WE ARE WHAT WE EAT

[Wendyf]

Have a look at THIS website for a concise view of the need for a low carb diet, it's worth reading their Mission Statement and the section on Politics.
The NHS and Diabetes UK still recommend a diet for diabetics that includes carbohydrates at every meal....only of benefit for the drugs industry!

[Tripps]

That's a really interesting site thanks for the link. It has some features of the 'conspiracy' type websites, but seems quite credible to me. I think I'll give it a go. I see now where your chocolate cake recipe came from. How was it?

This reminds me of the main 'dieting' method from years ago - just cut out bread potatoes, and rice, though they weren't called 'carbs' then. I've been trying to lose weight for a while now, and with some success, but it's very disheartening to see the progress of over three months efforts reversed by a week at Christmas.

I noted this quote from Stanley
"news of an increased risk of Type 2 Diabetes in pregnant women if they eat potatoes. I immediately thought of Wendy. It looks as though, as usual, she is in front of the curve"

Have you got some news for us?

[Wendyf]

[Tizer]

I once read that a baked potato would break down to usable energy faster than any other food, being second to glucose itself. Perhaps this is why they are saying avoid potatoes because they flood the body with excess sugar levels. Any thoughts Tizer?

Only that I can't see why one should single out baked potatoes as responsible for causing high blood sugar levels. They contain a lot of available, easily digestible starch but so do bread and cooked white rice and pasta for example. I'd expect the degree of cooking to have more effect than the type of starchy food. Ordinary folk used to eat bread and potatoes in large quantity but didn't seem to suffer from diabetes. But then they `burned off' the glucose with their high energy expenditure. Now we eat far too much for our meagre energy output. I don't think starchy foods would be much of a problem if we ate less food.

[Stanley]

I think that's the key to so many of these health scares and advisories Tiz, people just don't do the exercise to burn the 'dangerous' foods off. I haven't cut out all carbs, just limited them but I always have in mind the need to match exercise with food intake of all groups. When I think of how many calories I took in when I was working hard it amazes me. That level would be early death now......

[Tizer]

The Royal Society for Public Health has just published a policy paper urging that labels should be added to food and drink to show how much activity would be needed to burn off the calories consumed in food items. It says "the most common cause of obesity is consuming more calories than are burned off - and those taking lots of exercise are more likely to lose weight" and gives examples such as a mocha coffee containing 290 calories takes 53 minutes to walk off and a blueberry muffin takes 48 minutes. It has provided the following image to give further examples. The figure next to the food item is the calorie content and the figures in the boxes are the times needed to walk or run off those calories. It may surprise some people to find that it needs so much activity to burn up the calories from things like a bag of crisps. BBC report and RSPH press release

[PanBiker]

It's a good idea for those who have no idea of what they are putting into their mouths and the knock on effect. Whether they would take any notice is another matter. Interesting to see that the walking is rated at 3-5 mph, that's a brisk rate certainly if you are doing 5mph, that's nearly akin to jogging. Top and bottom of it is that to be effective your exercise needs to raise your cardio vascular rate to be most effective. Sedentary walking is better than nothing though. The sports tracking app we use on our phones tracks calorie burn according to the type of exercise you are doing.

A few from our diaries, walking 5 miles taking in a 600ft climb over 2 hours will burn 650 calories. 3 miles around the lanes in 1 hour 325 calories. 18 miles on the bike with a few hills in the way (can't avoid them here), 2 hours and 1100 calories. Sally swims twice a week and will earn in the region of 600 - 700 calories for an hour in the pool doing about 40 lengths.

[Stanley]

I don't know how they'd label this. Shin Beef and Liver at the heart but 70% cabbage, carrots and broccoli. Very low fat.... I'm having a bowl with my small pressed beef butty for dinner.....

[PanBiker]

Post the ingredients and quantities and I'll tell you Stanley.

[Stanley]

No need Ian, it's all good stuff and the shin beef was virtually fat-free.

