Healthy Diet Advice Ignored

posted: Thursday, August 21, 2008 | Categories: Obesity

How difficult is it to eat a healthy, balanced diet? Surely most people in the United Kingdom would have a fair idea of what this would consist of, even if they themselves did not follow such a diet. The World Health Organisation’s published recommendations of the daily allowances for salt and sugar intake, for the minimum amount of fruit and vegetables we should eat, the maximum level of saturated fat and the maximum amount of all fats have been around for more than a decade but is it really necessary to be so prescriptive?

Most people know that consuming too much sugar or too much salt is unhealthy. Similarly, diets high in fat, particularly in saturated fat are not going to do us any favours in the health stakes and surely everyone must know by now that it is necessary to eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day as part of a healthy balanced diet? Well perhaps we know in theory, but according to new research we are certainly not achieving it in actuality.

A study has found that, in the United Kingdom, less than one person in a hundred is meeting the daily targets set by the World Health Organisation. Less than one percent of the people in this country are eating healthily at every meal. It is a shocking statistic but perhaps not as surprising at it should be. When one considers that one in four women and one in five men in the UK is now classified as obese, this statistic merely highlights why we as a nation are becoming bigger and bigger. 1.2 percent of women managed to meet all the five targets compared to only 0.4 percent of men: that is less than one in two hundred.

The WHO recommends that salt intake should be less than a teaspoon a day and that consumption of fruit and vegetables should exceed fourteen ounces. Until we all readdress our eating habits it seems that the steady rise in obesity in the UK is set to continue.

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