Actually, this comes from Public Health England but if you look at the documents it does state that it is in association with the Welsh government, Food Standards Scotland and Foods Standards Agency Northern Ireland. The focus here is on food and drink only unlike the USA and France where exercise is included in the guidelines.
Eatwell Guide Visual
gov.uk/government/uploads/s...
Eatwell Guide Booklet
gov.uk/government/uploads/s...
You can find additional information on the link below.
I've only posted Governmental guidelines from around the world which purports to be based on sound research evidence. I considered posting the the guidelines from Public Health Collaboration but given the director was an ex party planner for a leisure centre I thought better of it! That of course was the organisation that issued jointly with the National Obesity Forum the report that grabbed the headlines in May 2016 recommending people eat more fat.
I would expect the guidelines to be very similar as medical research transcends national boundaries. In the USA almost 70% of the population are overweight or obese. In relation to the guidelines almost 90% are not eating enough vegetables and about 75% are not eating enough fruit. A staggering 90% are not getting enough dairy and around 75% are not consuming enough of the recommended 'oils'. However, almost 70% are consuming more than the recommend amounts of saturated fats and a similar number are exceeding the recommended amount of sugar. From this I would take it that not following the guidelines encourages you to gain weight not that the guidelines are necessarily flawed.
This is from Memorial Sloan Kettering - responding to a question about changing your diet...the added emphasis is mine. You can view the response here:
mskcc.org/blog/license-buil...
Memorial Sloan Kettering
Jan 13, 2016 • 2:13 pm
In reply to Can one extrapolate then if… by Edward Wagner
Dear Edward, thanks for your comment. The short answer is "no," switching to a low-glycemic index or low-fat diet or fasting is not something that can be recommended based on this information. Here's a more detailed response from Dr. Pavlova:
"Our bodies vigilantly monitor and correct the level of glucose in the blood, maintaining it within a very narrow range, more or less regardless of diet (except for pre-diabetics/diabetic patients)." [This means that altering your diet to reduce sugar, for example, will not significantly change the level of glucose in your blood.] "Excess sugar in diet may increase the risk of cancer in the long run by contributing to the development of obesity and metabolic syndrome, but the exact causative links are still being investigated and may include chronic systemic inflammation associated with obesity, changes in intestinal microbial composition, increased levels of insulin and other growth factors in addition to inefficient glucose control. But high sugar consumption per se would not cause our cells to divide improperly and grow into a tumor."
That said, eating a well-balanced diet that is low in added sugar and fat is recommended for health regardless of cancer status. You can read more about nutrition guidelines here: mskcc.org/cancer-care/patie...
Yes, but he was not the lead on the paper - Dr Pavlova (not making that name up!) was.- That is her response above. The paper was postulating a theory - it did not contain any empirical evidence. I don't think you can get much clearer than Dr Pavlova's answer above.
This summary of a report from the US in 2014 compared various diets to see if they could decide on the healthiest way of eating. It came down to eating minimally processed foods, good quality meat and dairy and a lot of vegetables. Our guidelines don't seem to mention the importance of the quality of our food.
ajc.com/lifestyles/health/s...
I fear too much profit in 'junk' food for food quality to get much of a mention.
Thanks to Augusina for sharing worldwide governmental guidelines for healthy eating. It's a starting point to say at least! It's also healthy to have this kind of discussion on government guidelines. My experience is that get information from relatively reliable sources and compare them, and reach your conclusion. If possible, read scientific journals articles. but most of us don't have the time. I like reading articles from scientific websites (those aiming general public), and check their references. So it's too much a burden. But it's hard to digest all these information and come up with something that works for oneself. At the moment, my conclusion is the Mediterranean diet seems to be the most healthy diet in the long run, in terms of both weight loss and stabilizing blood sugar level. After that would be low carb diet. In any case, I fully agree that whenever possible, one should eat real healthy food, rather than processed so called healthy food, so I also question weetabix, bagel's position on the eatwell plate. In any case, read the labels, it tells you what's really in their (if the manufacturers are honest enough, not swapping horse meat for beef)!
A really interesting discussion, and as happyhealthyjane says, aside from the challenge of interpreting the most recent scientific papers to gain nutritional guidance, the real difficulty is in discovering what works for yourself. Looking at the plate, which I think is a really useful visual for those who aren't really interested in the science and just want simple guidelines for a healthy way of eating, I too am surprised at the presence of bagels. As far as the Weetabix are concerned, I guess that's better than Sugar Puffs or any of those other sugar infested cereals that are still clearly popular enough to take up space on the supermarket shelves. Personally, I incline to the the GI approach as it seems to suit me, with its health-promoting emphasis on slow-digesting carbs and high fibre, so that I don't get those low-glucose/sugar craving swings that drive one to the biscuit tin or worse!
Have you been following the progress of the Newcastle/Glasgow Uni study?
Apparently, when they polled the public there was a preference for drawn images of food rather than photos of food. I see we ended up with neither just some very bad 'clipart' perhaps the stock images happened to have bagels!
