Government advice is usually derived from "think tanks",policy institutes and big business interests.

Just do the opposite of what is advised and you will generally be ok.

If the government really cared about our health and preventing cancer they would ban chemical farming and most chemicals in our environment,close the drug companies down and stop the military spraying us with poisonous chemtrails,ban GM food and stop poisoning the tap water.

Organic farming would be MANDATORY...instead they just say "eat 5 a day"...eating 5 a day of pesticide laden crap will kill anything sooner rather than later.

Just realise that the government is NOT your friend and has NO interest in your good health and you will be ok.

Robin

note also that the recommendation to drink 8 glasses of water per day started life as an observation which was that most people ingested the equivalent of 8 glasses of water per day on average, but a lot was in the form of fruit and veg. So an observation gradually became an imperative

I enjoyed your blog, Bryan, and you make some good points.

But I'm worried about your final paragraph, since it suggests that you didn't investigate the research and how it was done before writing your comments!

I hope someone on your team will do this, since it's sure to yield interesting information. Who funded the research, for a start? .... and how were 'lifestyles' defined and profiled? ... and did they look at any of the variables concerning fruit and veg which you mention?

If they didn't, it's probably a classic case of 'bad science'.  If that can be exposed, then the couch potatoes won't be able to salve their consciences so easily.  More important, the millions who are on some kind of path towards eating more healthily won't be discouraged - and we might all learn something from the argument!  (There is change going on out there for many people, you know - please don't get too cynical!)

Also, can we hear more about the 'modest' beneficial effect, which even this research apparently discovered?

In the end, it sounds like a real non-story which certain vested interests decided could be useful.

Question: is there anyone out there trying to get real nutritional knowledge inserted into doctors' and consultants' courses? .... and how are they getting on?

And finally, given the world of mass communication in which we live - and a 'Heath Service', so much of which is a drug-based 'sickness service' - is the 'five a day' campaign not in fact useful?

It was certainly no none-story, but the result of 13 years of research by a worldwide team of respected scientists, with a cohort of almost half a million. It did show some benefit, albeit quite small, for the eating of vegetables, but the important conclusion to be drawn is the constituent of diet need not be 'five a day' but other sources of nutrients that have heretofor been downgraded in diet at the expense of this very poor advice. What to do instead, is the important question and Burger and Chips is certainly not the route to follow. The nonesence that 'five a day' is, is exposed by this study to be the 'bad science' it is because is'nt and never was science. It was dogma.

You fail to see that the food lobby is almost as powerful as 'Big Pharma' and they want us all to eat their grain based foods and drink their fructose laced drinks because it's more profitable than providing the food we all need; a natural 'primitive diet' that has proven to be the one on which we mainly lived not so many tears ago. Fats have been denigrated when they are health giving and life sustaining. Meat; grass fed organic, has as many of the essential nutrients we need each day, more often than oily fish.

This study shows us that most we have been told is WRONG and is'nt doing us that much good, but that green leafy vegetables in moderate amounts can be useful but not life giving or cancer fighting except by about a 4% reduction in I believe, ten years. But if the advice was ill founded, as it was, then we need to take note of this and other evidence that points to a low carbohydrate intake as being the best. Of course this then throws high ingestion of fruits into doubt as this study showed. Fruits and worse, juices concentrate that simple sugar, fructose into a small but potent package which can lead to obesity and organ damage.

Research your diet, cut the carbs, eat fat; it won't kill you or clog your arteries, sugar especially fructose will.

to ernie-berry,

well said

Any chance that we can have a link to that research to read it for ourselves?

In the mean time, more of us are growing our own and going organic. I for one am more and more refusing to buy anything I can't understand the ingredients of. Has driven my family mad, but they're slowly following suit.

On the sugar front, my body knows the difference between refined sugars and natural fruit sugars. The refined sugars get stored as fat - giving them up has loosened my waistband by a couple of inches with no other form of "dieting" required.

Whatever happened to the research I saw some while back reported in a small paragraph in the Independent at the weekend? They proved with brain scans that the body doesn't recognize artificial sweeteners, therefore won't switch to "full" the part of the brain activated by a satiation level of other sugars. Ergo, you keep wanting more sugar. Could anything similar be happening with other manufactured foodstuffs?

I wish we could be educated about what we are eating so that we could make properly informed choices. There's far too much obfuscation out there.

"Just do the opposite of what is advised and you will generally be ok"

This sentence is difficult to parody, but I will try.  

"this sentence is false"

Get your head around that.

Remember, just do the opposite of what you are told.   Exactly the opposite.

So, when you hear advice, do the opposite.  And, generally, you will be ok...

Have anothing little thing about "this sentence is false".  Roll it around afew times.  Give it some thought.  Think about what it might mean...

so, if "this sentence is false", then the sentence is either true (In which case its flase) or false (it which case its true).  Ideas?