (and by that I mean added salt – specifically common table salt, sodium chloride) is indeed bad for you, the body does actually require *some* salts.
Again it’s down to us humans being really bad at the whole moderation thing!

Actually, real chocolate, as in 80%+ cocoa solids without a load of added sugar is quite good for you. Cocoa beans even better. It’s just very bitter, so most people don’t like it.
It’s a very good source of magnesium, which is required for over 2000 processes in the body.

The stuff most people call chocolate isn’t really chocolate, and I remember about 10 or 15 years ago there was talk of it being renamed as the amount of cocoa solids in your average milk chocolate bar is negligible. Even in commercial “dark” chocolate it’s rarely above 40%.

Of course they do.

Nutritionists aren’t fakers; some are very highly educated often to PhD level. The problem is that the title isn’t protected and any quack can use it. There’s currently a voluntary register for nutritionists with appropriate qualifications http://www.associationfornutrition.org/Default.aspx?tabid=92

A healthy fart is harmless to the back side but an annoyance to the nose ;-)