Are you ready? with Leigh Elder

I recently enjoyed reading Donna Chisolm's well-researched round-up of some high profile diets in the ‘North & South' magazine.

I also read the great comments from authentic and experienced nutrition experts like Elaine Rush, who says: 'We know more and more about less and less. We are drilling down on small pictures but losing sight of the whole picture”.

Oh, so true! And it is all these red herrings, and often misinformation, which causes chaos with the hearts and minds of so many Kiwis looking for answers.

Nutrition professor David Cameron says: 'Diets hold the promise of what we should be rather than how we are”.

Exactly – as in the $20 billion-a-year USA industry, one person in three is on a diet at any given time, and typically they will have four to five attempts each year.

Each new attempt is accompanied by this bright new hope of what they might achieve, and absolutely loses sight of how that person ticks and what sort of physiological nick they are in.

Surely, we have got all this badly wrong and need to rethink how we go about getting it right. With more than half our population overweight or obese, diabetic or with other metabolic issues, people's nutrition needs vary enormously.

For instance, a type 2 diabetic is intolerant to glucose, and any calorie-restricted diet, with a natural bias towards-friendly carbs will leave our type 2 sufferer awash in glucose.

It also begs the question, why do many of these diets have to tinker with the actual nutrition basics? A cynical answer would be that it creates a point of difference and will get noticed, and the 5:2 diet, Paleo, Low Carb High Fat and so on, all sound quite exotic.

At Eat For Keeps, we focus first on finding out about the health and metabolic status of our people, clarifying what basic nutrition is all about, and providing some succinct and specific resources and relevant food and lifestyle skills.

And it works. All we really need to do is apply a bit of good old-fashioned common-sense, and getting back to the basics with these very serious weight and diabetes issues would be a great help! Contact: leigh@eatforkeeps.com or call 027 294 1980.