Dressing as a tomato and meeting the CMO - all in a day's science

Elsie Widdowson, British nutritionist

Posted by Amelia Lake, Professor of Public Health Nutrition at Teesside University and Associate Director of Fuse

In this blog on International Women's Day, Amelia tells us about the pioneering female scientist who inspired her career in nutrition science.

When I was at University studying for my degree in Human Nutrition and Dietetics in the mid 1990s our ‘food tables’ were in books – actual books that you held.

We worked out nutritional content of food using books and calculators. Now-a-days this is all done by software without the need for the hard copy of the books. The book we all had was a copy of the ‘McCance and Widdowson’ Food Tables. I still have my well thumbed copy and the book is the the basis of the modern software systems that nutritionists and food scientists use.

Although as an undergraduate I didn’t really give the names McCance and Widdowson much thought it was later on in my career, thanks to the British Nutrition Foundation and my colleagues, that I really learned about Elsie Widdowson. She was born in 1906 and died in 2000 having spent a long and productive life as a pioneering female scientist. Along with her colleague Robert McCance, Elsie Widdowson was at the forefront of the Nutrition effort after World War II.

Elsie studied Chemistry at Imperial Collage London and in 1931 completed a PhD in Chemistry also at Imperial. Elsie met Robert McCance in the kitchens at Kings College Hospital in 1933, when she was studying to become a dietitian and he a junior doctor. Here, in the hospital kitchens, began a partnership that would last for 60 years!

It was at Cambridge, where they both worked, that the book I mentioned earlier was developed: a publication pivotal to nutritional science. But it wasn’t just for the development of this book that she has my respect - it was for the pioneering work around vitamin and mineral fortification, the rehabilitation of severely starved individuals and malnourishment around the world and important work on infant diets. This was an incredible female scientist who paved the way for nutrition scientists like me.

 

                           My inaugural Professorial lecture - challenging the food environment

I recently spoke about today’s nutrition challenges in my inaugural Professorial lecture. Preparing for this lecture I had to reflect on the work I have been doing in the field of nutrition research starting from 1998, looking at ‘the influence of Western Food on a Traditional Diet’ in Western Sumatra Indonesia for my first degree, through to my PhD studies on longitudinal dietary change and then finding my field around Obesogenic Environments and Food Environments. Similar to the ever changing Food Environment, which I study, the field of nutrition science is ever changing - in line with our changing diets and behaviours. There remain many challenges not least around food insecurity which, according to a new report by the Food Foundation, continues to increase. The current cost of living crisis puts food and eating into the spotlight. 

One of the challenges of Nutrition Research is around communicating. Doing this clearly around the noise of misinformation about food or food products is a challenging job! Throughout the twenty-three years that I have worked in nutrition, I have spent a significant amount of time communicating. Sometimes, that involves dressing as a tomato for a public lecture to children (see picture) and sometimes that involves meeting the chair of The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (Sir Norman Lamb) or even the Chief Medical Officer (Professor Chris Whitty). But most of the time it is about exchanging knowledge between professionals and communicating to the public about the ‘latest’ nutrition fad or ‘superfood’ (spoiler - there is no such thing as a superfood).

Dialogue is important, food is important and nutrition science has much to do. I think I am going to be kept busy in my line of work for a few more years!

The other issue I reflected on during my inaugural lecture was my career breaks (3 in total) and the fact that I have worked part time (3-days per week) since having my second son Auden in 2012. My eldest son David died from a rare disease called Alveolar Capillary Dysplasia in 2011 and, along with my husband we run a charity called The David Ashwell Foundation raising money for research into this usually fatal lung condition affecting newborns. In 2020 I was recognised by TimeWise as a Power Part-Timer. Since doing my lecture, I have received a number of emails thanking me for talking about working part-time and for acknowledging the army of helpers it requires to be a working parent.

If you want to help make a difference in people’s lives I can recommend a career in nutrition science….

#InternationalWomensDay #IWD2022 #BreakTheBias

Should Nanny be in charge of the tuck-shop (and off-licence)?

