OneGuyFromBarlick

See this LINK for the latest 'news' about coffee reducing the risk of diabetes. I suppose it could be good research and there may be something in it but is it any wonder that so many people are confused about nutrition when we have what are sometimes conflicting and always confusing messages. I believe we need less stories like this and more on sensible basics, like avoiding highly processed food and drink and cooking more natural ingredients.

Agreed. It's worth repeating here the last part of the story:
However, Dr Richard Elliott a spokesperson for the charity Diabetes UK said that while the findings, published in the journal Diabetologia today, suggested a connection between coffee and diabetes, it was still not certain that increasing coffee intake could really reduce a person’s risk. “Even if people who drank more coffee did tend to have a lower risk of type 2, it does not necessarily follow that coffee consumption was directly responsible,” he said. “Other factors that this study has not identified could also be involved and it is even possible that being at high risk of type 2 diabetes encourages people to reduce their coffee intake. What we do know is that the best way to reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes is to maintain a healthy weight by eating a healthy, balanced diet and by being regularly physically active.”

FOOD MYTHS Here's a link that Tripps put up in medical matters. Very sensible and I have little doubt, accurate.

I agree with much of it but I'd still recommend eating plenty of dietary fibre, vegetables and fruit. I'm not saying that because of results of fancy studies on thousands of people but simply by considering what we know about the composition of those foods and what the body needs. Sometimes you can just look at a bit of simple chemistry and physics and see why some things are good for us and some bad.

For several years now we have learnt that Statins are a key drug in reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke. By reducing the levels of cholesterol those people in the higher risk groups are seen to benefit from taking the drug. Gradually, various epidemiological studies have shown that as people age then a reduced cholesterol level would benefit even apparently healthy people. Some American reports have gone even farther to say that everybody whatever their age or fitness level would gain from reduced cholesterol. More recent studies suggest that statins could combat cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. The apparent benefits are endless.
Against all this euphoria is the fact that what we are saying is that thousands of years of human evolution has got it all wrong. Work on the genetic code has shown that the basic structure is as good as you’re going to get. Deviations through mutations or variations always leads to a degrading of the basic design sometimes with fatal consequences. So are statins the panacea to all our health problems? I think not.

I agree, as far as I am concerned statins aren't for me. My main objection is that as I understand it, once you start taking them you must carry on and this suggests they alter your metabolism. That can't be good because you're meddling with one of the basic building blocks of life. I don't believe in magic bullets. Include me out!

The reality is that it's not the level of cholesterol in the body that's important but the amounts being carried around in the blood and into cells in various forms associated with proteins. For example, we have `high-density lipoprotein cholesterol' (HDL-C), `low-density lipoprotein cholesterol' (LDL-C) and `very-low-density lipoprotein cholesterol' (VLDL-C) for starters. HDL-C and LDL-C are known widely as `good' and `bad' cholesterol respectively with regard to heart disease risk (commonly abbreviated to HDL and LDL). HDL is the carrier that removes cholesterol from the blood to the liver for breakdown into bile acids and secretion into the gut. LDL is the carrier that distributes cholesterol via the blood to the organs and their cells. Our bodies obtain cholesterol from the diet and by synthesis in the liver. Statins block the first step in cholesterol synthesis in the liver; products such as Benecol margarine block the absorption of cholesterol from the gut. And in any discussion of cholesterol we have to remember that it is an essential component of the membrane of every cell in our body, as well as being the precursor of the steroid hormones which control many of our body's processes. So the truth is that the role of cholesterol in our body is a very complicated business and the use of statins is like adjusting your wristwatch with a hammer.

"adjusting your wrist watch using a hammer" Lovely analogy Tiz!
On a non-scientific, common sense level... I have said for years that it's funny that if cholesterol is so bad for you God put it in Mother's Milk and Eggs.

Diabetes Clinic yesterday. Blood analysis is fine except for glucose being up slightly. I have an idea this might be down to my love of Bonne Maman Apricot conserve... I shall have to ditch it and the dark marmalade as well. Ah well..... (I didn't tell the nurse.... but convinced her it was a rogue result!)

I was listening to someone on the radio yesterday talking about ingredient lists on food packets. His advice was to buy food with very short ingredient lists; you can't go wrong with things like carrot, meat, broccoli etc. That way you know exactly what you're eating - no numbers. A very interesting concept in these days of pre-packaged food

Good advice Liz. Natural food doesn't need an ingredient list!

Started on my new regime yesterday. Less sugar, more veg and less meat. Can't think why I have neglected the old fashioned salad butty with all the trimmings, I really enjoyed my tea last night! (Oh, and the stewed cabbage, onions and peas as well, had half a bowlful to finish off!)

