This is not a rant but a desperate plea for clarity, accuracy, consistency...
I have spent a huge amount of time studying foods, vitamins, minerals, RDAs, upper limits, you name it. It is a fascinating, bewildering, confusing, complicated area....
The overall impression that I get is that confusion abounds because the guidelines constantly change and general awareness of 'correct' information is low AND there seems to be a plethora of old web sites with old, outdated information. Add to that the quacks, some bad blogs, the great misleading food labelling (eg traffic lights). Then we have the scare mongerers and multivitamin, supplementt fitness businesses. Result? Chaos at worst, confusion at best.
But there is no easy way for anyone to either plan things to get it right or to monitor things to see if they got it right (or how their particular body responds). Do you know how much calcium you are consuming today? Do you know if your calcium absorption is affected by any medications you might be taking - and what the exact effect of those medications are?
Not to mention that no one has the time or mental space to study what they eat, due to their busy, stressed lives they seem to live leaving very little time to study our nutrition even if we wanted to.
I have mangaed to pull put the best truths that I can over the last 2 years but I an still surprised regularly by stuff I don't know or think I know but am wrong.
At the start of my diabetic journey I knew very little and took a daily multivitamin and several supplements. It was quite random and I thought that that could only make things better. The actual result was that I discoved that I was wildly overdosing on iron and other stuff was out of kilter!
Hence my App. I hate flying blind. And the results from my blood tests have bern good. But who cares about that. I feel so much better too. That's the important bit.
More recently I have discovered that quite a few vitamins and minerals are important to blood glucose control. I had thought that just one or two were important previously. I won't list them here as I am stikl looking into it.
There are some vitamins and minerals that have no upper limits defined too and today I discovered 2 that have no RDA (recommended daily amount) - that of vitamin B7 and Boron. So no one knows how much we should be getting from the food we eat each day. Agghhhh!!
It all leads me to ponder how mere mortals are supposed to 'get it right' or is the ethos 'wait till you're ill, find out then what's wrong, and then correct it, and manage any long term damage'. Seems to me to be a very bad way of managing things.
I came across this new eat well plate from the NHS. It might be good, it might be bad, but I ponder 'what for all those that followed the previous 'not so good' version'.
There's a new version of the Eatwell guide, which shows us all what we should be eating and how much. Our heart health dietitian explains the differences
www.bhf.org.uk
There's a lot more going around in my head... so, where do we get definitive, clear, accurate, correct, simple, easy to understand and do, information
And I ponder, if these RDAs are so important but most peoples diets are not so good, why are most people healthy, er, or ok, or are they. Do we ignore or just not know or not realise just how unhealthy or unfit, or ill we all may be. Of course this leads nicely into my personal irritation... this is exactly where the NHS should be - proactively promoting good health throughout life and not just sweeping up the resultant mess of living our lives the way that we do.
There's a lot of 'information' out there but It seems all sources are a blessing and a curse.
I will go and have a lie down now
