Dr David Unwin helps working-class patients reverse type 2 diabetes

Improbable guidance from Washington urging Americans to ditch ultra-processed food echoes the work of a British GP whose patients are reversing type 2 diabetes through diet

Improbable guidance from Washington urging Americans to ditch ultra-processed food echoes the work of a British GP whose patients are reversing type 2 diabetes through diet

If I told you something not entirely awful has come out of the current US administration, you might start to worry about me. If I added that it was unveiled by Robert F Kennedy, the health secretary politely described as maverick (other much less polite terms are available), you’d think I’d taken leave of my senses.

Earlier this year ‘RFK’ announced a new set of dietary guidelines, introduced with a simple message: ‘eat real food’. The advice urged Americans to move away from highly processed, sugary, additive-laden meals and towards “whole, nutrient-dense” options such as vegetables, fruit, dairy, protein, healthy fats and whole grains. From a figure better known for courting controversy, it amounted to an unexpected pushback against America’s junk food culture.

Not everyone is convinced. Some cardiologists are uneasy about the enthusiasm for full-fat meat and dairy as part of the mix, a stance that has hardly endeared the message to vegetarians or environmentalists either. Others warn that romanticising older dietary patterns risks glossing over the health problems associated with mid-20th-century eating habits.

But many see it as a welcome rejection of the ‘obesogenic’ diets which have hampered the Western world for decades. Among them, the UK’s Dr David Unwin, one of the leading lights in helping people overcome type 2 diabetes and other chronic health problems via dramatic changes in their diet – particularly cutting down on sugary carbs and processed food.

Speaking at the Sustainable Foods Summit in London recently, Unwin gave a strong endorsement of the new US guidelines. Quick to stress that he was no fan of the Trump White House, he added that “nobody was more astonished than me when I discovered that the diet they were espousing was pretty well what I’d been advising for the past 13 years for my own patients”.

As a GP in a working-class Liverpool suburb, Unwin has spent much of his career treating the steady rise of type 2 diabetes. When he joined his practice in 1986, just 56 patients were living with the condition. Today the number is around 570. The increase reflects a wider trend across the UK, where rates of diabetes have climbed sharply alongside diets increasingly dominated by ultra-processed food.

From a figure better known for controversy, it ’ s an unexpected pushback against junk food culture

Speaking at the Sustainable Foods Summit in London recently, Unwin gave a strong endorsement of the new US guidelines. Quick to stress that he was no fan of the Trump White House, he added that “nobody was more astonished than me when I discovered that the diet they were espousing was pretty well what I’d been advising for the past 13 years for my own patients”.

As a GP in a working-class Liverpool suburb, Unwin has spent much of his career treating the steady rise of type 2 diabetes. When he joined his practice in 1986, just 56 patients were living with the condition. Today the number is around 570. The increase reflects a wider trend across the UK, where rates of diabetes have climbed sharply alongside diets increasingly dominated by ultra-processed food.

A sufferer from type 2 diabetes himself, which he puts down to half a lifetime of poor eating habits, like most doctors, Unwin once relied primarily on medication to manage the disease. Metformin remains the standard treatment, and newer drugs such as GLP-1 therapies have transformed care for many patients by helping control blood sugar and support weight loss.