I watched a TV programme last night called “Who Made me Fat?’ (available on BBC iPlayer for the next week. Click here if you’d like to watch it). It’s impossible to cover such a complex issue as the causes of rising obesity in such a short entertainment based programme, but there were some good points made in amongst the light heartedness. One which really resonated with me was around foods available within our hospitals.When I suffered a head injury a few years ago I spent many hours in hospital waiting rooms and was really struck by the lack of healthy food available in the kiosks and snack bars around the building. The only thing resembling healthy I could find were some rather sad looking apples that looked like they had sat there for a very long time. And yet there were shelves and shelves of pre-packed cakes, donuts and chocolates and a myriad of fizzy drinks and coffee choices. Even in the midst of being very ill I found this really shocking so I was horrified to see in this TV programme that in some hospitals it goes further than this- apparently hospitals in Cambridge, Croydon and Southampton actually have fast food chain burger outlets on site within the hospital. According to a minister speaking on the programme they are still there because of long term contracts signed some years ago but I am still absolutely amazed that some of our hospitals are operating like this. Perhaps a marker of how dependent on the private sector some of our public services have become.
The other part of the programme I thought was really interesting was when the presenter decided to map her sugar intake for the day. This was a ‘health aware’ presenter with what appeared to be a reasonably well balanced diet of ‘healthy foods’ on the surface but when she mapped her added sugar intake for a day it turned out to be more than twice the recommended amount. Here’s some of the figures I jotted down….
Recommended intake for refined/added sugar – 60g ( this does not include natural sugars in milk, fruit etc)
Some of the presenter’s daily food measured in the programme:
- healthy breakfast cereal – 34g
- cereal bar snack – 10.9g (2 eaten in the day)
- fat free yoghurt – 20.9g
- cranberry juice 5.5g
- baked beans – 24.8g
- toast - 1.5g per slice
- chicken – none
- brown rice – none
- kung pao sauce 38.6g
Sugar is hidden is so many foods that it really is worth ‘label watching’ if you rely on processed foods in your weekly shop. As a general rule I always ask my clients to be wary of ‘fat free’ foods as many are loaded with sugar to add texture and sweetness in place of the fat. In the body excess sugar is converted to fat for storage in any case so it can be counter productive to make ‘low fat living’ a strategy unless you are very careful to read labels.
Try mapping your added sugar for the day – it can be a real eye opener.