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Is Breakfast always a good idea? By Philippa RoxbyHealth reporter, BBC News

Breakfast may be the most important meal of the day, but eating it won't help you lose weight, research suggests. Those who ate breakfast consumed 260 more calories per day and gained 1lb more than those who skipped it, a review of previous studies found. But experts say a healthy breakfast can be a good source of calcium and fibre.It has also been shown to improve concentration and attention levels, particularly in children.Breakfast gives you energy, stops you snacking later in the day and supplies essential nutrients - so we are told. Its reputation as the nutritional backstop to our day stems from observational studies showing a positive link between people eating breakfast and having a healthy weight. But this new Australian research in the BMJ, which reviewed the results of 13 separate trials on breakfast eating, weight change and energy intake, found little evidence for those views.The findings of the Monash University research team suggest that skipping breakfast might in fact be a good way to reduce total daily calorie intake. They found that breakfast eaters consumed more calories overall and breakfast skippers did not have a greater appetite in the afternoon. And they say caution is needed when recommending breakfast for weight loss in adults - because it could have the opposite effect. However, the researchers added that there were limitations to their study. What is a healthy breakfast? 1. For an energy boost - try an "apple pie" porridge, with cinnamon, or baked beans on wholemeal toast 2. For protein - try scrambled eggs with spinach on toast or low-fat Greek yoghurt with fruit and nuts 3. For a light bite - make a smoothie from tinned fruit, banana and spinach or mash avocado on toast Source: NHS UK The participants in the studies were only followed for short periods - from between two and 16 weeks - and the difference in calorie intake between breakfast eaters and skippers was small. The researchers concluded that working out the long-term effect of skipping or adding breakfast to diets still needed more research. Prof Kevin Whelan, dietetics expert and head of King's College London's nutritional sciences department, says we should not get too hung up on calorie intake first thing in the morning. "This study does not say breakfast is bad for the health," he said. "Breakfast is important for nutrient intake, such as cereals and milk which are good for calcium and fibre." But the BMJ research did not look at this aspect of breakfast. "We are not talking about breakfast being the cause of obesity," he said.

Making sure you get the right type of calorie By Michelle RobertsHealth editor, BBC News online

The British Nutrition Foundation is launching a concept called the "quality calorie", to make people think more about the types of foods they eat. While most adults consume more than they need, simply counting calories and cutting down is not enough, it says. It wants people to look at nutritional values to select the best calories. Public Health England said excess calories were the root cause of obesity and tackling the issue was a priority. 1. Calculate how many calories you need 2. Can you lose weight without counting calories? 3. 200-400 calories recipes Calories give people energy - women need about 2,000 a day and men 2,500. Public Health England suggests: 1. 400 at breakfast 2. 600 at lunch 3. 600 at dinner 4. leaving room for a couple of healthy drinks and snacks Food packaging will tell you how many calories (kcal) the contents have - but working out the healthiest choice can be trickier. 1. A 30g handful of nuts contains about 174kcal, similar to a couple of chocolate digestives, but the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) says nuts are quality calories, making them a good snack, while the biscuits are not 2. An avocado contains lots of good nutrients even though it has more calorific value than many other fresh fruits and vegetables, making its calories "quality" too 3. A low calorie beer is not nutritious High v low High-calorie foods are often less healthy but not always. And those sold as low-calorie may not be the healthiest. Low-calorie means: 1. 40 calories or less per serving if it is a food 2. 20kcal per 100ml if it is a drink 'Zero' calories 1. Manufacturers are allowed to say their food is calorie-free if a serving has fewer than five calories - but these still count. 2. A can of diet "zero" fizzy drink contains about 10kcal - the same as a small (30g) carrot. The carrot has the quality calories, while the fizzy drink doesn't Empty calories Experts often refer to alcohol - but any food or drink high in sugar but low in nutritional value can be said to have empty calories.

1. A lollipop can contain about 45kcal, only slightly more than an apple - but 2. these calories are empty, while the ones from an apple are quality Hidden calories 1. When people say hidden calories, they mean foods or drinks higher in calories than most people might expect. 2. A 125g pot of low-fat fruit yogurt can contain more than 100kcals more than a chocolate-covered digestive biscuit. A plain yogurt with a few berries or a sprinkle of low-sugar granola would be a better quality calorie choice, says the BNF

