WE ARE WHAT WE EAT

[Tizer]

You're right Plaques, obese folk generally believe they are eating a `normal' amount of food when really they're failing to exert self control and not restricting themselves to the amount needed by their body. The more you eat, the more you want to eat. Fancy diets aren't necessary...people simply need to eat less. We're all expending much less energy than even our recent ancestors, but eating more. Obesity is becoming a global epidemic. Nutritionally, there are good foods and bad foods but no matter how `good' your food is you're still at a much greater risk of obesity (and all the health, mobility and longevity issues that come with it) if you eat too much of it. And obese people often over-feed their children and pets until they succumb too. All this and we wonder how we are going to feed the ever-growing world population.

[Tripps]

From memory - Radio 4 Today - The Food Programme.

The top man at Bulmers Cider - when asked how much actual apple juice was in their cider, would not give a percentage figure, but replied that it was information which their consumers had shown no inclination to ask for.

[Stanley]

David, I think they use a lot of imported concentrate these days. The small artisan cider-makers will be OK I think.
Tesco say that in the first six months of this year they dumped over 30.000 tons (IMPERIAL!) of food waste. How much of that was actually perfectly edible.....

[David Whipp]

Nah then Stanley, I can't see Tesco being Imperial.

What astonished me is that, according to the report (and assuming I heard aright), 'consumers' bin one in ten bananas bought.

Not in this household.

(If I get the chance to pay a couple of coppers for blackening bananas, I make a yummy banana cake - freezing most for future consumption. Once on a day, the Barlick Co-op were knocking good bananas out for nowt on Christmas Eve. I bought a box full and gave them as Chrissy pressies. Scrooge? Bah humbug.)

[Tripps]

Interesting that Tesco and food waste is in the headlines.

A couple of months ago a large building site emerged along the A505 but in the 'green belt'. There was nothing in the local press, and I guessed it was either a new service station or a Travel Lodge type development.

A letter in the local paper two weeks ago from a former Town Councillor revealed that it was in fact to be a food waste digester plant. He also said it had been passed not by the District Council, but directly by the County Council, and that they had overridden the fact that such developments were not permitted in the green belt - saying there were 'special considerations' . They did not reveal what these were. I assumed there would be huge local opposition and outrage - after two weeks not a word!

He said that the plant would be fueled by 'waste food' from supermarkets Tesco and Sainsburys, and there would be twenty five lorry loads of per week delivered. I make that about 3.000 tons per month of largely edible food.

An item in this week's paper says that consideration is being given to set up a food bank in the town.

[Tizer]

Is this the one?
http://www.waste-management-world.com/a ... re-uk.html

[Tripps]

Yes - I think so, but though close to Cambridgeshire, it's actually in North Hertfordshire. I note the line

"I would like to recognise the excellent support and specifically the Capital Grant received from the Waste & Resources Action Programme in helping us to progress this exciting project."

I suppose they'll pay it back when they start making some profit.

Did I tell you I'm reading a biography of Karl Marx at the moment

[Tizer]

Did I tell you I'm reading a biography of Karl Marx at the moment

Yes, are you reading it in a corner of a smokey, darkened coffee shop among like-minded and bearded individuals?

[Stanley]

Good Lad Tripps! And yes, the food banks came to mind when I heard the news. As I have often said, instead of applying sell-by dates blindly, why not let food banks pick the food over and make their own decisions. How many times have you picked out a bag of reduced fruit and they have refused to sell it to you even though it's obviously still edible.
Like you David I can't understand how people can be so stupid as to buy too much of the wrong sort of food and then throw it away. All that gets chucked out here is peelings.
Have you noticed the increasing trend towards using adverts to persuade people to buy ready cooked and take away food instead of cooking? More profit in ready meals and take aways because you can use inferior ingredients.

