Food for thought

As part of the BBC Wales 'Me & My Health' season, David Williams has been making a documentary investigating the links between poverty and ill-health. The film, In Poor Health, has taken him from the notoriously poor Gurnos estate in Merthyr Tydfil to Poland. Here he shares what he discovered on this unlikely journey

I HAVE just completed filming in Poland what is, in its own small way, a remarkable achievement. Women from the Gurnos estate in Merthyr Tydfil - one of the most deprived communities in Wales - were making Brecon cakes for their Polish hosts and Parisian guests.

In itself it was the perfect example of co-operation and friendship between the peoples of the new Europe, but for the women of the Gurnos it symbolised something even more tangible.

Until three years ago many of the women we filmed didn't cook at all. They relied instead on processed and fast foods to feed themselves and their families. What they were doing in Poland demonstrated the changes which they themselves have brought about.

We were in Wroclaw, the capital of lower Silesia in south-west Poland, for a get-together of people from some of the most deprived areas and housing estates in Europe.

Included in that list of shame is the St Denis estate in Paris - scene of recent riots - the Zawidawia district of Wroclaw, and the Gurnos - places synonymous with inequality and poverty and all that accompanies such labels.

The Polish visit was organised by Equal as part of a trans-national agreement to try to find practical solutions to the problems associated with poverty and deprivation.

The people we were filming know what it is to live amongst the poorest and, in the case of the Gurnos, some of the sickest people in the expanding new Europe. Wealth and economic well-being enjoyed by others seem to have passed these people by.

Wales - the Valleys in particular - stands out for its concentrations of ill health. Merthyr Tydfil has its own unenviable claim to fame as the second worst area in Britain for self-reported ill health.

Sickness and disability is now overwhelmingly the single most important reason why working age people claim out of work benefits in Wales and the percentage doing that in Merthyr Tydfil is high.

The link between diet, health and health inequalities is well established.

So, the people of the Gurnos decided to do something about their own problem. Supported in part by a European-funded project called Equal, they did their own research to find out what people were concerned about and what they wanted to do about it.

This was not a Jamie Oliver thing. This was about poverty which fuels appalling health statistics.

Higher mortality rates, heart disease, diabetes, cancers, mental and behavioural disorders ... the roll call of ailments associated with deprivation is depressingly long.

A recent disturbing report commissioned by the Rowntree Trust was stark in its assessment of the impact of ill health among the working age population of Wales.

It is, it concluded, at the heart of Wales' social and economic problems.

The survey organised by the Equal project on the Gurnos estate revealed some disturbing thought patterns. The survey showed that people on the estate were very conscious that they were eating junk food and had an unhealthy lifestyle.

They knew what healthy food was, but they regarded that as something reserved for "them"!

The "them" were the "boring" people who ate all the right foods. It wasn't for the people of the Gurnos.

Paradoxically, the survey also showed that what those canvassed wanted was a chance to change all that and they requested cooking lessons.

This was not something imposed by "them" from outside. There had been too much of that and it had failed.

This was something the people of the Gurnos wanted for themselves and the Equal project saw to it that they got just that. The result has been a radical change in attitude and increased self confidence and self esteem.

You could see it in the faces we filmed in Poland. They were beaming with happiness at being given the opportunity to show off their cooking skills.

Kelly Parry, a single mother with three young children, summed it up: "It's brilliant. I never thought I'd be doing this and I never thought I'd be doing it in Poland. Three years ago I was feeding my kids chips, chips, chips and chips."

That has all changed and Kelly Parry now brings her three children to the creche set up as part of the cooking class on the estate.

For me, filming on the Gurnos was something of a journey into the past. Coincidentally, one of the Equal action researchers involved in the cooking project turned out to be someone I had filmed 18 years ago.

I first met Rhonda Braithwaite when I was filming a documentary about the effects on the unemployed of a new benefits system being introduced by the then Thatcher Government.

Rhonda Braithwaite, who was bringing up six children and supporting an out of work husband, called it the new Poor Law.

On camera she told me that she had calculated that the new system would bring the family an increase in their benefits of 57p a fortnight ... 57p more to feed the family.

It was a disgrace, but Rhonda Braithwaite is not one to let hardship grind her down. She has survived those 18 years; brought up her family and nursed her husband who became ill and almost died.

Recently she lost her eldest son Darren, 34. There is to be an inquest to determine how he died.

I interviewed Darren 18 years ago. All he wanted to do was leave school - which he hated - and find a job.

It is difficult for me to know the hardship and pain that Rhonda Braithwaite has endured in the 18 years since we last met.

If she is hurting she does not show it and now that she is employed full-time by the Equal project she says she is truly happy. It has given her confidence to share with others ways of coping with a life blighted by poverty.

She has strong feelings about diet and exercise as a means of combating ill health. When I filmed her shopping 18 years ago her trolley was full of baked beans. She is still embarrassed by that piece of film, but the food in the trolley was to feed six children and two adults.

Every two weeks the family received a giro cheque from social security for 150. The priority was food for the children. Baked beans and milk featured large on the shopping priority list. There was fish and meat too and somehow Rhonda Braithwaite ensured that her children enjoyed a balanced diet.

Five of the children have grown up strong and healthy. Rhonda Braithwaite is convinced that is because of their diet and exercise.

"They are strapping children, but they are not obese," she told me. Unfortunately that cannot be said about an increasing number of children in Wales.

A consultant diabetologist, Professor David Owens, whom I interviewed for this documentary shocked me with the latest statistics on obesity. The children of Wales are now the third most obese in the world. Only the United States of America and Malta has fatter children.

Professor Owens also sounds an alarming note in the documentary when he says that unless we tackle the problem of obesity in this country it will "bankrupt the NHS".

One of the problems associated with obesity is the growing prevalence of diabetes, particularly Type 2 diabetes which is now affecting children as well as adults.

Diabetes is now draining an estimated 10% of the NHS's resources. By the end of this decade that percentage figure could double.

We were filming Professor Owens, who is the director of diabetes research at Llandough Hospital in the Vale of Glamorgan, because he has pioneered an all-Wales survey of diabetic patients in Wales.

There are 100,000 registered diabetics in Wales. It is estimated that a similar number have diabetes, but don't know it. According to Professor Owens there is a direct correlation between the prevalence of the disease and poorer communities.

Sight-loss is a common problem for those with diabetes. The all-Wales retinopathy survey is intended to identify the problem early and prevent blindness.

It is a pioneering survey and Wales is ahead of the game, but unfortunately the survey can only pinpoint one consequence of the disease. Some of the problems associated with it are compounded by what we eat and how much we exercise.

That is why the Gurnos project takes on significance much greater than that envisaged when it was first conceived.

It is about changing attitudes to food, diet and health and nowhere is that more difficult to achieve than in deprived communities where the pressures of poverty weigh heavily on vulnerable people.

But that one project on one estate in Wales has shown that it is possible to change attitudes, and the effect on those involved has resulted in more than a healthier lifestyle.

It is not just a knee-jerk reaction to dietary concerns.

It has been much more than that. It has been, quite simply, liberating.

David Williams, Western Mail