And the survey says...

On my recent holidays I took the opportunity to catch up on some nutrition reading including the results of Patrick Holford's '100% health' survey of 55,570 brits. This is the largest ever survey of diet and nutrition in Britain, and whilst most of the results seem pretty intuitive to me as nutritional therapist I thought they were worth sharing.

The survey was very extensive and the resulting report rather lengthy so I'll just share a few of the more interesting correlations:

Women who consume large amounts of fresh fruit are approximately twice as likely to have optimal hormonal health than those who consumed no fresh fruit. Whilst you might not naturally make the connection between hormones and fruit, fresh fruit and veg contain a huge range of beneficial nutrients that can have a positive impact on all systems in the body, so it may be beneficial to increase
your fruit intake in the week before your period.

Individuals consuming large amounts of dairy were less than half as likely to have optimum energy levels than those who did not. Dairy is often touted as a healthy food group, with individuals consuming large quantities of milk thinking it's doing them good, however increasing evidence suggests dairy foods are not that healthy and consumption should be minimised. The usually cited associated health problems include digestive difficulties, hormonal imbalances and even links to hormonal cancers. The survey results did not explain the link between dairy consumptionand low energy but I would imagine the high incidence of lactose intolerance in adults (milk from any mammal is only intended for infant stomachs) may be a large factor.

Individuals consuming high amounts of nuts and seeds were 2.5 times as likely to be in optimum health as those who did not. The term 'optimum health' is pretty broad but would have included multiple health measures and the results reflect the importance of essential fatty acids in the health of all organs. Essential fats are often lacking in british diets with an imbalance towards saturated fat intakes which can contribute to heart disease, skin conditions and hormonal imbalances.

These insights provide a snapshot of the surveys results, however the report usefully also includes specific dietary recommendations from the results which I'll cover on more detail in my blogs this week.
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