The UK Government fails the health of our children
(Chris Woollams, 2006). As if by magic, 4 days after we called on the Government to do something to improve the nutrition and nourishment of our children by reducing junk food consumption (and especially ’empty’ glucose consumption), the Government announced it was launching a ’pilot study’ in 500 schools across Britain.
"Fizzy drinks, crisps and chocolate are to be banned from tuck shops
and vending machines"; UK Government 2005
On January 5th 2005 Melanie Johnson, the Public Health Minister announced the ’Food in Schools’ pilot scheme, part of a national approach to healthy eating in schools. Fizzy drinks, crisps and chocolate are to be banned from tuck shops (how ’public school’) and vending machines.
Go To: The Rainbow Diet
This 2 million campaign (that’s about 15 per cent of the McDonald’s advertising spend in Britain) will see the switch to milk (oh dear!), water and fruit. Moreover parents are to be taught about healthy eating and what to put in their little cherubs’ lunch boxes.
Glucose links to child illnesses like epilepsy, diabetes and cancer
Let’s go back a little, before we are overwhelmed by the euphoria.
65 per cent of 16 year olds are overweight and about 25 per cent obese. 47 per cent of our children do not eat a vegetable other than potato in the average week. 27 per cent of children cannot name broccoli when shown a photograph.
8 per cent of all adults in the USA have late onset diabetes. In the under 12’s the figure is a whopping 16 per cent. In the UK, late onset diabetes is growing in the unders 12s by 11 per cent per year.
65% of 16 year olds are overweight and about 25% obese
The causes? Excess sugar and carbohydrate consumption. (Refined bread, pasta, rice, fizzy soft drinks, pasteurized fruit juices, chocolate bars, sugar, cakes, breakfast cereals etc. etc.). According to US research in 2001 Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil can be added to the cause list, and research in 2002 showed excess dairy consumed by the under 5’s also caused pancreatic overload.
The Government already instigated a healthy eating programme in schools 18 months or so ago. No one uses it. It is no good sending teachers a letter. You have to provide lessons, books, reading material as part of the curriculum. The Government simply has not done this.
Our Charity CANCERactive is working with two ladies, Michelle Roe and Sheila Gaukroger who have already run 3 pilot tests in the North East. They are trying to provide materials for teachers to teach healthy eating and cancer prevention to children and parents. If the tests work we will have packs for teachers, followed by reading books and other ideas for children of all ages.
We all have the best natural defence possible against diseases like diabetes and cancer. It’s called the immune system. And we want to explain simply to teachers, parents and kids how to have the strongest possible defence.
Meanwhile, excess glucose in children is associated with fitting, convulsions and epilepsy; and also seems linked with increased risk of glioma.
(There is even research now showing that people with higher glucose consumption are more likely to get dementia.)
Sugar feeds cancer
Obesity, diabetes, cancer, dementia are all linked to excess glucose consumption
When I toured the country I spoke in schools. To children who were extremely interested, to parents (who hardly bothered to turn up) and to school workers like kitchen staff and meal planners (who didn’t turn up at all!).
In icon we have warned of the dangers of excess cows’ dairy, of excess saturated fat and trans fat consumption; and the dangers of sugar.
Sugar feeds cancers. Despite this fact clearly established since Otto Warburg won his Nobel Prize in 1931 and used by Doctors throughout the Western world in PET scans, Governments, hospitals, dieticians and the like continue merely to talk ’blah’ about a good diet - for example, patients should eat ’a little bit of everything based around starchy foods’, in the letter we received from the FSA!
Holding blood sugar levels between critical limits is crucial in the prevention of cancer, and especially for people with cancer. There is evidence that sugars like glucose feed cancer cells more efficiently than starches. More with breast cancer survive for longer when kept on low blood sugar diets.
Various natural supplements can help reduce blood sugar levels, from chromium cinnamon, herbs like Berberine, drugs like metformin, foods like avocados (an element called mannoheptulose) to hydrazine sulphate (Joseph Gold, M.D.). Johns Hopkins has even shown colorectal cancer patients survive longer if they have restricted sugar diets. Western Governments are not telling people about ideas like these - although the research is there, our doctors and our Government don’t even seem to know it.
When is the Government going to appoint someone truly independent to look at what we really know about real healthy eating?
Our recent report on recommended hospital diets for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy was an eye-opener, such was the ignorance about how cancer cells work.
Worse when cancer patients are given PET scans, we actually inject them with radioactively labeled glucose. The cancer cells probably cheer!
The Government’s pilot test is a step. A small step. But the big picture involves a simple question - when is the Government going to appoint someone, preferably independent of Big Food interests, to rise above all the mumbo jumbo and look at what we already really know about real healthy eating? And then find practical ways to implement it in schools, hospitals and wherever cancer is a threat.