NHS patients should be pushy with GPs about treatment and drugs, says health chief He said the rationing body was carrying out work to examine why so many patients are not being prescribed medications, even though they have been endorsed by NICE - meaning local NHS organisations should not refuse to fund them. But he said individual patients should become more knowledgeable about their health conditions, and tell their doctors if they believed they were missing out on treatment which could help them. The former GP said: "The fundamental point is it's your body - and the more you understand about the drugs you are taking, or what you might be able to have, the better you are able to work with your doctor." He said that when working as a doctor in Cambridgeshire, near an American air force base, he was struck by the contrast in attitudes between the many US patients who consulted him, and the more deferential approach of local residents. He said: "Americans tended to want to know more about their treatment than the British who tend to be much more "thank you doctor, I will take that."" Prof Haslam said that "mercifully" attitudes were beginning to shift, but urged patients to be more pro-active about their health. He said he was not suggesting patients should issue orders or be confrontational, but that they should be able to assert what they wanted, and only be refused drugs which are backed by NICE if there were good clinical reasons why the medication would not suit them. "I think it is essential for the future of the health service and for the future health of the nation that patients understand their conditions, their treatments and work with their health advisors so they can have the best care," he said. Earlier this week a Government report found that thousands of patients are not receiving drugs for cancer and other major diseases, even though they have been approved by NICE, the body which decides which treatments the health service should fund. Prof Haslam said: "Patients have a right under the NHS constitution to these therapies, so I really hope we can improve this." As well as taking decisions on whether to approve medications, NICE issues advice on how to live healthily, with guidance for GPs and councils about how to encourage people to adopt better habits. Its chairman, who was appointed last April, said the watchdog was used to accusations of "nanny state" tactics but said that many people needed advice about how to live their lives. He said: "Despite us all thinking this is common sense it clearly isn't. There's an awful lot of people that need to be reminded about these issues and that's not nannying, it's not taking over as the state - it's supporting people. Prof Haslam said Britain needed to learn lessons from the years after World War Two. "If you look at the time when the nation was probably fittest it was immediately after the war, through the period of rationing and diet was dramatically restricted compared to what it is now," he said. In October a damning report by the World Health Organisation warned that the UK has the worst obesity rates in Europe, with 26 per cent of adults now obese. Earlier this month experts said that warnings that half of Britons will be obese by 2050 may be "optimistic" and underestimate the scale of the problem. Last year NICE issued guidance to GPs which said that doctors trying to tackle soaring obesity should not blame patients for being fat, having previously said that they should not use the word "obese" because it was derogatory. Prof Haslam said: "When we encouraged doctors to be less judgement in the way they addressed people with weight issues that generated a few thousand column inches. I completely understand that, on one level but we looked at the evidence - it is if you approach people in a non-judgemental way they are less defensive and you get better results.  Death of school cookery classes has left generation with no idea how to feed their children Generations of children are growing up on ready meals because their parents were never taught cookery at school, the chairman of NICE said. Prof Haslam said that although to some healthy eating might seem like "common sense," many families had little knowledge of how to feed their children nutricious meals, while others failed to make it a priority. He said: "I am hugely concerned about generations who lack skills in cooking from basic ingredients. You have a generation of children who have only ever been served ready meals because their parents have only ever had ready meals - because somewhere back in their childhood cooking classes and home economics disappeared. Last year, Government research found that just one in six families cook a meal from scratch every day.