The Eatwell Guide

The Food Programme

BBC

Food, Arts

4.4 • 977 Ratings

🗓️ 2 July 2018

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sheila Dillon questions whether the government's Eatwell Plate that's issued to the medical profession and used as public guidance for a balanced diet could actually be harming us. An increasing number of medics are abandoning the plate because they say it still promotes dangerously high levels of starchy carbohydrates and processed foods that contain high levels of the sugars that cause many of today's chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra author of the Pioppi diet is campaigning to change the official advice and says that a healthy diet and lifestyle are the key to reducing disease and the need for medication, but he says that vested interests from the food and pharmaceutical industries make some of these healthier choices more difficult to achieve. Dr David Unwin is a GP who has seen a huge spike in patients presenting with Type 2 Diabetes since he began practicing forty years ago. He advises lifestyle changes that include abandoning the Eatwell Guide and cutting out the starchy carbohydrates, processed foods and sugars and has seen a reversal of the disease in a significant number of patients. Sheila also visits Tameside Hospital in Greater Manchester which is overhauling its canteen food and vending machine produce to reduce processed carbohydrates and sugary drinks and snacks. In celebration of the 70th anniversary of the NHS the hospital will go completely sugar free on July 4th. Is it time to revise the Eatwell Guide and what will it take to do so?

Producer: Maggie Ayre.

Transcript

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0:55.0	Mike had always been a little bit kind of on the plumper side and a foodie. cooking, loved shopping for food and enjoyed the finer things in life.
1:08.8	We thought we were quite healthy in what we ate really and we were following the guidelines at least a third of his
1:15.6	diet was starchy carbohydrates, bread, rice, pasta.
1:20.0	He was a little bit overweight but he decided that in an effort to lose the weight he joined
1:24.9	a learned to row group and on the 12th of September he phoned me after his rowing session and he said that it was the most intense session that he'd ever done and he said he felt nauseous and once I heard that alarm bells rang and within five minutes he'd phoned and said can you pick me up from the bridge please and I knew I had to bring my handbag and my coat because I wasn't coming home and he was having a massive heart attack on the bridge.
1:54.8	You got medical treatment.
1:56.6	Yes.
1:57.6	And they were marvelous.
1:59.6	They were amazing and the care he received in C. C. U was very, very good.
2:05.0	It started to fall down a bit when he came back from the cardiac rehab with a picture of what was called the eat well plate.
2:12.0	And there were a few items on there that I had
	...

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