You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

We have all heard the saying, and when it comes to describing many BDA dietitians of a certain vintage, it fits perfectly. After years of patrolling hospital wards, like Gunga Din the water carrier, dispensing Fortisip, and making big decisions, will it be the banana flavour or strawberry. The days of impressing other hospital colleagues, with a laptop and the Henry equation, are long gone. Trained so long ago, back in the days Tim Berners-Lee was winning activity badges in the cubs, accepted sound dietary science has changed out of all recognition. Granted, most Doctors and Nurses have always viewed dietitians as more ornamental than true healthcare professionals, but it’s the internet that has changed everything.

We now live in an age where the ordinary guy or gal has access to unlimited information. So many people are realising, the standard eat five a day malarkey and cut down on the fat, is complete bunkum. So antediluvian are the dietitians diet sheets, they are more akin to an exhibit in the Ashmolean Museum, than a useful tool in a hospital or GP’s surgery. Worse still, is the fact dietetic associations all over the world, are increasingly jumping into bed with junk food outfits. Hardly a week goes by, when we don’t see a high profile BDA dietitian promoting high carb, high starch and even worse, high sugar junk food.

The days where a senior dietitian, lecturing in a University, could get away with writing off Dr. Robert Atkins as a man killed by his diet, or describing Dr. Richard Bernstein as a dietary heretic are coming to an end. Describing the countless diabetics, posting low carb higher healthy fat good news on social media, as nothing more than “anecdotal” looks more ridiculous by the day. The increasing number of well controlled diabetics, consider the average dietitians dietary advice, about as dangerous as going down with the Ebola virus.

Nobel Prize winner Max Planck said “Science advances one funeral at a time” I am not wishing the death of the dietetic dinosaurs, but the sooner many are pensioned off the better. They have become totally irrelevant in a modern world. A world where many healthcare systems are collapsing due to the epidemics of obesity and the often linked type two diabetes. Telling people to eat less and move more, has failed totally. As one of the new wave of dietary leaders said recently “you can’t outrun a bad diet” ain’t that a fact.

Eddie