Which? Magazine report lambastes nutritional therapy

Which? Magazine has just published a report on nutritional therapy, in which the profession comes out rather badly. In fact it tears strips off us.

In brief: five undercover investigators visited three different therapists. According to the report, some of the advice they received was shocking. It appears that none of the therapists behaved in a responsible manner, with at least one advising against seeing the patient’s GP and others making rather unusual, unconventional diagnoses, such as ‘leathery bowel’. Commenting on this report, someone from the British Dietetic Association pointed out that anyone can set up shop as a nutritional therapist, with no training, no qualifications and no regulatory body to keep an eye on what they get up to.

It’s all true. Anyone can indeed call themselves a nutritional therapist, or nutritionist, or nutrition anything. There’s nothing to stop you. You can fabricate any old bunkum and take someone’s money in exchange for it. It’s the oldest trick in the medical book. And being in the profession myself, I’ve heard of some at best bewildering and at worst disturbing advice being disseminated. Nutrition, I came to realise some time into my career, is a business which attracts all sorts – from food extremists, to control freaks, from predatory opportunists to the simply misguided.

Just like many a health profession, then. And like many other health professions it also attracts people who go on to become superb, skilled and intelligent practitioners with a genuine talent for helping people achieve optimum health. With that aim in mind, the University of Westminster launched, in 1999, the first nutritional therapy degree course in the UK, setting the standard for the profession overall. These days, any nutritional therapist who doesn’t hold a proper qualification is a fool.

Contrary to the impression given by this report, nutritional therapy does have a (voluntary) regulatory body and all training schools must meet standards set down in the National Occupational Standards produced by the Skills for Business Network. The professional body to which accredited practitioners belong is the British Association of Applied Nutrition and Nutritional Therapy (BANT). Nutritional therapy is a profession undergoing rapid transformation, currently aiming for statutory rather than just voluntary regulation. It’s what we want.

But none of that makes for a juicy, scandalous report. It is not clear how the therapists concerned were selected, what their level of training was and whether or not they were all members of BANT. BANT was not given the opportunity to respond, which is why there are no quotes from this side of the debate. We were not given the chance to defend ourselves. It is a biased, fudged piece of reporting. How very unscientific.