A big fuss about the supermarkets selling halal slaughtered foods without labelling them as such. None of them and none of the retail consortiums etc would come on the Today programme this morning to discuss the issue. Several things worry me here. First, do the supermarkets think they don't need to tell customers or were they unaware the foods were halal? Second, problems like this always raise another, associated, aspect, i.e. if the supermarkets can't tell what's happening to their food products can we assume the foods are safe to eat? Third, it's becoming increasingly common for companies, institutions etc to refuse to put up a representative to answer questions from the likes of John Humphrys. We're seeing more secrecy, and that's bad.

There was a long article in The Observer this weekend gone on the increasing move by national and international organised crime gangs into the 'food fraud', if we can call it that. Olive oil in particular was a concern, but across a range of products, their techniques are sophisticated and they 'employ' skilled people, often scientists, who know what they are doing.

Personally, I have no problem at all with Halal meat and have and do buy plenty of it, but at least I know it's Halal.

Richard Broughton

Some foods & drinks have always been a major target for fraudsters - branded alcohol spirits, extra-virgin olive oil for example. Writing on food science, I used to go to conferences on food safety from about 1990 onwards and the lectures on fraud and contamination were always an eye opener. The olive oil fraudsters in Italy always had better equipped laboratories than the government labs because they had more funds available. But now it's spreading to a wider range of products and countries.

All too tempting to put some cheap green colouring in 'run of the mill' olive oil and getting double the price for it as 'Extra Virgin'. And when there isn't a reliable way of determining if 'organic' food actually is, and it sells for a much higher price there's bound to be fraud. Not buying 'Extra Virgin' olive oil (or olive oil at all) or anything organic gets around it.

Il Casolare is as safe as any and good oil. In the Co-op again Richard!
As for the 'Halal Scare', I don't care how my meat is slaughtered as long as it's humane, it's cleanliness, traceability and how the animals are treated during life that concern me. People who worry about stunning, gassing, electrocution etc. need to recognise that any method involves killing so either get over that or stop eating meat! If fish could scream they'd be illegal.... Boiling lobsters and other shellfish alive?

What makes food fraud so easy now is the long, complicated and ever-changing supply chains shifting stuff around the world. The fraudsters just have to find a weak spot where they can `inject' their own product.

Yes - that same article noted that when the Irish authorities looked into the 'horsemeat' scandal in detail, some ready meals' ingredients had crossed in total something like 60 National boundaries and so regulatory authorities.

I might add here I have no problem at all in eating horse and have scoffed my share. But I don't like eating it when it's labelled as beef. About a year ago I was in Boulogne and the longest queue at the Saturday market was for the horsemeat butcher.

Richard Broughton

Bert Slack was a horsemeat butcher in Stockport during the war. I can remember how good the steaks were but my dad couldn't eat them, he had been reared with horses and saw them differently.

I seem to remember that some of the local butchers would only sell meat that had been reared on local farms. I often wonder if that statement can still be true today. The current system of tagging and recording means that carcases can be traced back to the supplier but can individual butchers request a particular farm supplier?

There's no reason why they can't sell meat from a local supplier and gain a benefit by labelling as such, I've seen butchers doing that here in the south-west. Of course, they probably also sell meat from other sources but then it's up to the customer to choose what they prefer to buy.

Talking of ready meals, we all know (I hope) that they contain a lot of added salt but I didn't realise quite how much until a few days ago when I looked at the nutrition label on two types of Tesco pizza. Eating either pizza would give you the same amount of salt as eating 12 bags of potato crisps. Twelve bags!! It's downright irresponsible of Tesco (and presumably the other supermarkets too) to sell a `ready meal' product with so much unnecessary salt in it.

It was seeing the Morrison's abattoir site in Colne where they are processing up to 30,000 pigs a week that made me think that if other abattoirs are working at similar output rates is it possible for a butcher to ask for a specific pig from a specific farm.
BBC Abattoir Link

P, my butcher, and I have no doubt others as well don't have 'a supplier' as such, they buy either at auction, from the individual farmer at home or have their own land and stock. The stock are sent to the registered slaughter house and the carcass is their property right through the process. The only difficulty Stewart has occasionally is if he wants to keep some of the offal. The slaughter houses have standard methods and don't like to deviate from that. You can get offal from the slaughter house but not from a specific beast. Stewart has farmers who know he'll give a good price for rare breeds or older sheep and they contact him when they have stock ready. I bought some pork from him that had run wild in a wood for years, the man only had two and Stewart bought both animals.
On another matter, you may remember I finished the bulk order of Lea and Perrins that David put me on to years ago. Since then I have not had any in the house and this coincided with my shift away from so much meat. I have noticed a definite change in how I feel and am beginning to suspect that part of it is due to not using so much Worcester Sauce, it's powerful stuff! So, I may get a small bottle for treats but not use the quantity I did before....

Today I noticed that wraps I had been using for lunches said "does not contain preservative 282". I looked it up and 282 is made from whey. Other breads say they contain milk powder and I avoid them but I didn't realise it was hidden in numbers as well. I will go back to making my own again; I've been a bit lazy about that recently.