The Eatwell Guide and its use in primary care

Outside the BBC's Broadcasting House and chiselled into the wall beside the statue of George Orwell (1903–1950) are these words:

‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear’ (The Orwell Society, 2025).

This has relevance for medicine, where many in our ‘pill-for-everything’ society hand responsibility for their health to ‘experts’. But more health professionals are telling people what they might not want to hear and – significantly – more people are listening, reflecting and asking pertinent questions, thus confounding those ‘experts’ who assume that some concepts are too difficult for the public to grasp.

Consider the Eatwell Guide (UK Government, 2024), published by Public Health England in association with the Welsh Government, Food Standards Scotland and the Food Standards Agency in Northern Ireland.

The guide states: ‘Starchy food is a really important part of a healthy diet and should make up just over a third of the food we eat… Base your meals around starchy carbohydrate foods’ (UK Government, 2024). Yet, type 2 diabetes (T2D) arises from uncontrolled blood glucose concentrations. As for fat, the Eatwell Guide says: ‘Cutting down on saturated fat can lower your blood cholesterol and reduce your risk of heart disease… The average man should have no more than 30g saturated fat a day. The average woman should have no more than 20g saturated fat a day’ (UK Government, 2024).