Coconut oil 'as unhealthy as beef fat and butter' Coconut oil is as unhealthy as beef dripping and butter, say US heart experts. It is packed with saturated fat which can raise "bad" cholesterol, says the American Heart Association in updated advice. Coconut oil is commonly sold as a health food and some claim the fat in it may be better for us than other saturated fats. The AHA, however, says there are no good studies to support this. Healthy myth? The advice around which fats to eat can be very confusing. Animal fats, such as lard, are generally seen as bad, while plant oils, such as olive and sunflower, are seen as healthier options. That theory is based on how much of one particular type of fat saturated fat or "sat fat" - these products contain. Sat fat Saturated fat is said to be bad for our health, although not everyone agrees. Eating a diet high in saturated fat can raise the level of "bad" (LDL) cholesterol in the blood, which, in turn, may clog the arteries and increase the risk of heart disease and stroke. According to the AHA, 82% of the fat in coconut oil is saturated. That's more than in butter (63%), beef fat (50%) and pork lard (39%). And, like other saturated fats, studies show it can increase "bad" cholesterol. Some claim that the mixture of fats in coconut oil still make it a healthy option, but the AHA says there is no good-quality evidence for this. It says people should limit how much saturated fat they eat, replacing some of it with unsaturated vegetable oils - olive oil and sunflower oil, and their spreads. Healthy swaps According to the AHA, studies show swaps such as this can lower cholesterol by the same magnitude as cholesterol-lowering drugs. Dr Frank Sacks, lead author of the AHA advice, said: "We want to set the record straight on why well-conducted scientific research overwhelmingly supports limiting saturated fat in the diet to prevent diseases of the heart and blood vessels." In the UK, Public Health England advises people to cut down on saturated fat: 1. the average man should eat no more than 30g of saturated fat a day 2. the average woman should eat no more than 20g of saturated fat a day Nutritional labels on food display how much saturated fat is in products.

But experts stress that fat is still an essential part of a healthy, balanced diet. We shouldn't cut out too much. Fat is a source of essential fatty acids and helps the body absorb vitamins, such as A, D and E. Victoria Taylor from the British Heart Foundation said: "To eat well for your heart health it is not just about reducing fat but reducing specific types of fat and taking care over what these are replaced with - unsaturated fats and wholegrains, rather than sugars and refined carbohydrates. "Any change should be viewed in the context of a whole diet approach. The traditional Mediterranean diet has benefits for a range of risk factors for heart disease, not just cholesterol levels. "We recommend replacing the saturated fats in the diet with unsaturated fats - using oils instead of butter and choosing foods like avocado, oily fish, nuts and seeds instead of foods high in saturated fats like cakes, biscuits, chocolate and fatty meat."

When you can (and can't) eat carbs for dinner By Dr Michael MosleyBBC

It's January, which means you may have stood on the scales and decided to go on a diet. But what sort? For many years, low-carb diets have been in fashion - based on the belief that eating lots of carbohydrates, particularly in the form of sugary treats such as white bread, rice or pasta, is bad for your waist and for your blood-sugar control. The reasoning is that if you eat lots of carbohydrates and sugars, particularly the sort without fibre that get quickly absorbed, they will rapidly push up your blood glucose (sugar) levels. Unless you burn this glucose off by doing exercise, your pancreas will pump out lots of the hormone insulin to bring these levels back down to normal. It does this by storing the excess sugar from the carbs as fat. Too much stored fat, particularly visceral fat (inside the abdomen) can lead to serious health problems such as type-2 diabetes. As well as concern about the amount of carbs we eat, people also worry about when they get eaten. It's widely believed, for example, that eating carbs in the evening is worse for you than having them for breakfast. That's because first thing in the morning your body is raring to go and should soon burn up the glucose released from the carbs. When you eat late at night your body is preparing to sleep, so the body should take longer to clear it. That's the theory. But is it really true? Morning v evening carbs On Trust Me I'm a Doctor, with the help of Dr Adam Collins, from the University of Surrey, we set up a small study. We recruited healthy volunteers to see how well their bodies coped with eating most of their carbs in the morning, or in the evening. We also wanted to see if the volunteers' bodies would adapt over time. All of our volunteers were asked to eat a fixed amount of carbs every day; things such as vegetables, bread and pasta. For the first five days they were asked to eat most of their carb allowance for breakfast, leaving only a small amount for dinner time. Then they had five days of normal eating before switching to low-carb breakfasts and high-carb dinners for a final five days. Dr Collins's team was monitoring their blood-glucose levels throughout. So what did he think he would find? "It's always made sense to me that we process carbs better if we have a whole day of activity ahead," he said. "So, I expect having most of their carbs at breakfast will be easier for their bodies to cope with. "But we don't really know what happens if you regularly follow an evening-carbs diet. "There's never been a study like

