Balanced diet
What is a balanced diet? From an Evfit perspective it is - as Professor Lionel Tiger wrote in the Wall Street Journal on 14 July 2002 - ‘The balanced diet for our species was what we could acquire then, not what the government and doctors tell us to eat now.’ Be wary of the term ‘balanced diet’. It is a loaded label which can generally be taken as meaning ‘a diet consistent with the preferences, prejudices and (limited) knowledge of the speaker’.
Unfortunately, government authorities - such as the UK Food Standards Authority - are bound to "take a balanced view" and so give weight to arguments from food manufacturers that the use of certain additives and manufacturing processes should continue and to pharmaceutical companies who claim their drugs are more effective in treating behavioural disorders. Perhaps this is what a "balanced diet" is: one that is one third good for our physiology, one third good for business and one third good for our consumerist culture which condones damaging food and lifestyle choices as "little treats" which "all children deserve".
Page up-dated 30 December 2007