[Bruff]

I can't speak for all foodbanks, but the one's round here do not ask for fresh food no doubt because, I imagine, they have no way of keeping it fresh. So there's no picking up bags of apples, spuds and other stuff. It's all rice, tins and other non-perishables and preferrably the 'value' ranges so that if you wish to donate 10 quid's worth of food, it'll go further. I don't really have a problem with this as foodbanks are a genuine last resort - you have to be referred by one or more agencies (social services/GPs etc) and can only use them 3 or 4 times a year at most. They are not a repository for free food day in day out (though this escapes some commentators).
I guess the 'luncheon clubs' that are in many towns could be a route for the distribution of perishables, but I am not sure of the extent to which this occurs.

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

Good point Richard and I hadn't thought about that. So, out of date 'fresh' food on racks so that customers can make up their own minds about what is edible or not. Danger from greengrocery of food poisoning must be far lower than in meats. On another point, why are salad leaves packed in 'a protective atmosphere' and flown in from thousands of miles away classed as 'fresh'?

[Tizer]

Because supermarkets, like many of our other companies and institutions, are now allowed to make up their own words and definitions of words (remember Npower's 10-month year, and the `lifetime guarantees' and `lifetime interest rates' that change when the company feels like it?).

Modified atmosphere packaging entails putting food in a sealed pack and adjusting the composition of the gas mixture in the pack to slow the natural deterioration. Nitrogen and carbon dioxide are added to replace some of the oxygen. This slows down the rate of oxidation and helps prevent colour changes. The increased nitrogen level slows down the growth of aerobic bacteria. It's important to recognise that putting food in modified atmosphere packaging is a bit like putting it in suspended animation; it doesn't kill any bacteria or moulds but simply slows their growth, and anaerobic bacteria (which don't need oxygen) may not be affected at all. If the original food has not been sterilised (e.g. by cooking) then any microbes in it will still be there and alive when the modified atmosphere pack is opened, and growth can resume as more oxygen once again becomes available. The quality of the original food is critical.

[Stanley]

So, the 'experts' have finally read the research and agree with what Tiz and I have been telling you for years, butter is good for you and far better than margarine. See this LINK for the Guardian story on the revelation. They should go further and point out the flaws in low fat diets, long since proved to be not only ineffective but dangerous to health. Further they should step up to the plate and condemn the use of cheap modified vegetable oils which all the research confirms are dangerous but are used by the food processors to increase shelf life regardless of the overwhelming evidence that they are bad for you. Expect a rash of opposing views from other 'experts' directly or indirectly linked to the food industry.
By the way, give some thought to the rising incidence of rickets. Main cause is deficiency in diets which can be directly linked to increasing consumption of inferior processed foods. (LINK)

[Tizer]

Milk is fortified with vitamin D in the USA and Canada but not in Britain. It's not surprising we're seeing more rickets when you look at how little time kids now spend outside in daylight (actually exposed to sunlight, not in cars).

Stanley, you'll be interested to know that, like you, Sir Ian Gilmore, previous president of the Royal College of Physicians, has given a strong endorsement to Rod Biltons' book `Know What to Eat'. Rod gave him a copy to read and got a very positive response. Now I'm trying to get Rod to put the book on Lulu so that it can be bought from their web site.

[Stanley]

Yes but Rod told me yesterday in a telephone conversation that Sir Ian has gone off up the Amazon! We had a long talk and I'm trying to persuade him to contribute to the site. Good bloke, I like him. He was impressed by the fact I was so up to date on the research and had read his book. We talked about the Rickets problem and he emphasised the necessity to get Vitamin K2 with the Vitamin D for it to be fully effective. He reckons that there are problems if Vitamin D alone is given due to possible calcification of the arteries. (See page 141 of 'Know What to Eat'.)
LULU is a good idea but he could get additional exposure here because of the bots indexing the site.

[Tizer]

For anyone reading this thread I suppose we should clarify that we are referring to Sir Ian Thomas Gilmore of Royal Liverpool University Hospital, a gastroenterologist and liver specialist, and a former president of the Royal College of Physicians...not to be confused with Sir Ian Hedworth John Little Gilmour, Baron Gilmour of Craigmillar (who is very unlikely to `go up the Amazon').

