OneGuyFromBarlick

Plasticiser chemicals can leach (migrate) from plastic packaging into food and drink and there are strict limits on how much is allowed in food/drink. However PET bottles (which are used for mineral water) don't contain plasticiser. A page on the web site of the German government organisation for consumer safety is useful:
http://www.bfr.bund.de/en/frequently_as ... 60846.html

On the other hand, as can be seen from that page, bottled water will never be genuinely pure in the chemical sense. It all comes down to defining the word `purity' for different purposes.

There are always two sides to a coin, In 2006 a long term study on the storage of water in PET containers by William Shotyk proved conclusively that chemicals would leach into the contents, and resulted in the recommendation that water stored in such containers should be changed regularly.

Encouraging news this morning (LINK) that leading research scientists (Those pesky interfering people again!) have joined with the Altzheimer Society to recommend that the best way to attack dementia is to encourage people to eat a healthy diet, they cite the Mediterranean diet as a good model. Question is will David Cameron go against his bosses in the food industry and agree with this proposition. Time and time again we see that money talks and Big Industry seems to be able to stave off common sense initiatives like this which do not fit in with their marketing plans or need for longer and longer shelf life.

LINK
See this link for more about the recommendation to use the Mediterranean Diet as a tool against dementia instead of pills. The message seems to be spreading, it was mentioned again on the news this morning. Nice to know that Tiz and I have been banging on about the right things!

Funny how a day after the recommendations on food and dementia the PM announces 'action' within ten years on dementia. Is this the right response?

It will take 10 years because the aim is to find ways of predicting 10 years in advance who will get dementia. So if you start now you won't have a final result until 10 years have passed. They should have started ages ago, but they never listen.

I was struck by the fact that only £12million is invested in dementia research per annum. Peanuts compared with other problems....

See this LINK for the latest report on the benefits of eating apples. Good news for me, I love 'em and probably average three a day all through my life, pips, core and all. The only bit I don't eat is the stalk!

I looked at that, though I thought at first , judging from the title, " A statin a day keeps the doctor away" a comparative proverb assessment modelling study, that it was a spoof.

Here's the full version - I think we need Tizer to help us understand it. Apples versus Statins

A couple of excerpts from the document. . .

What this study adds "An apple a day or a statin a day is equally likely to keep the doctor away"

"our study suggests that both nutritional and pharmaceutical population approaches to primary prevention of vascular disease have the potential to have a significant effect on population mortality. We find that a 150 year old proverb is able to match modern medicine and is likely to have fewer side effects. Now to model the effect of inquisitiveness on feline mortality rates."

Then I see the title of an adjacent article, and I'm back to thinking the whole thing is a spoof again.

"The survival time of chocolates on hospital wards: covert observational study"

I now see that ;
The cost of an apple came from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ weekly fruit and vegetable prices for the cheapest variety of dessert apple (assuming the NHS would want to purchase at the lowest price) of 47 pence/kilo, or approximately 4.7 pence/apple assuming these apples are on the smaller side.20 No costs were estimated for general practice appointments or the management of any side effects.

The price of apples is the only bit of the project that I feel able to comment on, and it's nonsense. I will ignore it all.

Best policy David, exactly what I do. I shall continue to refuse the statins and eat my three apples a day! Watch this space.... (Of course the quack might be right and I might die. Come to think I will do that anyway. Bugger it, apples taste nicer than pills!)

I do both - so I will live for ever.

Tripps, well spotted! Not exactly a spoof but an example of deliberately writing and publishing something to suit the festive season. An old tradition and originally meant to be a bit of fun for the medical profession but unfortunately these days the news media pick up such things and try to make more of them (or they simply can't see the joke). The researchers have done some computer modelling in their tea break, then sent the results and conclusions to the journal editor who has joined in the fun and published the paper

After Stanley's first post about apples I read the BBC web page and was appalled by their list of apple nutrients which showed that whoever wrote the page had no idea about nutrition at all. That prompted me to look elsewhere for comparison and I found a list on the web site of English Apples and Pears Ltd, described as "a limited registered company formed in 1990 to organise and develop the promotion of the English industry." I was shocked by the gross mistakes on their page for apple nutritional information and have written a message to them as follows:

"May I suggest you check the values in your table of nutritional composition for apples shown on this page of your web site?
http://www.englishapplesandpears.co.uk/ ... sition.php
A number of the values for vitamins and carotenoids are way out, probably due to putting in the correct number but the wrong unit. This can result in values a thousand fold too high if you've used gram (g) where it should be milligram (mg) and a million times too high if it should be microgram. For example you give the vitamin A content as 3 grams but if apples contained this much they would be toxic to the human liver."

It'll be interesting to see if I get a reply from them. Sadly, I often end up sending messages like this to correct information. Sometimes I get a polite `than you' but too often I get completely ignored!

Thanks for explaining that. So a sort of a spoof! I remember reading a very long time ago that apples effectively had virtually no nutritional benefit. Not sure if that's true, but it's coloured my attitude ever since.

