“...keeps the doctor away”, so goes the old adage. Our present day equivalent, the UK government’s official food guide may not be as old, but what is surprising is that it has not been updated since its publication 20 years ago. This is highlighted in a recent article in The Conversation by Kremlin Wickramsinghe and Mike Rayner from the Nuffield Department of Population Health’s BHF Centre on Population Approaches for Non-Communicable Disease Prevention.
With the recent announcement from Public Health England that the guide is to be updated, the authors suggest a number of ways in which it could be improved, particularly the need to take into account recent thinking about what constitutes a diet which is good for the environment and not just health. Ultimately, the guide is designed to help people make better informed choices about what they eat, which ties in with the BHF CPNP’s ongoing research to assess the impact of front of pack food labelling on what food people buy.