this before, and as a scientist I'm excited to see what happens" So what did we find? Well, there was a clear winner. And it wasn't the one I was expecting. When the researchers tested the volunteers on the day after a run of high-carb breakfasts and low-carb dinners, they found their average blood glucose response was 15.9 units. This was roughly as predicted. But when they did the same tests after five days of low-carb breakfasts and high-carb dinners? Remarkably, their average glucose response went down to 10.4 units, which was considerably lower than we were expecting. So what happened? Well, it could be that what matters is not so much when you eat your carbs but the length of the carbs-free "fasting" period that precedes your meal. If you've had a big gap since your last carb-rich meal, your body will be more ready to deal with it. That happens naturally in the mornings because you've had the whole of the night, when you were asleep, in which to "fast". But our small study suggests that if you go low-carb for most of the day, that seems to have a similar effect. In other words, after a few days of low-carb breakfasts and high-carb dinners your body becomes trained for this - it becomes better at responding to a heavy carb load in the evening. Dr Collins is now launching a much larger study, which will hopefully provide more definitive answers. In the meantime, his advice is not to worry too much about what time of day you eat carbs, as long as you're consistent and don't overload with them at every meal. It's more about achieving peaks and troughs, If you've had a lot of carbs in the evening, try to minimise them in the morning. On the other hand, if you've had a pile of toast for breakfast, go easy on the pasta that night.

Low-carb diets could shorten life, study suggests By Alex TherrienHealth reporter, BBC News A low-carb diet could shorten life expectancy by up to four years, a study suggests. Low-carb diets, such as Atkins, have become increasingly popular for weight loss and have shown promise for lowering the risk of some illnesses. But a US study over 25 years indicates that moderate carb consumption or switching meat for plant-based protein and fats - is healthier. The study relied on people remembering the amount of carbohydrates they ate.

'Gaining widespread popularity' In the study, published in The Lancet Public Health, 15,400 people from the US filled out questionnaires on the food and drink they consumed, along with portion sizes. From this, scientists estimated the proportion of calories they got from carbohydrates, fats, and protein. After following the group for an average of 25 years, researchers found that those who got 50-55% of their energy from carbohydrates (the moderate carb group and in line with UK dietary guidelines) had a slightly lower risk of death compared with the low and high-carb groups. Carbohydrates include vegetables, fruit and sugar but the main source of them is starchy foods, such as potatoes, bread, rice, pasta and cereals. The NHS Eatwell Guide provides details on how to achieve this kind of healthy, balanced diet and reduce the risk of serious illnesses in the long term. Researchers estimated that, from the age of 50, people in the moderate carb group were on average expected to live for another 33 years. This was: 1.four years more than people who got 30% or less of their energy from carbs (extra-low-carb group) 2. years more than the 30%-40% (low-carb) group 2.years more than the 65% or more (high-carb) group The findings were similar to previous studies the authors compared their work with, which included more than 400,000 people from more than 20 countries.The scientists then compared low-carb diets rich in animal proteins and fats with those that contained lots of plant-based protein and fat. They found that eating more beef, lamb, pork, chicken and cheese in place of carbs was linked with a slightly increased risk of death. But replacing carbohydrates with more plant-based proteins and fats, such as legumes and nuts, was actually found to slightly reduce the risk of mortality. Dr Sara Seidelmann, clinical and research fellow in cardiovascular medicine from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who led the research, said: "Low-carb diets

that replace carbohydrates with protein or fat are gaining widespread popularity as a health and weight-loss strategy. "However, our data suggests that animal-based low carbohydrate diets, which are prevalent in North America and Europe, might be associated with shorter overall life span and should be discouraged. "Instead, if one chooses to follow a low carbohydrate diet, then exchanging carbohydrates for more plant-based fats and proteins might actually promote healthy ageing in the long term." 'Not enough to focus on nutrients' The authors speculate that Western-type diets that restrict carbohydrates often result in lower intake of vegetables, fruit, and grains and lead to greater consumption of animal proteins and fats, which have been linked to inflammation and ageing in the body. Prof Nita Forouhi, from the MRC epidemiology unit at University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the study, said: "A really important message from this study is that it is not enough to focus on the nutrients, but whether they are derived from animal or plant sources. "When carbohydrate intake is reduced in the diet, there are benefits when this is replaced with plant-origin fat and protein food sources, but not when replaced with animal-origin sources such as meats." However, there are limitations to the study. The findings show observational associations rather than cause-and-effect and what people ate was based on self-reported data, which might not be accurate. And the authors acknowledge that since diets were measured only at the start of the trial and six years later, dietary patterns could have changed over the subsequent 19 years. 'High fibre intake' Prof Tom Sanders, professor emeritus of nutrition and dietetics at King's College London, also pointed out that the use of a food questionnaire in the study led to people underestimating the calories and fat they had eaten. "One explanation for the finding in this and the other US studies is that it may reflect the higher risk of death in the overweight/obese, who may fall into two popular diet camps those favouring a high-meat/low-carbohydrate diet and those favouring a low-fat/highcarbohydrate diet," he added. Dr Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist at Public Health England, said: "This provides further evidence that low-carb diets could be incredibly damaging to our long-term health. "High-fibre starchy carbohydrates should provide about half of our energy, including fruit and vegetables, while reducing intake of higher fat meat and dairy."