Rod, now in his early 70s, has been so deeply involved in his biochemistry that he's never found time to learn much about computers and the Internet and he'll readily admit that he's naive in that respect. Therefore the best way to get him to contribute might be for him to write some articles on food and diet which could be published in a dedicated thread on OGFB. We'll just have to remember to nudge him into making them easily understood!

[Stanley]

I'm expecting him to email me and when he does I'll try to get him on board.

[Tizer]

You'll see headlines today like: `US moves to ban trans fats in foods', `FDA moves to take trans fat out of food', `No More Trans Fat: FDA Banning the Artery-Clogger', `Artificial Trans Fats in Food Deemed Unsafe by U.S. FDA'. Here is the news from the horse's mouth, the US Food and Drug Administration.

FDA NEWS RELEASE, For Immediate Release: Nov. 7, 2013

FDA takes step to further reduce trans fats in processed foods
Reducing trans fat intake could prevent thousands of heart attacks and deaths

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced its preliminary determination that partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs), the primary dietary source of artificial trans fat in processed foods, are not “generally recognized as safe” for use in food. The FDA’s preliminary determination is based on available scientific evidence and the findings of expert scientific panels.

The agency has opened a 60-day comment period on this preliminary determination to collect additional data and to gain input on the time potentially needed for food manufacturers to reformulate products that currently contain artificial trans fat should this determination be finalized. “While consumption of potentially harmful artificial trans fat has declined over the last two decades in the United States, current intake remains a significant public health concern,” said FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D. “The FDA’s action today is an important step toward protecting more Americans from the potential dangers of trans fat. Further reduction in the amount of trans fat in the American diet could prevent an additional 20,000 heart attacks and 7,000 deaths from heart disease each year – a critical step in the protection of Americans’ health.”

Consumption of trans fat raises low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or “bad” cholesterol, increasing the risk of coronary heart disease. The independent Institute of Medicine (IOM) has concluded that trans fat provides no known health benefit and that there is no safe level of consumption of artificial trans fat. Additionally, the IOM recommends that consumption of trans fat should be as low as possible while consuming a nutritionally adequate diet.

In recent years, many food manufacturers and retailers have voluntarily decreased trans fat levels in many foods and products they sell. Trans fat can be found in some processed foods, such as certain desserts, microwave popcorn products, frozen pizzas, margarines and coffee creamers. Numerous retailers and manufacturers have already demonstrated that many of these products can be made without trans fat. Thanks to these efforts, along with public education, the consumption of trans fat in American diets has been significantly reduced. Since trans fat content information began appearing in the Nutrition Facts label of foods in 2006, trans fat intake among American consumers has declined from 4.6 grams per day in 2003 to about 1 gram per day in 2012. “One of the FDA’s core regulatory functions is ensuring that food, including all substances added to food, is safe,” said Michael Taylor, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine. “Food manufacturers have voluntarily decreased trans fat levels in many foods in recent years, but a substantial number of products still contain partially hydrogenated oils, which are the major source of trans fat in processed food.”

Following a review of the submitted comments, if the FDA finalizes its preliminary determination, PHOs would be considered “food additives” and could not be used in food unless authorized by regulation. If such a determination were made, the agency would provide adequate time for producers to reformulate products in order to minimize market disruption. The FDA’s preliminary determination is only with regard to PHOs and does not affect trans fat that naturally occurs in small amounts in certain meat and dairy products.
http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/ ... 373939.htm

[plaques]

Prior to Mrs Thatcher entering politics she worked as a chemist developing the introduction of air into ice cream.
The ice cream being hydrogenated fats or as we call it now "trans fats". I'm not saying that her particular endeavours were armful to anyone but she appeared to be good at inflating something that in the end may proved to be a potential killer.
Could this in any way be related to the economy model that she let lose?

