MISQUOTING Hippocrates to defend yourself against charges of medical illiteracy is not the best PR strategy, but those are the depths to which the UK鈥檚 National Obesity Forum sank last week.
Forced onto the defensive after publishing a controversial report on dietary fat and health, the pressure group tried to pour (cooking) oil on troubled waters by that the father of medicine advised eating 鈥渞ich foods鈥� to stay thin, including 鈥渇atty meats, especially from grass-fed animals鈥�. Where the obesity forum got this from is not clear, but the wording is very similar to that on a for weight loss.
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To be fair, overweight people to eat rich foods. But he also said they should only eat one meal a day, drink wine, refrain from bathing and sleep on a hard bed. Grass-fed meat doesn鈥檛 get a look-in.
This less than rigorous approach to the facts was largely what got the obesity forum into trouble in the first place. Critics of the report 鈥� called 鈥� say that the authors cherry-picked the evidence and ignored important studies. Public Health England condemned the report as 鈥渋rresponsible鈥� and 鈥渕isleading鈥�. The British Dietetic Association also .
鈥淭he consensus on fat, carbs and health has been under pressure for years and may need revising鈥�
Flawed it may be, but the report contains much food for thought (see 鈥�Fat vs carbs: What鈥檚 really worse for your health?鈥�). The consensus on fat, carbs and health has been under pressure for years, and there is growing evidence that the orthodox advice needs revising. The forum probably jumped the gun, but may eventually prove to have been broadly correct. There is now a pressing need for a rigorous review by a body such as Public Health England: despite its official-sounding title, the National Obesity Forum is a self-appointed charitable organisation, something that did not come across clearly in the coverage of the report.
The row also exposes deeper problems with dietary advice. Scientific disagreements aside, the protests over the report were largely based on assumptions about what the general public would take away from it. Health officials fretted that we would be left confused, or use the report as an excuse to eat fatty food and quit counting calories. The worst outcome would be for people to conclude that the health police don鈥檛 know what they are talking about, and stop even trying to lead a healthy lifestyle.
These assumptions about how most of us might respond to health advice are reasonable, but they are only assumptions, and quite patronising ones at that. They take it for granted that health advice has to be clear and unequivocal, even if the science itself is unclear and equivocal.
What would be really useful is some detailed research on how people respond to health messages, so that genuinely well-intentioned experts, including the obesity forum, understand how to share their wisdom with us. We know from research on communicating climate change, for example, that simply handing down scientific facts doesn鈥檛 work and often backfires. There is no reason to assume that health advice is any different.
One thing that scientific bodies must do is refrain from appealing to ancient wisdom 鈥� a strangely effective but ultimately self-defeating rhetorical device. Hippocrates was way ahead of his time, but his time was more than 2000 years ago. Modern science can do better.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淯nhealthy advice鈥�
