The community needs to change its attitude towards food and what is being consumed, says nutritionist Cyndi O’Meara.
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Ms O’Meara will be speaking in Dubbo on May 12 as part of her Real Food for Health tour. The two hour talk will look at the unprocessed, seasonal food which people historically used to eat, and also encourage everyone to look at food as a whole, rather than its parts.
Ms O’Meara said foods such as butter had been declared ‘bad’ because of its fat content, however it also contained vitamins and minerals, as well as beneficial contents like butyric acid. Eggs had also been dismissed, she said, but were full of nutrients.
“The dietary guidelines that have been around since the 1990s have made a big mistake,” Ms O’Meara said.
The dietary guidelines that have been around since the 1990s have made a big mistake.
- Cyndi O'Meara
There were also a lot of items on packing labels which had been given new names or were misleading, she said.
“People are being fooled in the food industry by ‘natural sugars’ and ‘natural preservatives’ but there’s nothing natural about it,” Ms O’Meara said.
Most people were confused about what they should be eating, the nutritionist said, but she wanted to encourage consumers to start asking questions.
“We have to change and if we don’t change the statistics aren’t going to change,” Ms O’Meara said.
“Autism, ADHD, allergies and food sensitivities, they’ve reached a magnitude we’ve never seen before. Allergies weren’t around when I was a kid. There used to be a short bus but there’s a long bus now. It is about questioning the status quo that is not working.”
Ms O’Meara has spent the past 40 years studying and researching nutrition. In 1998 she published her first novel Changing Habits Changing Lives and last year she developed the documentary What’s With Wheat?. She’s also created an online education website Changing Habits.
“It all started because I wanted to do this for myself and I wanted to do this for my kids. I noticed in my mother’s group they were asking ‘how do you keep your kids off antibiotics? why are you doing that? why are you doing this?’ because they didn’t know what I know,” she said.
Ms O’Meara will be at Club Dubbo on May 12. The two-hour talk will begin at 3pm.
Tickets are available on the Changing Habits website: changinghabits.com.au.