Nutrition

carrots at farmers market

What we eat underpins our whole health.  In the wealthy West, where food of all kinds is plentiful, we should therefore all be thriving.  Instead, there's a correlation between populations adopting 'modern' Western diets, and an increase in heart disease and cancer.  The endless supply of food that we enjoy is often denatured by over-processing.  Meanwhile food manufacturers and retailers have multi-million pound marketing budgets to persuade us to eat cheap, high-fat, high-sugar snacks.

We need an ever greater level of education and willpower to navigate and understand the choices that our supermarkets offer us.   Over the coming months, these pages will carry a range of perspectives on how, as individuals and as a society, we can re-learn how to eat well.

Why don't we eat well?

Oranges

 Dr Beckie Lang and Dr Toni Steer look at what research tells us about the state of the nation's eating habits. They discover that it's social factors, not ignorance, that lead many of us to make bad food choices.

Should we trust what scientists say about food?

The Food Standards Agency brought together Professor Kay-Tee Khaw (principal investigator on the Epic Norfolk Study),  Professor Erik Millstone and the medical doctor and journalist Ben Goldacre to discuss what the sources of uncertainty are when scientists try to judge what's healthy or unhealthy in our diets.  Should we trust scientists? - and if so, which ones?

Delicious hospital food

Mike Duckett, catering services manager turned quiet revolutionary has transformed the food at London's Royal Brompton hospital.  But as he explains, when he changed the food, it also affected the wider community.

Nutrition news