Tinned food - healthy enough? By Michelle RobertsHealth editor, BBC News online Retailers are warning that a no-deal Brexit could lead to temporary food shortages, and some people have begun stockpiling tins of food in preparation for just such a scenario. The government says food supplies will be secure whether we leave the EU with or without a deal. But what would happen if you did cut out fresh fruit and veg and ate only tinned goods? In 2017, BBC Radio Derby's Andy Twigge set himself a challenge of eating only canned food for a week. "I did it for a laugh really. "I love tinned potatoes and marrowfat peas, so I wondered what it would be like to live off tinned food for a while. I set myself a week. I thought it should be quite easy." He almost managed it, but quit on day seven. The thing that broke him? A Sunday roast. "I stuck at it for six days. I even ate tinned Brussels sprouts! "I did have a Fray Bentos pie, and that was very nice, but it did all become a bit of a chore. I was physically fine on it though. I didn't waste away or anything." He says he's not sure he would call what he did "nutritional". Because he was only doing the diet for a short period, Andy didn't check with a dietitian. But we have, and here's what they think. Less nutritious? To be tinned, foods are sealed and preserved by pressure cooking them at a very high temperature. Like regular cooking, this destroys some of the nutrients. Canned foods are often thought to be less nutritious than fresh or frozen foods because of this. But that's not always the case, say diet experts. Bridget Benelam is a nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation. She says: "Generally speaking, there's a wide range of canned foods that you could eat - from fruit, veg, potatoes and pulses to fish and ready-made foods like soup, baked beans or chilli. "And some of them are nutritionally better than others. Tinned oily fish like salmon, for example, is healthy. And beans and pulses, like chickpeas and lentils, are a good source of protein and fibre while being low in fat. "Unfortunately, there's not a lot of data about nutrients in canned food versus fresh or frozen." She said the main nutrients that could be lost or diminished in the canning process were some of the water-soluble vitamins which cannot be stored by the body and are vital for healthy skin, blood vessels and bones, and the nervous system.

Lost vitamins Researchers have attempted to measure the loss, comparing fresh, frozen and canned fruit and veg. Findings suggest that although frozen foods lose fewer nutrients initially when they are packaged, when you get them home and eventually boil them, they can lose a similar amount to the tinned version. Likewise, although freshly picked, uncooked fruit and veg contain lots of nutrients, these will degrade over time, even when you store them in the fridge. Bridget says: "With tinned foods, there may be some losses of nutrients like vitamin C and thiamine, which can be lost when cooking, but whether this would have an impact on health would depend on the diet overall. "Nutritionally, it could be OK, as long as you get a good mix. My main concern would be the tedium. The texture could be quite dull. Food can get a bit mushed and squished when it is canned. You won't be able to have tinned salad, so you'd have to make sure you are getting the right variety of food." So, when it comes to picking, what are the pitfalls? The UK's Food Standards Agency has examined BPA, and says that levels of the compound people would typically consume do not represent a risk to consumers. The European Food Safety Authority has also assessed the evidence and says dietary exposure to BPA is "not a health concern for any age group". The US National Toxicology Programme has been carrying out a long-term study into BPA, looking at the effects of exposure in rats before and after giving birth to see if there might be any link to diseases such as cancer. A final report is expected in the autumn of 2019.

More veg, fewer burgers - can a family learn to like the planetary health diet? By Laurel IvesBBC Health

"It's not veggie again is it? Can't we have some normal food, please, like lasagne?" This was the reaction of my 13-year-old daughter, Louisa, said with a teenager's sigh, when presented with beany enchiladas, a healthy vegetarian recipe from BBC Food. To be fair to her, beans have featured heavily in recent family suppers. We're following the new planetary health diet, or Eat-Lancet diet, devised by 37 scientists around the world to improve our health and save the planet at the same time. The diet is largely plant-based, although it does allow one serving of red meat, one serving of chicken and two servings of fish per week. Most protein, however, comes from pulses and nuts. Dairy is restricted to a glass of milk a day. Eggs are limited to oneand-a-bit a week. Bread, pasta and rice should be brown, and half our plates should be fruit and veg. Added sugar should be limited. It doesn't sound extreme, but for most of us our average meat and dairy intake is far higher. In fact, Europeans would need to eat 77% less red meat and 15 times more nuts and seeds to meet the guidelines. Our family is not totally typical because my husband, Johnny, is vegetarian, and his veggie stew is a weekly staple. Which is not to say that the kids are fans of said stew. They prefer to eat white pasta and sauce, sausages and chips, burgers and fish fingers. At school their diet is even worse. School dinners are derided as "gross", so their average day consists of bacon butties, crisps and mid-morning "pizza" baguettes. After school, snacks might be a white flour English muffin, a bun, toast and jam, or a cake. Plus illicit sweets on the way home. As for me? I eat a lot of vegetables, but I also partake of meat too often, and, as a cheese, yoghurt and latte lover, my dairy consumption is far higher than the recommended range. Clearly there's plenty of room for improvement. Afternoon tea, but no cake My first mission is to see if I can improve what the girls eat after school. At my local shop I look for healthy snacks. I settle on lightly salted popcorn, brown rice crackers, hummus, seaweed thins, nuts and olives. I set these out in bowls around the kitchen, ready for the kids' return.

