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Warning – health promotion can seriously damage your health! - all welcome to UEL public lecture

Monday 8 January 2007

Dr Geoff Webb, author, columnist and senior lecturer in nutrition and physiology at UEL's School of Health and Bioscience will give a public lecture entitled ‘Warning – health promotion can seriously damage your health!’ on the evening of Tuesday 23 January in Stratford.

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.

The Public Lecture takes place from 6.30 – 7.30 pm in The Great Hall Lecture Theatre, University of East London, Romford Road (junction of Water Lane), London E15 4LZ. All welcome, admission free and refreshments provided. For details, visit www.uel.ac.uk/lectureseries

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For details and pictures contact Patrick Wilson: 020 8223 2061 or 07951 797 975

Notes to Editors

The University of East London (UEL) is a global learning community with over 28,000 students from over 120 countries world-wide. Our vision is to achieve recognition, both nationally and internationally, as a successful and inclusive regional university proud of its diversity, committed to new modes of learning which focus on students and enhance their employability, and renowned for our contribution to social, cultural and economic development, especially through our research and scholarship. We have a strong track-record in widening participation and working with industry.

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