Thursday, February 27, 2014

Understanding Nutrition

more Thursday:

I had a Nutrition tutorial yesterday, and we filled out a anonymous quiz about our nutrition knowledge then looked at how people answered.

Questions included: Alcohol has negligible calories/kilojoules, true or false?
At least a quarter of the group thought that was true!

Meat, fish and eggs are a good source of fibre, true or false?
Again, a lot of people said true!

I was astonished.

Yes, I've read a lot about nutrition and I'm twice the age of most of the others so I probably know more. But I thought this was basic stuff everyone knew. Apparently not.

You just can't make assumptions about what other people do or don't know. I have huge gaps in my own knowledge - anything to do with sport, for example. Maybe other people would be flabbergasted about how little I know about car maintenance, considering I drive one every day.

This is going to be interesting.

4 comments:

  1. Uh yeah, wow. Maybe some of the government things they're doing here with food labeling and stuff isn't as asinine as I thought, then.

    BTW, I wanted you to know that I'm going to keep reading, but I don't have the time to work on the comment word verifications anymore, so you might not see comments from me as long as you have them in place. Sorry about that!

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    1. I think I've managed to remove those - I don't like them either! I'll see if I get much random spam without them.

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  2. Hi Natalie, I've come to the point where I base most of my nutrition knowledge upon what I've learned experience-wise. There are too many nutritionists in the U.S. who base their knowledge upon the U.S. food pyramid, which even the government food researchers think is very wrong. So "the wisdom of the crowd" for how to eat well and to maintain a good weight is crucial to understand. My oldest daughter has gone to 2 different nutritionists. One was based upon the U.S. food pyramid, giving her advice that made her gain weight. The second was an athletic nutritionist, who advocated against the food pyramid and gave my daughter excellent eating advice which has really worked for her--much like what I tell this daughter.

    I have a nutritionist student who reads my blog because--so much about eating right is using weight management tools well, and about positive mindset, which many nutritionists downplay.

    Anyhow, it's just random thoughts. I think the thing that sells a nutritionist the most is--how *they* have personally conquered their own eating issues. Sort of like gym trainers, no one can get away from first impressions.

    I wish you the best in your studies. You sound very interested, which is great. :-)

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  3. The ironic thing, of course, is that while I probably know as much or more about nutrition as anyone in the class (apart from the teacher), I am also the only overweight person in the class. Knowing is a long way from doing, and if I don't apply my knowledge it is worthless.

    And the other problem, like with Marion's nutritionists, is that a lot of my "knowledge" is contradictory! Lots of voices all shouting different things.

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