My Mosaic Career

Dr Margaret Ashwell

I am delighted to be a founding Trustee of The Academy of Nutrition Sciences, because  I believe that its formation has been the most significant advance for the profession of nutrition science  during the 21st century.

My career path in nutrition started (or didn’t?) by my deliberately choosing to forego the one module on nutrition in my Physiology and Biochemistry degree at the University of Southampton. Nutrition didn’t feature in my MRC- funded PhD either, even though the ability of mitochondria to make less than 5% of their own proteins (the conclusion of my research)  has subsequently been discovered to play a  key role in the genetics of obesity.

I eventually had nutrition thrust upon me when, after my PhD,  I wrote, on the off-chance,  to the fairly newly formed Consumers’ Association. Much to my surprise, they asked me to research and write the Which? Slimming Guide which was published in 1972. Meeting nutrition experts such as John Durnin, Robert McCance, Derek Miller, Trevor Silverstone and John Garrow inspired me to ask the latter if I could crawl back to the MRC and do research on adipose tissue and fat distribution in his Nutrition department at the Clinical Research Centre.  Thanks to Roger Whitehead and Phil James, I transferred within the MRC in 1981 to the Dunn Nutrition Unit in Cambridge and changed  my research focus to brown adipose tissue with Paul Trayhurn. However, I still maintained my interest in fat distribution and the adverse effect of central adiposity on health risks with my excellent collaborator, Adrian Dixon, Head of Radiology at Addenbrooke’s Hospital . 

During my time in Cambridge, I was asked to stand for Honorary Secretary of the Nutrition Society, and I have never regretted my early involvement with our Learned Society.

Here is my first piece of advice to a young scientist:

Get involved as soon as you can with your learned and professional networks.  Volunteering in your early career years is really important so you get known as an enthusiast.

I have to admit that, even in the Dunn Nutrition Unit, although I had learned a lot about energy balance and adipose tissue, I still knew very little about nutrients. My next move to be Principal of the Good Housekeeping Institute did not change this situation. It was only in 1988,when I became Science Director of the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF), I could escape no longer and rapidly had to learn about all the nutrients.

My best idea ever was to approach those great pioneers of nutrition, Robert McCance and Elsie Widdowson, to ask if I could write a book about them; they said yes, and this was published in 1993. 

Here is my second piece of advice to a young scientist:

Don’t be scared to approach the legends of your profession. It is only by learning about their past that you can improve your own future.

Since 1995 I have been self-employed ( I enjoy being Dr Ashwell of Ashwell, a village 20 miles from Cambridge), and I have worked for Governments, Universities, Industry and Charities and many more. I have covered even more aspects of nutrition than  had I stayed at the BNF, and  I think I have had projects on foods and nutrients in every sector of the Eatwell plate.

In the early days, I had lots of project work, but I was desperately missing the camaraderie of working in a team. So, in 1996 I started SENSE ( Self Employed nutrition Support and Enlightenment ) to provide a network for those missing the support of an institution of Company.

Here is my third piece of advice to a young scientist:

If you are in need of a network and it does not exist, start one!

I was lucky that I was able to continue my (unfunded) research work on fat distribution with Sigrid Gibson, and I was delighted when NICE agreed in 2022 that waist-to-height ratio was a better indicator of health risk than Body Mass Index (BMI). I had first suggested this in 1996 and all our research, and that of many others around the world, had continued to support my suggestion.  I'm still waiting for this NICE Guidance to be fully implemented but, one day, I’d like to think that everyone in the world will know the answer to this simple question: How long is a piece of string?  Answer: Less than half your height if you want to minimise your health risks when you are young or middle-aged.

Here is my fourth piece of advice to a young scientist:

You need tremendous patience if you want to see the results of your research passions become public health guidance!

In 2016 I was very chuffed, if not rather surprised, to be elected President of the Association for Nutrition ( AfN) and this opened up a completely new chapter for me in the field of the  regulation of the nutrition profession. It was in this role that I was first approached, in 2018, about the possibility of the coming together of four organisations involved with nutrition science Three of these (the Nutrition Society, the BNF and the AfN) had already played major roles in my career, and so I was really enthusiastic for these three and, of course, the British Dietetic Association ( BDA) should join forces and form an over-arching body. The purpose of The Academy  would be able to act where the individual organisations could not on issues of mutual importance in nutrition science. After a lot of discussion and preparation, the Academy was launched at the end of 2019.

So here is my final piece of advice to a not- so- young scientist which is very similar to my first:

If you feel that your profession has given a lot to you, take every opportunity to give something back to it.  Your experience as a volunteer will be enormously valuable to any organisation, but especially to new, important organisations such as The Academy of Nutrition Sciences.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.