Food for the Brain, Russell Partnership and Universities That Should Know Better: Updated

The Economist recently carried an article that reports a Food for the Brain conference and it linked to the charity, lending it some share of respectability. So, it is with bassoon notes of incompetence and inevitability that we learn of some Food for the Brain literature that has made its way into a café in Imperial College, London. Our sources tell us that, to date, no students have complained about the leaflet although there are 300 medical students, 200 biology students and many students of other science disciplines. So, either they thought it was an elaborate po-mo joke and they weren’t rising to it (if you’re at Imperial, there’s probably a good chance that you are already doing something right, vis-à-vis, using the brain well, studying efficiently) and dismissed it as yet another badly-written polemic by some interest group or other (actually…).

We have checked around but, as far as we know, Imperial College has not yet joined the roll call of shame of credulous universities and institutions (University of Edinburgh, take a bow) that have paid for nutrition audits or accreditation from Food for the Brain or its partners. It may well be that some misguided employee who has attended a workshop is responsible for putting out the leaflets or (more worryingly) that they were placed there by some well-intentioned individual.

The leaflet in question is produced by The Russell Partnership which has a strategic alliance with Food for the Brain. In one of those recurrent, paddling in the same self-referential shallows, inevitabilities, we learn that their “team of experts, [is] led by qualified nutritionist and author Fiona McDonald Joyce, Dip.ION, M.BANT”. Fiona McDonald Joyce is also, like Jerome Burne, co-author of works with Patrick Holford. The same Patrick Holford who is the CEO of Food for the Brain. Food for the Brain is very upfront about this and they stress this relationship in their leaflet about the Russell Partnership Nutrition Audit (pdf).

The Russell Partnership carries out nutritional audits and is responsible for awarding accreditation from Food for the Brain. Now, the last time that we examined a Food for the Brain food audit, we were both underwhelmed by its quality and left with some questions.

There are many annoying aspects of this, but, above all, the universities that are paying for this accreditation – “What Are You Thinking? Do you think that this is an appropriate use of money” etc. Above all, we’d like to know what Catering Depts. think that they are gaining by this. Have they consulted other parts of the university – people who might not want the university’s gullibility or credulity in such matters to be exposed? Step forward, Ian Macaulay, Assistant Director (catering), The University of Edinburgh.

“The Food for the Brain award is the benchmark for this industry as it actually links academic performance to the food served. The process has very much been one of improvement and education, as we have undertaken nutritional workshops for catering staff and our chefs have learnt that healthy food does not need to be bland or budget-busting.”

I look forward to the University of Edinburgh releasing their findings to support this remarkable claim. I trust that any discussion of improvements in academic performance will allow for grade inflation, what students and staff eat elsewhere etc. etc. I also find it difficult to match-up Macaulay’s optimism and enthusiasm with the actual audit (pdf). HolfordWatch would also like to point out that many chefs study nutrition at Catering College. They know how to construct a nutritious menu, meet the needs of their customers and how to deliver this within a budget. Does Edinburgh not employ sufficiently qualified and credentialled people or was the audit authorised without consulting them? Was it beyond the ken of mortals to have consulted the Uni of Edinburgh’s own excellent food science, dietetics, psychology, neurology and other relevant bio-medical departments if they had really wanted some evidence-based advice?

We learn that Leeds is now boasting of its accreditation. That’s Leeds. A university with an excellent Interdisciplinary Centre for Obesity,
Nutrition and Health (ICON-Health). Home of The Procter Department of Food Science with an enviable reputation and a 5* rating for the research excellence, the only Food Science Department in the UK to have been awarded this twice. And the university caterers decided to spend money on accreditation from FFTB.

Some readers may recall just how very odd some of the FFTB nutritional assessments are and the fact that they rely upon a paper evaluation of the ingredients and meals in question rather than any laboratory testing. Plus, if I were a student at Edinburgh or Leeds, I’d be annoyed by the PlaySchool quality of the posters.

Poster 2 tells us to eat fruit and veg because “vitamins and minerals help your brain and body work and play hard”. Apparently, oily fish are:

Packed with brain-boosting fats. Will also help keep your skin soft and supple and hormones balanced.

Similarly, these people breathlessly report that:

Good sources of protein…provide brain fuel and help your body replenish itself after exercise or partying.

The ‘specialist poster’ that is dedicated to Brain Boosting Fats is full of the usual canards.

Your brain is 60 percent fat and how well it performs depends on it obtaining the right kind of fats from your diet. Hydrogenated fats (in processed and fried foods) are solid and therefore block the transmission of information with neurotransmitters. Omega 3 fats on the other hand…actually help your brain send and receive information. Aim to eat oily fish two to three time per week (and snack on nuts and seeds) in order to optimise your brain function. If this seems hard to achieve you may wish to consider a fish oil supplement – independent health food stores can advise you on good quality brands.

We can’t deal with all the canards but we are tired of explaining that the majority of the brain is made up of water. As for the remainder…Eh? They think that fragments of solid fats are somehow coagulating somewhere to prevent the “transmission of information”? Who is building these blocks, those wacky comic characters, the Numskulls?^[a] And what do they think hydrogenation is for? Fats undergo hydrogenation because a process demands that a liquid fat is transformed into a solid fat. Now, hydrogenated fats might not be that useful when consumed in substantial quantities but not for the reasons that these leading thinkers provide.

Is it appropriate for catering outlets to be promoting fish oil supplements to their customers? Or advocate consulting “independent health food stores” about recommended brands?

The same poster contains this gem about protein.

The amino acids from protein not only provide the body with the raw material for growth and repair, they are also required to make neurotransmitters…and they help the liver detoxify substances like alcohol and caffeine.

