Day 032 - 06 Oct 94 - Page 10
1 areas.
2
3 Q. You can sit down as you wish or stand up. Have there been
4 changes in dietary patterns in the last 20, 30 years?
5 A. I believe there have. I believe there is evidence to
6 show that, in my opinion, there have been changes in
7 dietary patterns, both in the types of food eaten and in
8 the resulting consequences in terms of disease rate. For
9 example, even in the last 10 years there have been
10 increases in the numbers of adults deemed obese through
11 government surveys, but also there have been changes in
12 eating patterns, and I believe that the impact of high
13 street fastfood outlets has been a party to that change in
14 eating patterns which has moved more to a snack food
15 eating to "grazing", as it is called, which is tending to
16 eat between meals as well as at meals, and away from
17 regularisation of food intake through three meals a day.
18
19 Q. Is also the type of food being eaten changing?
20 A. Well, there it is harder to -- obviously, the types of
21 food have changed -- you only need to look at your
22 supermarket shelves -- but the actual nutrient quality of
23 those foods is a bit more hard to determine. Although
24 patterns would show that, for example, low fat milk
25 consumption has increased, low fat spreads consumption
26 have increased, one might then think, therefore, the fat
27 consumption has actually decreased because these low fat
28 alternatives are being eaten more.
29
30 In fact, it appears from our evidence, from evidence that
31 is currently being looked at, that quantities of fat in
32 the diet have not changed over the last 10 years or so.
33 The average diet still consumes as much fat as it ever
34 did.
35
36 On sugar, similarly, although people are actually
37 consuming -- no, they are consuming as much sugar as ever
38 they did. They are purchasing less white sugar, but they
39 are consuming as much sugar as ever they did, plenty of
40 that sugar appearing to come from sources where it is not
41 obvious that the food contains a lot of sugar; for
42 example, spreads, soft drinks (which are obviously sweet,
43 but the quantity of sugar is not necessarily apparent),
44 and other ways in which sugars can be added to food,
45 including savoury foods. So the total consumption of
46 sugar by the population in this country appears not to
47 have changed at all, despite attempts by individuals --
48 indeed by the mass of the population -- to reduce their
49 purchasing of plain sugar, white sugar.
50
51 Q. When you say it has not changed, you mean it has not gone
52 down despite concerns?
53 A. Exactly.
54
55 Q. Does that imply it had risen since, say, the Second World
56 War?
57 A. I do not think I can go back that far. What it
58 implies is a shift of the sources of sugar. So, despite
59 individuals' intention to buy, for example, low fat or low
60 sugar, reduce their sugar consumption by buying less