[Stanley]

They move slowly, Problem was they bought the 'saturated fat bad' research even though it was shown to be bad science and spent 15 years trying to prove that it was right but had to admit in the end that they couldn't do it. Just shows what a hold the food processors have on the administration, no different in the UK. The message is that there is no need for us to wait, just make sure you avoid them and incidentally, most vegetable oils. The lady on the chexk-out in the supermarket yesterday couldn't believe i WAS PAYING £8.60 FOR A LITRE OF iL cASOLARE COLD-PRESSED, EXTRA VIRGIN, UNFILTERED OLIVE OIL WHEN HER VEGETABLE OIL ONLY COST (bugger caps lock) £157 a litre. That's the nub of the problem.

[Marilyn]

Never been brilliant at maths, but £157 a litre seems a tad dear...
I take it you mean £1.57/ litre.

[Tizer]

Don't knock all vegetable oils Stanley, your olive oil is a vegetable oil...and so is rapeseed oil which now has a similar fatty acid composition to olive oil.

The resistance to abolishing trans fats has been due to the usual problem....vested interests.

Plaques, I enjoyed your comment about Maggie, inflation and ice cream. But don't forget that her science background made her the first politician in the UK to warn us and other governments about the coming climate change. I wish we had politicians today who would do that, she was decades ahead on that issue.

[Tripps]

We have just clashed Tizer - my post has disappeared into the ether......try again...

I'm getting confused here - I thought Tizer had said that rape seed oil was better than sunflower, so I changed. I read the label, and rape seed is what is called vegetable oil in the shops. There is a 'cold pressed extra virgin' version for those that think it matters. Wonderful phrase 'extra virgin'

All a bit academic as a bottle lasts me about six months as I put it in a spray dispenser, and use as little as possible.

[Tizer]

You're on the right track David, rapeseed oil is better than standard sunflower oil. Sunflower oil was promoted in the past because it was rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids and the thinking at the time was that this was better than saturated fats (and it seemed to remove hair from men's chest, going by the ads for sunflower margarine). Since then we've found that not all polyunsaturated fatty acids are the same from a health viewpoint. Sunflower was rich in omega-6 and we ended up way out of balance with far too much of it and too little omega-3 (found in fish oil and to some extent in flaxseed oil). One way to restore the balance is to eat more fish and take fish oil capsules to raise our omega-3 level. But another way to adjust the balance is to cut down on omega-6 by eating an `omega neutral' oil instead of the sunflower. Rapeseed and olive oils are both rich in omega-9 (sorry to add complication!) but this doesn't play any part in the important omega-6/omega-3 balance, ie. they are omega neutral...so if you replace sunflower with rapeseed oil (or olive) you will go some way to restoring the healthy balance.

Rapeseed and olive oils are rich in oleic acid, the omega-9 that I referred to above. There is now high-oleic sunflower oil which will be healthier for us but I doubt that it's being used widely yet. It will be more expensive for the food manufacturers to buy and also they, and the retailers, usually don't state on the label what type of sunflower they are using, so you don't know what you're getting anyway.

The `extra virgin' bit means that the oil hasn't been refined and will therefore retain more of the antioxidants and pigments from the original olive or rapeseed. The downside is that unrefined oil is less stable, more likely to oxidise and will develop rancid flavours and odours more quickly. Also it will break down more quickly if used to fry foods, which is a problem if you re-use frying oil but not if you use it once only. Never use extra-virgin oil repeatedly in a chip pan! Besides being very expensive it will go off rapidly.

[Stanley]

Tiz, if I gave the impression I was knocking all vegetable oils I'm sorry, I wasn't. After all I was buying Olive Oil! My point was that the people going for the cheap vegetable oil are doing it entirely on price and the methods used to produce some of these cheap oils doesn't bear close scrutiny. That's why I quite like the sediment in my Il Casolare olive oil......