Just in case you’ve missed the messages about food that mothers and grandmothers dispense on a regular basis, there is a poster about food to limit/avoid. However, it is delivered with an even heavier dose of unevidenced assertion than you might expect.

Sugary food and drinks Release sugar very quickly into the blood stream to provide a short-lived buzz – followed by a dip in energy…Also damages cells to lead to ageing and wrinkles as well as rotting teeth!

Well, at various universities you might find people who need a high calorie intake because they are actively involve in sports and train regularly. And, is it not possible that this impact might depend on the level of intake, the frequency and what it is consumed alongside?

Plus, it doesn’t look as if the assertions about the link to damaging cells and ageing etc. is quite as direct as the authors state but it does look very similar to the best-selling assertions of Dr Perricone’s 7 Secrets to Beauty, Health and Longevity. Even research that lends some indirect support to this, e.g., Dietary nutrient intakes and skin-aging appearance among middle-aged American women,^[1] reports a very odd mix of results (there does not seem to be sufficient correction for multiple data points that would demand a much lower p value to indicate significance). And, it doesn’t detail the form of the carbohydrates so it is difficult to extrapolate from that (plus, it’s difficult to know how a 24-h recall of diet can reflect what you have eaten for the intervening decades years of your life since NAHNES 1 and various other circumstances).

Refined carbohydrates like white bread, white rice and pasta and chips [r]elease their sugar very quickly to raise blood sugar levels

Well, that depends on what you eat them with: if you ate a Danish Open-Sandwich with a thin slice of bread with added seeds, and some vegetables and lean meat on top, that might slow matters down a little.

Fatty meat and full fat dairy products Easily store as fat. Worsens inflammatory conditions like eczema and asthma.

Well, again, that might depend on the quantity. If your calorie intake does not exceed your expenditure there is little reason to expect these foodstuffs to be metabolised and then preferentially stored as fat. Where is the evidence that they worsen either eczema or asthma in the absence of an underlying allergy or other response in which case, the fact that something is full fat rather than reduced fat might not be relevant?

Caffeine Upsets blood sugar balance to disturb energy, concentration and weight

Really, any quantity, delivered with any frequency, and for everyone? There are some interesting indications that caffeine alters blood sugar management in test meal conditions involving male participants^[2] (at caffeine levels of 5 mg/kg body weight) but this is a long way from being sufficient for a dietary recommendation, not would it support these claims. It is acknowledged that the results of lab tests such as this are at odds with epidemiological studies that report that coffee (with and without caffeine) can reduce the risk of diabetes^[3] (the review authors examine the evidence and propose some possible mechanisms).

The section on alcohol demands particular attention.

Alcohol Weight gain. Strains the liver so that it can not detoxify other substances like hormones, resulting in raised circulating oestrogen levels in women and men

Apart from sounding like modern-day Temperance speakers, we’re not entirely sure that we follow their thinking. “Strains the liver…detoxify…hormones”, eh? Detoxify seems to be used here as if it is analogous to metabolic processes which doesn’t tie in with their other use of the term ‘detox’.^[b]

If may seem a little unfair to look at their posters but FFTB and Russell Partnership are charging substantial sums of money for this incomplete and occasionally absurd nutritional guidance. If you want an unbelievably simple soundbite to give people, what is wrong with Michael Pollan’s classic, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants“.

The dietary wisdom of the posters is alternately so sub-GCSE or completely wrong-headed that it is not worth further commentary: it is entirely predictable that this is the material of people who practise nutritionism rather than evidence-based nutrition. FFTB, making stuff up or (at best) stating the obvious. And there are universities in Britain who are willing to pay for accreditation from FFTB – it beggars belief.

Updates

Nov 28: we learn that the University of Bath has not just been laying out bowls of sunflower seeds on a whim, they too have garnered up FFTB accreditation.

Notes

[a] Originally featured in The Beezer and, later, The Beano.
[b] Ben Goldacre has argued that ‘detox’ is a cultural product that has no meaning in the way that it is used in nutritionism, marketers, advertisers or lifestyle gurus. Goldacre says that, as commonly used, ‘detox’ is not grounded in biomedical or metabolic processes: ‘detox’ is not a medical term unless it is describing substance abuse programmes.

The detox phenomenon is interesting because it represents one of the most grandiose innovations of marketers, lifestyle gurus, and alternative therapists: the invention of a whole new physiological process. In terms of basic human biochemistry, detox is a meaningless concept…There is nothing on the ‘detox system’ in a medical textbook…
If you look at a metabolic flow chart, the gigantic wall-sized maps of all the molecules in your body, detailing the way that food is broken down into its constituent parts, and then those components are converted between each other…it’s hard to pick out on thing that is the ‘detox system’.
Because it has no scientific meaning, detox is much better understood as a cultural product. Like the best pseudoscientific inventions, it deliberately blends useful common sense with outlandish, medicalised fantasy. [Pg 10, Bad Science]

References

[1] Cosgrove MC, Franco OH, Granger SP, Murray PG, Mayes AE. Dietary nutrient intakes and skin-aging appearance among middle-aged American women. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Oct;86(4):1225-31.
[2] Moisey LL, Kacker S, Bickerton AC, Robinson LE, Graham TE. Caffeinated coffee consumption impairs blood glucose homeostasis in response to high and low glycemic index meals in healthy men. Am J Clin Nutr. 2008 May;87(5):1254-61
[3] Greenberg JA, Boozer CN, Geliebter A. Coffee, diabetes, and weight control. Am J Clin Nutr. 2006 Oct;84(4):682-93.

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