"Great! Popcorn!" says Josie, 11, as she charges into the kitchen. This snack is a winner as it reminds her of treats at the cinema. She ignores the nuts, doesn't love the seaweed, but eats the entire bowl of olives and a couple of rice crackers. So far, so good. For supper I'm making mushroom mince chilli, a recipe from The Food Medic website, which involves processing mushrooms to replace the mince. If you scrunch up your eyes the finished version almost looks like mince. It tastes good too. Everyone eats it a little reluctantly. Afterwards Louisa says: "Can I get a burger at the weekend?" The next morning, however, she makes her porridge with oat milk, without even being asked. And at school she opts for dried fruit instead of crisps. Clearly some elements of the healthy-eating message are sinking in. That evening I make tofu steaks with ginger and sesame from a recipe by popular Irish veggie chefs The Happy Pear. I'm not a huge tofu fan, but this recipe is delicious, and quick to make. What do the kids think? "It's like flavourless bacon," is Louisa's verdict. "I'll eat what I like at school," says Josie. Still, their plates are clear, so I'll take that as a win. As the family's bean consumption rises, I'm cutting back on dairy. I now have coffee with oat milk, a tasty and sustainable substitute. I'm staying away from yoghurt and cheese most of the time, and I feel lighter and brighter, although this could also be a result of my new veg-heavy diet, and less cake. With the health of the planet in mind I'm also shopping more locally, cooking from my weekly organic veg box, and making sure to buy British meat and fish, where possible.

Does drinking fizz make you fat? We all know that sugary, fizzy drinks are full of calories - with the equivalent of about seven teaspoons of sugar in a standard can of cola. But is it only the sugar in the drink that swells our waists, or could it also be the bubbles? In a recent study done last year at Birzeit University in the Palestinian territories, researchers took a group of male rats and gave them either a fizzy sugary drink, a flat sugary drink or tap water to consume. They found that the rats who regularly drank the gassy sugary drink put on more weight at a much faster rate than rats given either flat sugary liquids or tap water. When they took blood samples, they found that the rats drinking fizz had much higher levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin, which could explain the weight gain. Cheese sandwich test It was such an interesting study that the BBC's Trust Me I'm a Doctor team thought we should do a similar experiment, but with a mix of human volunteers. With the help of Dr James Brown from Aston University in Birmingham we recruited a group of healthy volunteers. Rather cunningly, we decided not to tell our volunteers what the experiment was really about as we didn't want that knowledge to affect the results. So instead of telling them it was mainly about bubbles, we said it was about measuring the impact of sugary drinks on appetite - which was partly true. At the start of the experiment, our volunteers arrived at the lab after having gone 10 hours without food. They were then given identical, calorie-controlled cheese sandwiches to eat. The idea of doing this was to ensure that all our volunteers started with roughly similar levels of ghrelin in their blood. An hour after eating their sandwich each volunteer was given one of several different soft drinks, allocated at random. They either received a glass of a fizzy sugary drink, a glass of the same drink (but flat), a glass of fizzy water or one of flat water. Ten minutes after they had had their drink, James took a blood sample to measure the volunteers' ghrelin levels. Once he'd done that, our volunteers were sent away with a food diary - so we could assess how many calories they ate in the hours following their drink.

