Just listened to an interview on woman's hour with Sheila Dillon about her experience of discussing nutrition in the hospital after receiving a multiple myeloma cancer diagnosis. In the Food Programme she'll be discussing this topic on the 19th May. She asked her oncologist and various other professionals in hospital about nutrition... basically it didn't matter what she ate they'd said to her.
The snack trolley (a supermarket shopping trolley stuffed full of sugary snacks, crisps etc) she'd see wheeled up and down while she was visiting for chemo.
I suppose the nursing staff would consider a chocolate bar to be a treat and god knows, the patients need a treat or two if they have cancer... comfort food never did anyone any harm!
She was mildly horrified at the lack of interest &/or knowledge around nutrition. What a body might need more or less of while fighting cancer didn't feature on any of their radars.
I hope with more mainstream folk highlighting the troubles anything faces getting trialled in a comparable way to the 'gold standard' only pharmaceutical companies can afford that we might see the green shoots of an alternative to the pharmaceutical stranglehold of treatment options in many chronic diseases.
...gotta have hope.

Does this disconnect show a perceived lack of shared experience between the healthy and the sick?
Even the least food aware amongst us must know that sugar isn't good for us but health professionals seem not to regard the sick as having bodies just like theirs? Is this a lack of empathy on some sort of unconscious level? Perhaps it's a necessary level of self preservation? After working in this environment day after day, year after year would it pay to imagine thinking of your body as delicate and vulnerable  just a sick person's?

I find it very curious and in the same way as the health professional's sphere of experience is different to mine i guess i can't put my mind into that of theirs either, thoughts anyone?