A lifetime of NHS
Dietetics at the start of the NHS: The science of dieteteics has been around for a while now like the NHS.
I have always known the National Health Service (NHS) here in the UK. It has been a major part of my life having been employed in it for the last 16 years. Growing up I was also surrounded by it as my mother was a Physiotherapist and her sister a Nurse. My 2 sister in laws also work in the NHS; a Speech and Language Therapist and a Clinical Psychologist, plus two of my cousins are doctors and one cousin has gone into NHS management! My Grandparents were around at the start. My paternal
Grandmother was a Nurse working at Hartlepool Hospital and my Grandfather a Hospital Engineer. Both maternal Grandparents were Doctors (and my Grandfather a Dentist also). My maternal Grandmother trained in Glasgow as a Doctor, but only after her father made her train as a Teacher first as it was a more ladylike profession! My
Grandfather trained in Birmingham and had his first junior doctor job in the hospital I work in now! We are a family of NHS workers. Not only does the NHS provide us with free health care, but it has provided half my family with employment!
Dietetics has evolved
Over the past 70 years Medicine, Nutrition and Dietetics have evolved. Dietetics is a fairly young science and the first Dietetic department appeared at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary in 1924. The first meeting of the BDA was in 1936 with 77 members (1). There are now 9,585 qualified working Dietitians in the UK (2) with most having worked in the NHS at some point in their career.
Back in 2010 when we cleared out our old Dietetic offices at Selly Oak Hospital ready to move into the brand new Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, I saved some old dietetic textbooks heading to the skip. They included ‘The Handbook of Diets’ by Rose Simmons published in 1937, ‘The Diabetic Life, Its Control by Diet and Insulin’ by R.D. Lawrence published in 1945 (including a wartime supplement) and ‘Hutchinson’s Food and the Principles of Dietetics’ 5th edition published in 1922 and the ninth edition in 1944. These books would have been used by some of the first Dietitians who worked at Selly Oak Hospital. They would have been using these books 70 years ago when the NHS started.
Some of what we knew about nutrition 70 years ago has not changed. Hutchinson’s 9th edition from 1944 states that
‘Dietetics stands foursquare upon calories, protein, inorganic elements and vitamins and it is only an effort that we can imagine that there may be more legs for dietetics to stand on’.
He was quite right as these are still the principles of nutrition today (macro and micronutrients). He went on to say
‘What directions the future progress of dietetics will take it is impossible to say. It is probably that more vitamins will be discovered or subdivided further and new ‘accessory’ food substances may be brought to light’.
We have not found many more vitamins in 70 years, but we have found new ‘accessory food substances’ which could include substances such as probiotics, prebiotics, antioxidants, FODMAPs and many more.
Comparing diets from the 1940’s to today
The diet for diabetes is similar today. Simmons in her Handbook of Diets from 1937 tells us that patients with diabetes should weigh their foods, particularly bread and potatoes (much like carbohydrate counting now). Patients under Simmons care were given food lists – 1 of sugar forming foods (carbohydrates) and the 2nd of bodybuilding foods (proteins) and then taught how to substitute foods from the lists.