Dr Geoff Webb, School of Health & Bioscience
We are constantly bombarded with advice about diet, lifestyle and health. Much of this advice is based on scant evidence and promoted in the media by people with little credible medical or scientific expertise.
Rarely a week goes by without some new ‘super-food’ like blackcurrants, mushrooms, pomegranates, walnuts, olive oil, green tea, turmeric or even red wine and chocolate being promoted on the basis of their important health giving properties.
Dr Webb will suggest that this untested advice is not just harmless nonsense but potentially damaging and sometimes even dangerous. Appropriate changes in diet and lifestyle can prolong life and improve wellbeing but inappropriate changes can damage health, waste resources and perhaps even cause premature deaths.
He will discuss several examples of now discredited advice that caused real harm. Did thousands of British babies die as a result of inappropriate advice about sleeping position? Have millions of people been persuaded to take dietary supplements that do no good and in some cases do real harm?
Dr Webb will identify causes of past mistakes and suggest current areas where health promotion may be doing more harm than good.
© 2006
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