[Tizer]

I've been trying some soft drinks and juices and was surprised to find that some of those that are described as `light' still contain a lot of sugar. But I was appalled to see that some of those that are `full sugar' also contain artificial sweeteners such as sucralose and aspartame! What's the point of putting sweeteners in a sugary drink that's already cloyingly sweet? No wonder people are addicted to sweetness, we can't get away from it. This mirrors my concerns that all sorts of foods now contain spices. Have a look at food product labels and you'll be surprised how often you see paprika where you don't expect it. Again, we've got people addicted to spices. They don't experience the flavour of the basic food materials and that's one of the reasons the supermarkets can sell so much poor quality stuff - meat, fish etc gets dowsed in spices.

[Stanley]

Couldn't agree more Tiz. It must be especially galling for people who have to avoid spices and sugar! Of course you are right, the food processors have to find a way of making their products more 'attractive'. In this case it is pandering to taste buds that are already educated to expect strong flavours, salt and sugar. This of course is exacerbated further by pursuing shelf life. This can crop up in surprising places. We have all got used now to tomatoes that are genetically modified to give them longer life. On a basic level, if proper dry cured bacon was offered in a supermarket nobody would buy it, too fatty and salty. Instead we get pickled pork that froths up like detergent when you fry it. Salt is necessary in some products!
I still hold the opinion that the changes in diet brought about by the food processors in the search for profit are one of the biggest silent killers of our generation. It's no accident that the rise of the 'Western Diseases' coincides exactly with the rise of the food processors and the supermarkets. Like many other instances in modern life we are told they are essential and beneficial, where would we be without them? Probably in a healthier and more diverse world with more natural food......

[Tizer]

There's a lot made in the papers this morning of big food companies announcing they will reduce the sugar content of their products to avoid sugar tax. That sounds good at first sight...but consider what will happen. The more they reduce sugar the more they will add artificial sweeteners like sucralose, saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame etc to retain the same level of sweetness. Most people like sweetness and buy the sweetest when given a choice of several versions of a particular food type. Therefore the manufacturers don't want to be the one with the lower level of sweetness. Multiple sweeteners are often used but they usually haven't been tested for safety in combination, only in isolation. Who knows what will be the long-term effects increased amounts of the cocktail of sweeteners in our diet? (As I mentioned above, food companies are already adding artificial sweeteners to sugary drinks as well as low-sugar versions.)

[Wendyf]

Did you see the item in "Trust me I'm a doctor" the other week about artificial sweeteners raising blood sugar levels in certain people? Here

[PanBiker]

I uses to use sweeteners in drinks. When my BP was judged to be a tad high I found that switching back to sugar helped to lower it. Myfitnesspal the fitness tracker that we use monitors sugar intake as well as calories, carbs, fat, protein and sodium. Here is a screen snip of today's diary after I have entered my typical winter breakfast. Daily allowance for target weight loss and daily running totals are shown at the bottom.

[Tizer]

Wendy, thanks for the linked page which confirms my observations about the prevalence of sweeteners and also shows their adverse effects. As far as possible I don't eat or drink food products which have been manufactured to be low in sugar by using sweeteners. I'd rather just eat/drink less of the `normal' products. What I hadn't realised was that the sweeteners are used so much now in the `normal' products. It wasn't like that when I worked in the food industry! In the early 1990s I knew the lady who was editor of the leading US food industry magazine and had lots of contact with food manufacturers and retailers. I often complained that too many ingredients were used in food products, often unnecessarily. She always argued that ingredients (like sweeteners) are very expensive and they would never use them unless they were necessary. My response was that they are often only considered `necessary' because their competitors are using them. It had little to do with the consumer's health and well-being or the perceived quality of the product.

Ian, what are the units for the other columns to the right of `calories'? Are they grams?

[PanBiker]

They are whatever units the nutrient is normally measured in as far as I am aware. What each represents is probably somewhere in the FAQ section but I have never bothered looking. Our diaries are set to mainly track calories and these are the default settings for that mode. You can set it up to focus on any combination of nutrients. It has defaults for common uses such as gym work where primary focus may be more on protein and carbs. Here is part of the settings page where you can tweak the columns, you will see that calories is a required setting in this mode, I have pulled down the options for the next column.



