Feed your children well...

[Rodo]

Some parents are obsessive about keeping their children covered up with either clothes or sun lotion. You see children when abroad in head to toe suits with hoods to bathe in the pool. It's no wonder they are short of vitamin D. A little sun won't hurt them, provided they are not allowed to stay out in it for too long.

[JoM]

I was just surprised that there were still cases of it. It's a disease I associate with pre-WW2.

Yes, absolutely, Jo.

But TBH, I'm more concerned about the rise in TB in Birmingham .....

Oh definitely! That is a worry

[Suff]

I was just surprised that there were still cases of it. It's a disease I associate with pre-WW2.

Personally I thought it was a disease caused by a lack of knowledge about basic nutrition. Which, of course, a growing number of young women no longer have. In this age of fast food, no thought going into meals because someone thought of it for you and children of 15 year old's having children at 15, what else could we expect.

After WW2 there was a comprehensive programme of educating women about the dangers of bad nutrition. Now there is an expectation that this knowledge is somehow endemic in our society and we no longer need to educate young mothers about the dangers.

No, of course we don't need to educate them, we just force the children to take vitamins whether they need them or not...

There are two very important points here.

1. How quickly knowledge is lost when it is not constantly refreshed
2. How our society has changed that we think it is acceptable to target the symptoms rather than educating the problem....

Because in the current mode, nobody will feel responsible and nobody will do what needs to be done. Reality is the Government can't do this for everyone, people have to do this for themselves. where Government should be targeting their effort is in nutritional education and also in ensuring that nobody comes into the country with TB....

Both of which successive governments and Councils have failed at miserably....

[KateLMead]

Yes TB! and to make the massive comeback of this disease worse the present form does not respond to antibiotics
There are no medical checks on immigrants entering UK. Legal or illegal
The rise in Hepatitis,Aids, TB and other communicable diseases is kept very quiet, my youngest developed a primary complex when we were working in the Philippines she was on medication for two years, we also arranged. An open day for locals many of whom walked fifteen miles and more to see the doctors and dentists services who my late husband organised .
The numbers found to be suffering with TB following being being examined and referred to hospitals
was frightening.

[pederito1]

My considered opinion is that young children may need vitamin supplememts even with a good diet. These however should only be given after ascertaining a need for a particular one by a test.

[Workingman]

I personally think that it is all a lot more complex than throwing out supplements like confetti. There are many facets all feeding in to the "problem".

Suff mentions ready meals. These things are nutritionally suspect at the best of times, but when they become the staple diet they are a disaster. Yet, in an attempt to keep us "informed", government(s) and the food industry, have concentrated salt, sugar, fats, carbs and calories - two greens, two ambers and a red, that's OK. Nutrients? Who cares?

Then we have 'adspeak'. "No artificial colours, flavourings and preservatives." screams the label in a shorthand for "Natural colours, flavourings and preservatives are good." Nobody tell us why a chicken pie might need any CFPs - artificial or natural - because they would have to admit that the industrial process needed to get the 'meat' and texture it into 'chunks' took them all out in the first place.