They didn't know about the importance of natural antioxidants and dietary fibre in those earlier times. Another benefit is that while you're eating an apple you can't be eating less beneficial stuff!

I once read some interesting stuff about the beneficial effects of eating apple pips and the hard part of the core.

I don't know of any beneficial effects of the pips and core. There are some misguided claims about the pips containing an anti-cancer chemical but this is a confusion of the amygdalin present in pips with the synthetic chemical laetrile. The latter, which has been tried as an anti-cancer agent, is a modified form of amygdalin.

Aw shucks Tiz. Now you have spoiled it! They used to tell me that eating the pips caused appendicitis.....

The apple is there just to tempt you to eat the pips. That way the apple may reproduce. Many years ago there was a man who came into our local watering hole, during the summer months he would regularly bring in tomatoes, and swap them for a half. Later on we discovered that he worked at the local sewerage works. the tomatoes grew wild on the sewerage farm each and every one had grown from a seed that had passed through the human gastric tract.

Burying filled toddler nappies after said toddler has eaten tomatoes have the same effect for growing plants. Another friend used to feed his dog tomatoes , ready for planting out within 24 hours.

I'm watching the spread of the advertising campaign for the fast food industry, 'Don't cook! Just eat!' I can't think of anything more dangerous in the long run.

Sugar is the new tobacco. LINK.
A welcome initiative when you look at the levels of sugar and saturated fat in processed food. It's been blindingly obvious for years that the food industry will always take the line of least resistance and lowest cost in their search for profits. We see the results in the growth of what are often described as 'The Western Diseases'. The common factor is that as the role and influence of the food giants increases, so does the level of injurious effects on health. Some serious action is long overdue.
Question is, what is the most effective action? I have long said that it's a waste of time attacking the processors with their vast advertising budgets. The place to start is education of children in school so that eventually they will know more about nutrition and strangle the beast at it's source by tightening the purse strings.

Sugar and fat are the two components that confer palatability upon food in the sense of making the food more attractive and easier to eat, so whichever company puts in the most of these makes the most sales and profit. Humans evolved to select fatty and sweet substances to eat because fat provides more calories (energy) and sweetness signals ripeness in fruit and vegetables. That combination of palatability and evolution means we find it difficult to resist sugary and fatty foods, yet we need much less energy in our modern life (and that includes children too, nowadays). But I think the campaign against too much fat and sugar in foods misses the more important point - we now eat far too much food. Having just started the New Year and with people making resolutions we're bombarded by stories and advertising about the `latest diets'. We don't need diets, we should simply eat less. Smaller meals, fewer snacks, fewer sweet drinks. Eat less but eat better.

I agree with Stanley that education, particularly of children, is the best way to counter the problem. As for the industry, selling food energy is like selling `power' energy or raw materials - our capitalist system isn't suited to limiting intake or usage, it's based on competition for who can make us consume the most. We now need a system that makes us consume the appropriate amount.

I freely admit that I hate the food industry and its constant fight to get customers to buy more and more of their products. It struck me yesterday when listening to the reports of how much supermarket chains had sold over the Xmas period that in a perfect world, people would buy exactly the same as they bought on a normal weekend because nobody can eat more and be healthy. I also wonder about cookery programmes that involve loads of expensive ingredients, some of Nigella's concoctions would soak up a family budget for a week! We need more programmes showing people how to make the base of a good stew out of some bones and an onion. I'd recommend everyone that they should read Dorothy Hartley's 'Food In England' for a tour de force of the foods and cooking techniques that served us well for thousands of years. The real tragedy is that these are the cheapest foods and the healthiest way to prepare them, just what everyone needs. Unfortunately, the opposition is the enormous advertising power that is dedicated to 'Just Eat! Don't Cook' and instant gratification without effort. People are told they have 'busy lives' and the nice people at the Cathedral of Choice are helping them to eat well and healthier with minimum effort. The end result is that diets are dominated not by what is in season, good for the planet and dirt cheap but by what is most tempting and cheapest to produce. Words like 'fresh', 'healthy' and 'Home made' are used for mush that is anything but these things. Yes, I'm angry and yes, I am I suppose a 'food freak' but in my defence I've taken the trouble to establish the scientific facts and the the best way to apply them to my diet. That's why I favour education.....

See this LINK for the latest gloomy predictions about the increase in obesity in the population. I always remember hearing someone referring to "Digging your grave with a knife and fork". It looks as though for the majority of people, this is exactly what is happening.

Preventing people from smoking cigarettes is a relatively easy target compared with preventing them from eating too much and getting obese, yet we've still not made much progress on cigarettes. The government can put controls on ciggies but how do you control food? It's a much more complex issue. It's all very well for people to say the food industry is putting too much fat and sugar in our food but how could it be regulated? What's an acceptable level of fat/sugar in one food is far too much in another food. I think the only chance of success will be through education.