Preface Part 2

 

 Text between -o- and -o- and Referencing, Preface Contents and other links  added.

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Preface Part 1   here

Part 2 Contents:

   0.6    Confusion

   0.7    Start Again 

   0.8    Main Aspects of the Book 

   0.9    Acknowledgements

   0.10  Nil desperandum

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0.6   Confusion

0.6.1  Food education programmes can only be written with large groups in mind.

If food education is to influence individual dietary decisions better programmes will need to be available to the individual. While this book is not concerned with their content it can provide information to those who prepare such programmes. In contrast to specific diet sheets written for an individual's illness the food education programmes can only be written with large groups in mind.

 

0.6.2   Needs can only be identified on the large scale

It follows that the needs can only be identified on the large scale. National patterns of death and illness attributable to poor diet can be compared with data on the consumption of types of food. The logical extension of this is to change the food education programmes, observe any changes in the medium term consumption data and then look for improvements in the demographic data.

 

0.6.3  Identify new aspects of the process

Clearly, such approaches should be taken, probably are in progress at the present but they are outside the scope of an investigation such as this. What can be done, however, is to identify new aspects of the process by which individual food preferences and choice are made. 

 

0.6.4    Finding out about preferences and choice

This may be done by discovery or by seeing new links between facts already known. In the absence of laboratory/field work the 'new links' approach is the more probable. 

Comment can be made on projects past or continuing directed at finding out about preferences and choice and these can assist in seeing different associations between conclusions reached from these and the more theoretical studies.

 

07  Start Again

0.7.1   When children no longer see state school tuck shops

One message is that it is too difficult to change the badly-dieted mature person and easier to launch the solution to the national food-health problem onto the youngest generation. Events in compulsory education are critical as they occur in the formative years.

When children no longer see state school tuck shops example of temptation update and school menus written to pander to tastes affected by TV adverts they may better see the sense of their home economics update and other teaching directed at a healthy life style.

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0.8  Main Aspects of the Book

0.8.1    Nutritionists address increasingly the massed preferences of foods

We eat what we like (and vice versa.) when we can and on occasions when 'our' food is available. When it is more convenient for practical and social reasons, we are quite able to consume foods well outside our normal repertoire. However, the professional concern of nutritionists addresses itself increasingly to the massed preferences of foods, many of which are not nutritionally beneficial and a fair amount are positively harmful. 

Accepting that food education operates within the overall health education approach and is complementary to efforts made to reduce smoking, to promote healthy exercise, there are numerous overlaps in the 'cause and effect' debate. 

 

0.8.2   The greatest health to the greatest number of people

This book focuses upon food preferences and choice made by the individual in an attempt to point the way forward to the greatest health to the greatest number of people. Others may be better equipped to devise the necessary programmes to achieve this.

The medical, food education and academic communities are somewhat confused and contradictory in their understanding of individual food preferences and the use of related terms and concepts. The main literature is searched to extract such terms, and efforts are made to bring some sense to the disparity. This being done the terms and concepts are sorted according to a model of  

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individual food preferences. This divides into headings including social, geographical, economic and physical considerations. Other models are devised to threw light on related issues as the book progresses to consider the implications for national dietary health.

 

0.8.3    We may achieve goals involving correct food 

One of the main reasons health education has a fair way to go in terms of improving the health of the nation is that it takes time for its effects to work through. It is, however, easier to say that the dietary dimensions of health education are less difficult to assess in terms of what is consumed today and from this we ought to be able to make predictions about future dietary induced health. We may one day achieve goals involving the correct choice of foods but this will come to nothing if there is always after-meal inactivity accompanied by smoking and drinking.  

 

0.8.4   Steer away from any 'correct drink choice'

While 'correct food choice' in the book embraces many of the issues and factors involved, you are not told to 'eat this' and 'avoid that.' When it turns attention to drink no one is advised, as such, to drink non-alcoholic refreshments. Rather, the approach is to steer away from any 'correct drink choice' because it cannot be dealt with in the same way as food. 

 

0.8.5   The book concludes with ways to reduce many food and drink problems

We must eat food but we don't need to drink alcohol; water could suffice but it doesn't always.  Excessive intake of food causes fewer problems to other people but too much drink not only affects the individual but has medium and long term effects, some of these being on other people.