They had to come back to the lab three more times over the next couple of weeks to eat the same cheese sandwich and have bloods taken, but each time they were given a different drink. This is what's known as a crossover trial - the idea being to try different things on the same person rather than just across a group. It means you can produce statistically significant results with fewer recruits. Ghrelin is the key Once James had crunched the numbers we gathered our volunteers together to tell them the true purpose of our study, which was to assess the impact of not only the sugar, but the fizziness, on hunger. What James had found was that ghrelin levels were about 50% higher when people had a fizzy drink. So the fizzy sugary drink makes you a lot hungrier an hour later than drinking the same drink, but flat. This increase in ghrelin wasn't only seen after drinking sugary fizzy drinks; there was also a slight effect when James and his team compared the impact of still with carbonated water. We also wanted to see what effect drinking carbonated fizz had on how much food our volunteers consumed later in the day. And that, in some ways, was even more revealing. James says: "If you group together the carbonated drinks and the non-carbonated drinks, they ate on average 120 calories more after they had had a carbonated drink than they ate after they had a non-carbonated drink, and that's a really significant finding." So, on top of the 140 calories in the fizzy drink, it seems they ate another 120 calories later in the day as a direct result of the extra ghrelin that was produced by having had a drink with fizz in it. But why should bubbles have this effect on our hunger signals? We don't know for sure, but James thinks there are two possible reasons. "One is that after drinking a carbonated drink, carbon dioxide is released in your stomach. There are chemical receptors in the stomach which detect carbon dioxide and cause the cells at the top of the stomach to release ghrelin and it makes you feel hungry. Another possibility is it is a mechanical thing. The stomach bloats and stretches a little bit from that extra gas and again that stimulates cells to release ghrelin. Those are the best two possibilities in terms of mechanism." So is it OK to drink flat, sugary drinks? Unfortunately not. According to James: "The take home message from this is sadly and boringly that the healthiest option is probably still water." In terms of scientific research this is early days, but it provides another good reason why people should steer clear of sweet fizzy drinks.

Is milk healthy? Canada's new food guide says not necessarily Canada has released a new food guide, and one thing is noticeably missing - a daily dose of dairy. The guide does away with food groups entirely, and instead encourages people to eat a variety of unprocessed foods. The last time the food guide was updated was in 2007, and the version unveiled on Tuesday took three years of consultations. The changes have been praised by advocates for plant-based diets, but have raised the ire of the dairy lobby. Canada's food guide provides Canadians with nutritional advice for optimal health. The latest edition does away with many standard elements, like food groups, serving sizes and the recommendation that 100% fruit juice can substitute whole fruits. For years, people had criticised the guide for kowtowing to the meat and dairy industries. The latest guide course-corrects, says Dr Hasan Hutchinson, director general of Health Canada's office of nutrition policy and promotion. "We were very clear that when we were looking at the evidence base that we were not going to be using reports that have been funded by industry as well," he told reporters the day before the guide was made public. No more three-a-day Dairy has long had a central role in health policies in Canada and other Western cultures. Since the food guide was first published in 1942, Canadians have been encouraged to eat or drink several servings a day. But no more. Instead of recommending Canadians get a specific number of servings, the guide lumps dairy in with other proteins. Canadians are advised to fill half their plate with fruits and vegetables, a quarter with starches or grains and a quarter with protein.

The plate analogy is supposed to be more intuitive than a specific list of foods and serving sizes. The US did something similar in 2011, when it switched from the "food pyramid" diagram to "MyPlate". In the US, the plate is divided into four sections, but unlike Canada's food guide, it includes an image of a glass of milk. The new food guide also calls out chocolate milk, in addition to juice, as a culprit in the growing childhood obesity crisis. For decades, parents have been giving their children flavoured milks as a way to entice them to consume dairy. But the new guide says the sugar outweighs the nutritional benefits. Recent research shows the majority of a child's sugar intake comes from sweetened beverages. Creameries sour The move away from meat and dairy requirements has won praise from vegetarian and vegan advocates, including Dr David Jenkins, the Canada research chair in nutrition and metabolism and a professor at the University of Toronto. Dr Jenkins created the Glycaemic Index in the 1980s, and now follows a plant-based diet for environmental reasons. "I think [the guide] is moving in a plant-based direction, which will ruffle some feathers, but I think that's the direction it needs to go," he said of the new food guide. He says we have erroneously placed "cow's milk next to mother's milk" in terms of its importance for human health. The dairy industry is - not surprisingly - less than thrilled about these changes. Earlier this month, the Dairy Farmers of Canada released a statement warning that the new guide could hurt Canadian farmers, especially after recent trade concessions made to the US during the negotiations of United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. "There is no scientific justification to minimise the role of milk products in a healthy diet," it wrote, citing numerous studies promoting milk's health benefits. The guide comes at a time many Canadians are cutting back on meat and dairy, for environment, health or ethical reasons. Milk consumption has declined since 2009, according to Statistics Canada, while the popularity of plant-based milk-alternatives have grown. In that way, the new food guide is not so much predicting the future, but catching up to it. "It's not particularly new to say eat more fruits and veggies, people have been saying this for a while," Dr Jenkins says. "This is not radical stuff."