Guest post by John Mooney, senior lecturer in Public Health at Sunderland University

Aside from inclement weather and beautiful coastlines, there are a number of more worrying close parallels which the North East of England shares with my native Scotland. Most notable among these are an embedded culture of heavy drinking and an ongoing aversion for substantive proportions of both populations to fresh fruit and vegetables, alongside a fondness for fried and fast food.

The unfortunate consequences of these ‘’lifestyle choices” speak for themselves in the league tables for obesity across the life-course and in the statistics for alcohol related liver disease mortality, where only Scotland has higher rates than the North East. Despite good evidence that parts of Scotland, notably Greater Glasgow and West Central Scotland, have a more significant health burden than comparable areas in England (the widely publicised ‘Glasgow Effect’), there is no room for complacency in the North East, as front-line public health teams know only too well (especially since much of Scotland's culinary delights, including Tunnock's teacakes, are readily available in most major grocery retailers).

Is Scotland ready for a Tunnock’s tea-cake tax?

As an embedded researcher in Sunderland City Council where I work one day a week with the public health team, I have the dubious privilege of being immersed in the reality of what this means for those engaged in efforts to improve population health in the region. Specifically, there is the ever present tension arising from the contrast between the current consensus about what types of intervention might work best, alongside the reality and constraints that can frustrate their implementation. Flipping back to North of the border, Scotland’s best example of that practical tension has to be the ongoing legal machinations of the European Courts, dealing with industry raised legal challenges to alcohol minimum unit pricing.

My own previous experience during a career development fellowship at the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy (SCPHRP), gave me a small taste of comparable “practicality constraints” when our review of the international evidence around obesity prevention highlighted that a sugared-drinks tax would be the most promising and cost effective intervention at a national level. The commonly used slang for all fizzy drinks in Scotland (due to the popularity of a certain rustic coloured tipple) of ‘bottles of ginger’ led the Scottish Daily Mail to pronounce on its front page: “Nanny State Researchers propose a Ginger Tax!”. It’s only fair to say that SCPHRP Director, Prof John Frank’s subsequent telephone conversation with the then Treasury Secretary, Danny Alexander was particularly tense!

The all pervasiveness of the term “nanny state” in relation to public health interventions was recently brought home with a colleague’s recollection of her eight year old daughter’s reaction to school tuck shop restrictions: “I don’t want to be living in a <>~^+*!! nanny state”. It was very much in evidence also with the Chief Medical Officer’s festive cheer about there being no safe minimum level of alcohol consumption in relation to cancer risk. No surprises for guessing how that particular advice was received by New Year revellers in Scotland.

While public health “nudge” messages are often ridiculed as nanny state interventions, what is often forgotten in relation to dietary or behavioural advice is that these “nudge messages”, whether around availability, affordability, or portion (glass size/ strength of beverages), have all been incrementally (and imperceptibly) ratcheted up in the other direction over preceding decades. This could equally apply to the added sugar content of processed food and drink or the cultural normalisation of everyday drinking.

This should not however be a council of despair for public health practitioners and policy makers across the board. Smoking was once thoroughly normalised behaviour in all public and workplace environments. The legal challenges to alcohol minimum unit pricing, the most effective intervention at reducing excessive consumption based on solid international evidence, are steadily being chipped away in my native Scotland and perhaps “a ginger tax” for the whole of the UK might not be far away. Especially now Jamie Oliver has taken up the mantle of the sugared drinks tax debate and NHS Chief (Simon Stevens) seems, as of last week, to be fully on board – for NHS premises at least. Although I dread the reaction of my colleague’s politically savvy eight year old when she finds out!

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John Mooney FFPH is senior lecturer in Public Health at The University of Sunderland and spends one day per week with the public health team at Sunderland City Council.

He will be presenting at Teesside University’s Health and Social Care Institute lunchtime meeting in a talk entitled: Is Scotland Ready for a Tunnock’s Tea-cake Tax and other public health conundrums? On Wednesday 27 January 12.30 – 2pm in C2.22, Constantine Building, Middlesbrough.