Last year, Food for the Brain modified some advice on dietary exclusions for children – when we pointed out that such changes should be implemented under medical and/or dietetic supervision. We were therefore disappointed to see iAfrica reporting Holford’s advice that “in order to maximise your children’s potential” you should:
Take your child off foods with additives or added sugar [and] Eliminate allergens from the diet…If you suspect your child is intolerant to a particular food, eliminate it from their diet and monitor the difference/reaction. If after two weeks if you see no difference in the behaviour or symptoms, reintroduce it and see if there’s a reaction. The most common foods that cause problems are wheat, gluten (the protein found in wheat, barley, rye and to a lesser extent oats), diary foods and eggs.
Once again, we would emphasise that children should only be placed on restricted diets under appropriate medical and/or dietetic supervision. A varied, healthy diet is best, unless there are problems with allergies, intolerances or other medical conditions. However, the need for appropriate supervision is not mentioned in the article.
It is also unhelpfully unclear what Holford believes ‘additives’ and ‘added sugar’ to be: for example, I often flavour porridge with raisins, apple, cinnamon and/or peanut butter (not all at once, of course); would these count as additives? Or what about food that is fortified with vitamins or omega 3 fats?
Of course, it is possible that iAfrica has misreported Holford’s advice: if so, we hope that he will contact them ASAP in order to get this corrected. However, would be unfortunate if – despite our previous discussion with Holford on the potential risks of restrictive diets in children – he is still offering similarly problematic advice.
9 Comments
December 5, 2008 at 8:39 pm
The subject of dietary advice and those who give it out turned up in one of my Nursing degree student “Case based tutorials” this week. I got to have fun explaining to the students precisely what the difference between a dietician and a “nutritionist” was. Even better, one of the students asked about “Dr” Gillian McKeith, a discussion of whose background amply illustrated all the points I was trying to make.
December 6, 2008 at 12:43 am
Heh – excellent.
December 6, 2008 at 8:51 am
There are some drugs that have to be taken with food and due care and attention has to be paid to how much food and how much fat. E.g., there’s a drug that goes well with a Rice Krispie square that has around 180 calories and no more than 2g of fat (10% of the calories from fat).
Anecdote alert concerning a ridiculously length disagreement with a nutritionist who had advised a 6oz piece of salmon with mashed potato and oven-roasted vegetables as a meal option for a client when he was scheduled to take a drug that had to be taken with a low-fat meal.
Broadly speaking, the fat content of the meal had to be low in order that the drug didn’t dawdle in the stomach but was passed along at a predictable rate to the part of the gut where it would be absorbed in a fairly predictable manner. (There were other drugs involved and the timing of all these and their predictability was crucial.)
At approx 22g of fat for the salmon (never mind the rest of the meal) there was too much fat to allow the necessary transit of the drug. Just to add to this, the mashed potato was made with olive oil and the vegetables were roasted in lashings of the stuff.
The nutritionist decided that it would be wise to use the broken record technique. She kept saying, “But it is low fat. Omega 3s don’t count and neither does mono-unsaturated fat from olive oil”. As if somehow “healthy oils” didn’t act in the same way on the stomach and retard emptying.
At the end, following an intervention from a very senior, well-respected RD who specialises in the area of that particular disease, the family dispensed with the services of that nutritionist.
But – she couldn’t be reported. There was nowhere to complain that her advice was plainly wrong and, in this case, potentially impeding the efficacy of a course of essential drug therapy.
December 6, 2008 at 10:07 am
“I often flavour porridge with raisins, apple, cinnamon and/or peanut butter (not all at once, of course)”
I don’t know – that could work…
December 6, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Hm, not sure about pb and apples. Maybe will give it a try :)
December 7, 2008 at 9:43 pm
@ jonhw, if the pb and apples don’t appeal, a friend swears that porridge with marmalade and sausages is ambrosia. Haven’t tried it myself!
December 8, 2008 at 1:23 am
Marmalade and pork is tasty. Less sure about the addition of porridge, though :)
December 9, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Ah, porridge freaks! Porridge plus golden syrup and nothing else! I’ll bet you go for pb and jam on the same piece of toast as well? Or even bananas on toast? No, no, no!
December 10, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Heathens, porridge needs little more than a pinch of salt before consuming at room temperature.
PS It seems Holford is popular in some parts of the press of Namibia as well.