Dr Ann Walker, one of the three members of Nutriprofile’s Expert Nutrition Group, runs a clinic in Reading where she uses herbal medicine alongside nutrition to help her patients. She has a spectacular herb garden and spends what spare time she has walking in the countryside and capturing plant life through the seasons on camera. We caught up with her at home to ask her about NutriProfile.

Q: How did you first get involved in the field of nutrition?
A: I’ve been working in food most of my life but when my husband developed chronic fatigue and nothing could be done using orthodox medicine, we started to look at nutrition and herbal remedies. It’s a fascinating subject. My husband found that herbs and nutritional supplements helped to relieve his symptoms, so I retrained in herbal medicine and took over his treatment. He no longer suffers from chronic fatigue!

Q: What was it about NutriProfile that made you want to get involved?
A: Knowing the importance of nutrition personally, I believe that a dietary survey such as NutriProfile is a great opportunity for the general public at large to find out where they are not meeting their nutrient targets. People who come to see me who are unwell are usually missing nutrients in their diet and improving their diet can improve their condition enormously. 

Q: What particular skills did you have to offer NutriProfile?
A: I have been in the field of nutrition for years, so my experience has played an important part. I also have detailed knowledge of reference nutrient intakes and government recommendations on nutrition.

Q: Does NutriProfile provide an accurate dietary analysis?
A: Absolutely. NutriProfile’s food frequency questionnaire has been scientifically validated and therefore, when compared with the Gold Standard ‘weighed surveys’, that weigh everything you eat over a 7 day period, it correlates highly. Better still it deals with a typical diet over a long period of time, which is more representative, rather than focussing solely on what you eat over one week only. There is always a certain degree of inaccuracy with all dietary surveys but with NutriProfile this is minimal.

Q: So how does NutriProfile determine how nutritious your diet is?
A: NutriProfile takes the data you provide in your questionnaire and calculates the nutritional content of your diet using the nutrient composition of food tables. This is then compared against the Reference Nutrient Intake (RNI) for your specific population group to determine whether you are meeting the target intake for each nutrient.

Q: Do you think that this kind of profiling is going to be an important part of nutritional analysis in the future?
A: Food frequency questionnaires have already played a very important part in nutritional studies around the world and I can’t see that changing. Where NutriProfile will be invaluable however is that it is valid specifically for the British diet and freely available for public use. And because it is a validated food frequency questionnaire, it is an obvious tool for a personal nutritionist to use in consultations with his or her clients.

Q: Would you recommend that your patients take the test?
A: Definitely, and I’d probably suggest that they take it before they come in to see me so that we can discuss the output. NutriProfile provides people with overwhelming evidence that they are not reaching their nutrient targets. This makes a real difference to patient compliance as they can actually see where they risk deficiency and receive advice on the kind of changes they can make to their diet and their intake of nutritional supplements to address this.

Q: What kind of a difference do you believe NutriProfile can make to a person’s health and wellbeing?
A: It will undoubtedly help to improve a person’s diet and consequently their general health and wellbeing. What is excellent about it also is that it enables that person to complete the questionnaire again after a few months to see the positive impact of any changes they have made to their diet.

Q: Do you think people will be surprised by their results?
A: Yes, I think so. Most people know that they should eat healthily but often don’t. They fool themselves that they eat a healthy diet but I anticipate that many will find big nutrient gaps, especially for omega 3 and calcium.

Q: What is the biggest problem with nutrition in Great Britain currently?
A: I would say that, as a nation, we probably eat too much carbohydrate which can dilute our diet and stop us getting enough micronutrients. We also don’t do enough exercise and therefore do not use up the amount of calories we are consuming.

Q: Why do you think it is that we (as a nation) don’t seem to know about nutrition?
A: I think that we are aware of many elements of healthy eating but don’t convert it into our behaviour. The knowledge is there but it is not translated into our choices.

Q: Which nutritional supplements do you choose to take?
A: I regularly take a multivitamin, vitamins C and E, fish oil, and a calcium and magnesium combination. I also take vitamin D during the winter and some herbs as and when they are needed.
Even if I have improved my diet, each time I complete the NutriProfile questionnaire my requirement for a multivitamin, calcium and magnesium, and a fish oil supplement are always thrown up.

Visit www.NutriProfile.org to do your NutriProfile today.

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