NicoleC1971
BANNED
I went to an event organised by Diabetes UK (aka the official UK diabetes charity) and thought you might be interested to know how this went. It was well run with plenty of coffee and 'healthy' snacks (popcorn, grapes and Belvita biscuits). 1/11 of us were type 1s so I am not sure if this was intentional but obviously skewed the discussion.
DuK are running a serious of these consultation workshops. The good news is that they have heard the message loud and clear that diabetics would like clear front of packet carb content labelling; as a type 1 this is is a necessary part of balancing your insulin dose against the carb content of your meal without going into the nuances of how quickly said carbohydrate gets absorbed.
The bad news IMO is that DuK have taken a prior policy decision to ask for a traffic light system which gives a value judgement on particular macro nutrients (sat fat, salt and sugar I believe); this is voluntary at present and under EU legislation I think we cannot change those particular nutrients but post March 31st '19 I can't see the government suddenly taking saturated fat/fat out of the 'danger' /red label it currently sits under. The aim is rather to make this system mandatory for the front of the pack for all food products in the UK.
2nd bad thing - they want calorific values to be displayed for packaged food and on restaurant menus.
Lastly they would like restaurants to keep a more detailed bible of their common menu items with full nutritional values given upon demand. There was some talk about using commonly used food databases as an adjunct so that customers can discretely and reliably check food values on Apps like My Fitness Pal and \Cronometer.
I was in the majority of folks around the table who said that we did not want to know about calories but there was no disagreement about the provision of neutrally presented information about food which people can use however they choose to manage their diabetes. Everyone was behind the idea of clear and neutral information on food.
However DuK sidelined the discussion and just wanted us to look at mock ups of food labels and restaurant menus showing calories and traffic lights to get our feedback on the design aspect.
I was a little disappointed that they had decided to focus on calories! I wore my avatar tee shirt (bacon), told them I was a low carber and made the point that pushing food manufacturers to publish clear calorie values is likely to lead to further develop meant of lower calorie junk food items which are likely to be high in carbohydrates but low in nutrients.
The whole thing from the low fat and high carb snacks to the lack of broad discussion, just reminded me of how entrenched the energy balance hypothesis is e.g. DuK believe that obesity is caused by eating too much and not doing enough and that making people more calorie conscious will cause them to eat less; I think the latter is a dubious assumption. We know that we are eating more calories but the more interesting question is why is that and I doubt it is because we didn't realise a big mac and chips was fattening.
2 people came up to me afterwards : a type 2 lady who said she'd tried low carb before but was too scared of the calories in cream and cheese to give it another go and a staff member who told me she was pre diabetic and was trying low carb again implying it had worked but she had been too strict at 20 g a day and had had to back off.
DuK are running a serious of these consultation workshops. The good news is that they have heard the message loud and clear that diabetics would like clear front of packet carb content labelling; as a type 1 this is is a necessary part of balancing your insulin dose against the carb content of your meal without going into the nuances of how quickly said carbohydrate gets absorbed.
The bad news IMO is that DuK have taken a prior policy decision to ask for a traffic light system which gives a value judgement on particular macro nutrients (sat fat, salt and sugar I believe); this is voluntary at present and under EU legislation I think we cannot change those particular nutrients but post March 31st '19 I can't see the government suddenly taking saturated fat/fat out of the 'danger' /red label it currently sits under. The aim is rather to make this system mandatory for the front of the pack for all food products in the UK.
2nd bad thing - they want calorific values to be displayed for packaged food and on restaurant menus.
Lastly they would like restaurants to keep a more detailed bible of their common menu items with full nutritional values given upon demand. There was some talk about using commonly used food databases as an adjunct so that customers can discretely and reliably check food values on Apps like My Fitness Pal and \Cronometer.
I was in the majority of folks around the table who said that we did not want to know about calories but there was no disagreement about the provision of neutrally presented information about food which people can use however they choose to manage their diabetes. Everyone was behind the idea of clear and neutral information on food.
However DuK sidelined the discussion and just wanted us to look at mock ups of food labels and restaurant menus showing calories and traffic lights to get our feedback on the design aspect.
I was a little disappointed that they had decided to focus on calories! I wore my avatar tee shirt (bacon), told them I was a low carber and made the point that pushing food manufacturers to publish clear calorie values is likely to lead to further develop meant of lower calorie junk food items which are likely to be high in carbohydrates but low in nutrients.
The whole thing from the low fat and high carb snacks to the lack of broad discussion, just reminded me of how entrenched the energy balance hypothesis is e.g. DuK believe that obesity is caused by eating too much and not doing enough and that making people more calorie conscious will cause them to eat less; I think the latter is a dubious assumption. We know that we are eating more calories but the more interesting question is why is that and I doubt it is because we didn't realise a big mac and chips was fattening.
2 people came up to me afterwards : a type 2 lady who said she'd tried low carb before but was too scared of the calories in cream and cheese to give it another go and a staff member who told me she was pre diabetic and was trying low carb again implying it had worked but she had been too strict at 20 g a day and had had to back off.