The book concludes with a look at ways in which health education might alter in its approaches to solving the many food and drink problems in our society.

Alan F Harrison
Canterbury,
England.
October 1986

 

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9  Acknowledgements 

The library staff of Telford College, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University, and Canterbury College of Technology always displayed diligence, patience and good humour in their dealings with my numerous requests and I am grateful for their help. 

 

The staff in the typing pool at Telford College were equally helpful and forbearing.

 
Mary Arnold and Shirley Inglis of Balerno, Edinburgh typed a lot of the first and second drafts and saw to the related correspondence.

 
Patricia Weir of Sturry, Canterbury, typed much of the final material. Secretarial assistance was received from Pauline Okell, also of Canterbury.

 
The Department of Graphic Art at Canterbury College of Art was extremely helpful and I am grateful to Peter Sullivan, Head of Department and Roy Chambers, Deputy Head. Daren Beaumont, B A Graphic Design second year student proficiently designed and prepared the covers to the book and many others in his group 'competed' for the job.

 
Professor Robert Moore, Head of Department of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen kindly read Chapter Two and his comments were appreciated. 

 

Timothy Steward of the Department of Education at Edinburgh University commented on the work at its early stage.
 

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10  Nil desperandum

0.10.1   Collecting and marshalling 'evidence'
If you are fairly new to books taking a more academic approach to the subject then these few paragraphs are for you. This book has been written with a view to collecting and marshalling 'evidence' concerning its various dimensions. To enable you to see where the material has come from and to enable the evidence to be checked by those who want to, anyone should be able to refer to the original paper, book or article. 

 

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0.10.2    Setting out the references
There are several ways of setting out the references. The 'numerical' system seems so unwieldy and one often has no immediate clue as to the author. I have chosen the 'Royal Society' method whereby if John Smith is quoted from page 345 of his book published in 1955 the quotation is referenced in a particular way. The text here might quote "...such and such..." (Smith, 1755: 345). 

 

You can then look him up in the Bibliography and perhaps see that his book 'The Smith Factor', say, was published by Brown & Co. Those who are studying or researching any topic to which Smith might make a contribution may need to obtain the book through the library system and will need to give all the details mentioned.
 

If Smith had written any other book or paper in that year which has been used it will be referenced 1955a, 1955b etc., and the Bibliography will distinguish between the various items.
 

0.10.3    Now for a little Latin

 
So far so good, then. Now for a little Latin, 'little' is the operative word, however, as it is usually shortened. 

 

Academics feel more comfortable when they read it all and there's no reason you shouldn't do the same. If Smith is quoted again a page or two later in this text I might put (Smith: 234 op cit). The italics are used to keep things 'fluid' in a rather similar way to quotation marks. 

 

The op cit means that the same book or paper has been used again and loc cit and ibid are used for similar purposes.

If Uncle Tom Cobley and three of his friends wrote a book used here it is referenced (Cobley et al 1978) and the et al saves putting all their names as it means 'and all'. There's one of these on page 36. If ff comes after a page reference it means continue for a few pages more. If you see cf then compare one thing mentioned with something else, and gv means 'look it up' (in the Bibliography, for example).

If you see sic it means that whoever it was meant something to be spelt in a specific way. It can mean also that someone made a mistake but we were clever enough to spot it. We could continue ad nauseum (until sick of it) with Latin but there are a few more to explain. You knew vice versa and per se means 'as such' in this oeuvre (that's French) or work. 
 

There's a ceteris parabus on page 31 which means 'other things being equal'. Now, I went around for a while not realising you say keteris and that is a good reason for this addendum to the beginning of the book (if that's not double Dutch). I also wondered at first why people couldn't write in English but I pretended to be an academic and it went away. It all has to be taken as being sui generis which is Latin for 'I can’t explain it', 'it's taken for granted' or, only slightly more seriously, 'it's unclassifiable'. 

 

The adjective sui generis is Latin, meaning literally, "of its own kind." Anything sui generis is its own thing; there's nothing else like it.  more

 

 

0.10.4

If there's anything else like the terms mentioned here used in other writings you can always refer to your dictionary. You can make notes on your tabula rasa and savour them later.
 

There's no accounting for taste.

 
Degustibus non disputandum

 

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Preface Part 1 (previous three pages here)   Preface Contents.

 

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