How diet is changing - the good and the bad Children are turning their backs on sugary drinks, with the numbers drinking them falling by a third over the past nine years, a survey suggests. About half of children do not drink them and those that do are drinking fewer than children in 2008-09 did. The shift has contributed to an overall reduction in sugar consumption. However, all age groups still consumed above the recommended levels, according to the nine-year analysis of the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey. But on other measures, diet has not improved, the report, from the Food Standards Agency and Public Health England, said. Fruit and vegetable consumption remains largely unchanged and is still under the recommended five-a-day level. Fibre intake has fallen slightly, while vitamin and mineral consumption is down. And there has been little change in oily fish intake.

Emer Delaney, of the British Dietetic Association, said she was pleased with the progress that has been made. She said the reduction in sugary drinks consumption was "important", adding: "It shows change can be made - and it is happening slowly, but surely." But she conceded more needed to be done to get people to increase fruit and vegetable consumption. "Frozen and tinned fruit and vegetables are just as good - we need to encourage people to use them as well as fresh products." Is this the death of fizzy drinks? There is a long way to go yet. The first thing to note is the definition of being a "consumer" used by the survey team. They asked people to keep diaries over four days and those who did not have a sugary drink over that time period were classed as a non-consumer. On that basis, half of children were classed as having them in the latest survey. Nonetheless, the drop in consumption levels is welcome news for health experts who have spent the past decade warning about the dangers of them. The tax on sugary drinks was introduced in 2018 - after this survey was carried out - but the change in the law was preceded by a number of years of debate about the sugar content of these drinks. A typical can of cola is enough to breach the recommended daily sugar intake for children in one go. The warnings appear to have had an impact. Around three-quarters of children were consumers of sugary drinks at the start of the period. But despite this progress, sugar consumption is still too high. Official health advice recommends that no more than 5% of calories should come from sugar, but children are getting more than twice this amount. What about fruit and vegetables? The five-a-day message has been around for a long-time - the government campaign was launched in 2003. But it seems to be having little impact. Over the nine years there has been hardly any change in the amount people consume. Adults under 65 are eating around four portions a day on average. Older adults and children even less.

The five-a-day campaign is based on advice from the World Health Organization, which recommends eating a minimum of 400g of fruit and vegetables a day to lower the risk of serious health problems, such as heart disease, stroke and some types of cancer. Five-a-day was chosen because it was viewed as realistic. Research has suggested that to get maximum benefit people should be eating twice that amount. Apples and pears, citrus fruits, salads and green leafy vegetables and vegetables, such as broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower were found to be best.

Are we eating at the wrong time for our body clocks? We've been warned repeatedly about the health perils of being outof-sync with our body clocks. Are we eating in the right way for these circadian rhythms, and could changing our mealtime habits boost our health and help us lose weight? 'Breakfast like a king' What did you eat this morning for breakfast or lunch? The chances are it wasn't steak and chips, chickpea curry or anything else you might normally have for dinner. Yet some scientists believe eating more of our daily calories earlier in the day - and shifting mealtimes earlier in general - could be good for our health. One study found women who were trying to lose weight lost more when they had lunch earlier in the day, while another linked eating later breakfasts to having a higher body mass index. "There's already a very old saying, eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper, and I think there's some truth in that," says Dr Gerda Pot, a visiting lecturer in nutritional sciences at King's College London.

Now scientists are trying to find out more about what's driving those results and are looking at the relationship between eating and our body clocks, dubbed "chrononutrition" by some, for answers. When you eat You may think of the body clock as being something that determines when we sleep. But in fact there are clocks in virtually every cell in the body. They help prime us for the day's tasks, such as waking up in the morning, by regulating blood pressure, body temperature and hormone levels, among other things.Experts are now looking at whether our eating habits - including irregular mealtimes and eating too late - are far from optimal for our internal rhythms. Dr Pot, who studies chrono-nutrition, said: "We have a body clock that determines that every 24 hours each metabolic process has an optimal time when something should happen. "That suggests that having a large meal in the evening is actually, metabolically speaking, not the right thing to do because your body is already winding down for the night." Dr Jonathan Johnston, reader in chronobiology and integrative physiology at the University of Surrey, said although studies suggest our bodies are less good at processing food in the evening it was not yet understood why this is. One theory is that it's linked to the body's' ability to expend energy. "There's a little bit of preliminary evidence to suggest that the energy you use to process a meal - you use more of it in the morning compared with if you eat in the evening." Properly understanding the link between when we eat and our health is important, Dr Johnston says, because it could have big implications for helping to tackle the obesity epidemic. "If we can come up with advice to say, 'Well actually you don't necessarily have to change so much what you eat, but if you just change when you eat,' that little subtle modification might in itself be a really important part of how people can improve health across society," he says. Beyond this, the timings of our meals could also have implications for people with disrupted body clocks, such as shift workers, who are estimated to make up about 20% of the workforce, Dr Johnston says. Animal studies have shown that eating at certain times can help re-set circadian rhythms, and now research is looking at if this applies to people too. In a study of 10 men, Dr Johnston found that delaying their mealtimes by five hours clearly shifted a biological marker of their body clocks. While it was a small study, Dr Johnston said it suggested that eating at specific times could form part of a strategy to help people cope with a disrupted body clock, something that has been shown to be particularly harmful for health. More questions So should we all start eating earlier? Experts say there are a lot of questions that need answering. For example, what are the optimum times to eat and avoid food? How is this affected by our own individual body clock types - be it morning lark, night owl or something in between?

