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DieƟetics in AƟens Ursula Arens Writer; Nutrition & Dietetics
Ursula has spent most of her career in industry as a company nutritionist for a food retailer and a pharmaceutical company. She was also a nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation for seven years. Ursula helps guide the NHD features agenda as well as contributing features and reviews.
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Delegates attending the EFAD Athens Conference number eight, ate lots of local delights. Plates were mountain-high with souvlaki, salads and spanakopita. Aside from eating together, there were lots of opportunities to compare and contrast the science and practice of dietetics in a melody of European accents, the unfair constant being that the official language of the event (=English) was not the mother tongue of the vast majority of those attending. The European Federation of the Associations of Dietitians (EFAD) was established in 1978 to encourage both the better nutrition status of the population of the member countries of Europe, and to support the scientific and professional development of dietetics, with a view to entwining these two public and professional strands. Membership of EFAD is open to all National Associations of Dietitians from member states of the European Union, and there are currently 33 member associations (of which the BDA is one), representing over 30,000 dietitians. In addition to funding from member associations, EFAD receives funding from the Executive Agency for Health and Consumers, under the framework for the Health Programme of the European Union. The EFAD Athens conference held in October 2014, offered a rich diversity of themes to consider and, at all times, there were three to five parallel events to choose from. Over the threeday conference, there were 16 lectures, 10 workshops and 21 roundtables and, as always with a large conference, some preparation time is needed to blend learning the most with rushing around the least. There were many star speakers. French sociologist Claude Fischler offered dazzling insights into the many ways that we think about food and how this influences food choices. Questions on foods show particular polarity between American versus French re-
NHDmag.com April 2015 - Issue 103
spondents, and Professor Fischler has researched these differences in depth. Prompted with pictures of chocolate cake, Americans think “guilt - calories”, whereas French think “celebration - pleasure”. A picture of a jug of cream makes Americans think “unhealthy”, whereas French think “whipped”. Professor Fischler observed that when looking at the many risk factors there were for obesity, the one that consistently scored highest was being an English-speaker. Americans valued quantity, variety and comfort, whereas the French selected quality and pleasure-giving to explain their food choices. For a sociologist to observe that people are muddled and inconsistent in their views is not stopthe-press news, but Claude Fischler also gave some historical examples of strident pronouncements of the healthiness of foods that would today elicit opposite opinions. The obvious thought is which of our current dietary guidelines will amuse future nutrition professionals? Today his main area of research is commensality - eating together and sharing food - and possible effects on public health; eating a lunchtime sandwich al desko is unlikely to score well, but can the who-you-eat-with really out-trump the what you eat in relation to health? Another internationally acclaimed speaker was James Hill, best known for the establishment of the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) in the US. This project is an inversion of the normal research project; rather than ex-