When you set it up in the first place you enter your current height, weight, neck, chest, waist and lifestyle. From this the program works out your basic physiology. For weight loss you then set a target and the program works out a daily allowance with a safe calorie deficit. If you stay within the daily limits you will lose weight. It's not an instant fix more of a monitoring system to help you stay on track. It's very useful as it shows you the values of what you are eating so you can see which are the good foods and which ones will pile on the calories.

[Wendyf]

I don't understand the carbohydrate content in your tablespoonful of sugar, surely that would be 14 or 15 gms not just 4?

[PanBiker]

Yes it would Wendy, you can enter foods manually, scan from barcodes to get at correct figures or use the huge database of foods that it already has logged. Our settings are focused on calories I would think this entry is probably a typo, I'll check, My diary is not primarily focused on Carbs but if it was you would ensure that the staple items were correct for whatever is your prime focus.

Later edit:

The entry I have chosen is actually wrong, its not the nutrients but the quantity that is at fault. It should read teaspoon rather than tablespoon, 3 x tsp = 1 x tblsp, it should read 48 calories and 12.6 carb. Checking, most of the database entries are equated by teaspoon I must have found the only one that read tablespoon and it turns out it is wrong, Doh! I will swap it out for the right one in my diary.

[Tizer]

Like Wendy, I thought the 4 seemed wrong for grams which is why I queried it. Don't worry Ian, I don't think the error will put you in hospital!

[Wendyf]

Must admit I was bit concerned about Ian having a tablespoon of sugar on his breakfast cereal.

[PanBiker]

No it wont Tiz, my breakfast will just cost me more calories! To add to the picture here is my diary as it is now, I have altered the sugar entry for a more accurate entry which I will use from now on. You can see I had a mini English breakfast for lunch. I fancied going for a decent walk so had something a bit more substantial than soup and toasted Chia that I often have at lunch. The bacon was from the butcher with most of the fat removed, egg fried in the "one cal" spray stuff (olive oil based) and the tomato was 100g chopped tinned stuff that I had left over from making my meatball recipe last night. Two slices of Chia Bread with butter and a brew to finish it off.



You will see that my calorie allowance has gone up as it now includes the calories earned from my walk. Here is the Endomondo GPS tracked route with it's statistics for my effort.



Myfitnesspal can automatically take inputs from a number of different sports tracking applications so no matter what exercise I choose to do it will be reflected in the calorie counter. There is a bit at the bottom that you can't see and that is water intake, simply measured in the number of glasses you drink. I had 400ml on my walk along with the sugar hit biscuits you see in snacks and another glass full when I got home so currently running at 3 glasses.

I can more or less eat what I want for my tea now after my walk. It will probably be chicken based with rice and veg, no problem if I want a glass of wine with that as well.

I should mention that both these applications are free, you can subscribe to either which opens up more enhanced features but I find that the free versions do everything I want them to do.

Just seen Wendy's comments when I was about to post. I sometimes have dried fruit instead of raw sugar but the hit is almost the same. As mentioned earlier sugar substitutes have a knock on to my BP. It does not seem to have any detrimental effect on me, my bloods, cholesterol and BP are all normal now on this kind of regime. I do have a sweet tooth and am a bit of an ogre without it.

[Wendyf]

Oh dear Ian, what an admission. Time to cut down on the sugar.....

[PanBiker]

I have just measured it and it is actually 2/3 of a real tablespoon. I just use the spoon I eat my porridge with. As stated above a handful of dried fruit has just as much sugar and I can't eat it without. You would not want to know me if I cut it out completely, I have tried it in the past and I can honestly say that my demeanor was probably worse than when quitting the cigs. If you cut out everything which is apparently bad for you it would be a very miserable world. I'll hang on to my spoon of sugar and hopefully remain pleasant to know. Best not have a slice of Sally's Christmas Cake.

[plaques]

Sounds like a fearful complicated why to lose weight. All this high tech: counting and recording. You don't really need a 'Myfitnesspal' just a pal who is honest enough to prod you in the gut and say "What's this". Then do like what Stanley does and eat less of everything. "You know it makes sense" as they say. But each to their own. Diving for cover.