And are there foods that are particularly bad to eat at certain times? Both Dr Johnston and Dr Pot said the evidence suggested we should be consuming more of our calories earlier in the day, for example by making lunch the biggest meal. However, Prof Alexandra Johnstone, a nutritionist who is now starting to study in the field of chrono-nutrition, is slightly more cautious. She says that while there are studies showing that shifting our mealtimes earlier might boost our health, she'd like to see a clearer explanation of what's causing this. But she hopes forthcoming research can show this and lead to clear guidance for people around when to eat.

Practical Week 1 - Healthy Eating Listening Section Task 1 1. What does Anna say about the times she is hungry ? A. She usually eats healthy food B. Two sides of her tell to eat healthy food C. She never wants to eat Junk food D. Two sides of her fight about what to eat 2. What does Anna’s healthy side say? A. Healthy says “You mustn’t eat Junk food” B. She says that Anna doesn’t have to eat celery C. Healthy say that Anna should eat more celery D. She says that there are many good vegetables 3. What does Junk say about celery? A. She says that ice cream is better than celery B. Junky says that she learned to love celery

C. She says that people on the web like celery D. Junky says that it has 95% water and no ice cream 4. What does Anna say to Junky and Healthy? A. Healthy food and junky foods are the same food B. It is important to eat healthy foods, but some junk food is ok C. Will you two be nice to me? D. I know that junk food will kill me, so I only eat healthy food 5. Why does Healthy want to go back? A. Healthy wants Anna to buy ice cream B. She thinks Anna should look for peas C. Healthy wants Anna to buy some fruit D. She wants Anna to buy more vegetables 6. What statement means the same as “You mustn’t buy donuts?” A. You really ought to buy donuts B. It is necessary to buy donuts C. You should not buy donuts D. You don’t have to buy donuts

Writing Section Task 2 1. 2.

You are going to read a text which contains all these words What is the topic of the text ?

Task 3 Vocabulary

Tick the words above that you know (√) Where would you find these words? Use the words to finish the sentences below: A. White bread, white rice and potatoes are high in __________ B. Butter and cheese are high in _________ C. Oily fish, for example Salmon, is high in __________ D. Brown rice and wholegrain bread are high in ____________ E. Salted nuts, olive and cheese are high in _________ F. Chicken, beef and lamb are high in __________ G. Chocolate is high in _________

Task 4 Complete the Table Write a list of food that you often eat and then write what they contain For example: chocolate - sugar, saturated fat Mark √ or X if they eat healthy or unhealthy Food you often eat Chocolate

It contains a lot of ….. It is high in …… Sugar, saturated fat

Is this a healthy food? √ = Yes X = No X

Speaking section Task 5 1. Talk with your partner about some of the food you eat. Explain why you think a food is healthy and unhealthy For example: ‘I think chocolate is unhealthy because it ……… sugar and saturated fat’ ‘I think brown rice is healthy because it ………. fat and …….fibre’ 2. What do we need to eat more of to keep healthy? 3. What do we need to eat less of to keep healthy?

Reading section Task 6 1. From reading the first and last paragraphs, what do you think the article is about? 2. What specific information does it give you? 3. Now read the whole article. What extra information did you get? 4. Did it change your idea of what you thought the article was about?

Task 7 Newspaper quiz. Divide your class into small groups and give each group a newspaper (or, at least, one or two pages from a newspaper). Ask them to devise a quiz for the other groups in the class. They have to write five to ten questions based on facts they find in their newspaper or section of newspaper. They then exchange newspapers and find the answers to the questions as quickly as possible.

Task 8 Structured Assignment

Work with a partner or small group to design a poster to explain what a balanced diet should include (using cover, Member’s name, NIM) Assignment should be sent maximum on Tuesday 12th February, at 16.00 to [email protected] Task 9 Individual Assignment Write a short report about comparing of minimum two different nutritional informations in the food packaging. You need to compare how much salt, sugar and fat in the food. After that, make a decision about which foods are the healthiest and the unhealthiest. (using cover, Member’s name, NIM) Assignment should be sent maximum on Tuesday 12th February, at 16.00 to [email protected]