Tuesday 11 March 2014

Hang about, I thought we were doing sugar this week?

 
Children in the UK are eating far too much salt, with much of it coming from breads and cereals, research suggests.
 
Children should eat less than a teaspoon of salt a day, but 70% of the 340 children in the study published in Hypertension ate more than this.
 
 
Even moderate drinking during the earliest months of pregnancy may be damaging, say researchers in Leeds.
 
Their study is the latest in a long debate over whether it is safe to drink at all during pregnancy.
 
The findings, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, suggest the chances of premature birth increased.
 
 
People will be advised to halve the amount of sugar in their diet, under new World Health Organization guidance.
 
The recommended sugar intake will stay at below 10% of total calorie intake a day, with 5% the target, says the WHO...
 
UK campaigners say it is a "tragedy" that the WHO has taken 10 years to think about changing its advice.
 
They really ought to read each others memo's and take it in turns.
 
Most chucklesome of all is the list of "Useful health links" at the bottom of the page:

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're a researcher. You've been funded for 3 years to study the effects of X. Why on earth would you give a shit about people studying the effects of Y (except at dinner parties)?

Scientific papers are among some of the most boring things to read in the world. That's also why politicians and the media get them wrong all the time.

Bayard said...

"Children should eat less than a teaspoon of salt a day,"

Says who? From the article: "Lead researcher Prof Graham MacGregor, who is chairman of both the charity Blood Pressure UK and the lobby group Consensus Action on Salt & Health (CASH)", the fakecharity that makes no bones about what it's in the game for. So the only person saying salt is bad for you has a vested interested in saying that salt is bad for you. Funny, that.

Tim Almond said...

Bayard,

I've had a look at the PDF that they linked to, and I can't find anything in there that is supposedly referenced in the article.

Would anyone else like to take a look?

Bayard said...

TS, I think they got all their "facts" from Prof MacGregor. Also, I looked at the abstract, which said that they had determined the level of salt consumption in the children tested by sampling the salt in their urine, well, I'm not a scientist, but if eating more salt means that you piss out more salt, does that not rather suggest that the excess salt is simply passed through your body? Shouldn't they be doing something a bit more sophisticated, to measure the amount of salt maintained in the body?

This is the really irresponsible bit: "Children should eat less than a teaspoon of salt a day". Nowhere in the article does it state that too little salt in your diet is harmful. Parents reading this and seeing only recommended maxima could quite easily conclude that no salt was a healthy option. After all eating no salt is definitely eating "less than a teaspoon of salt a day".