OneGuyFromBarlick

I don't want to get in trouble but I have to admit it so I'll say it quietly...I eat a lot sugar. My blood sugar levels swing between normal and low so I usually have jelly babies and sweet biscuits to hand for when I suddenly feel faint. On the other hand, I don't add sugar to drinks and don't like sweet tea. The government's health advisers would give me up as a bad job!

We always take caramelised biscuits when we go on a walk, very good when your legs need a bit of a boost, not fun crashing when you still have a few miles to go. We consumed loads of sacrificial Jelly Babies on the coast to coast bike ride, we needed rocking on 4000 extra calories a day on that.

I see Michael Mosley has produced a new diet book aimed at reducing blood sugar and reversing diabetes. The bood sugar diet

Wendy, I've just been talking to Margaret and she has been looking at diet and she was telling me that they don't use potatoes or bread now but substitute sweet potatoes instead for their 'carbohydrate fix', especially roasted or fried and than allowed to go cold and reheated. I have an idea I have come across this before as a useful technique because it modifies the nutritional value of the sweet potato. I told M I would consult you. Any views on sweet potatoes?

I'm no expert Stanley, but it looks as if the jury is out on sweet potato. It is almost as high in carbohydrates as potato but there is more fibre and extra vitamins and minerals so probably better for you. Swede & celeriac are good replacements for potato but cauliflower is even better with hardly any carbs at all.
I find I don't miss pasta, rice or potatoes and I appreciate the rest of the meal more.

Stanley wrote:..but substitute sweet potatoes instead for their 'carbohydrate fix', especially roasted or fried and than allowed to go cold and reheated..

This relates to what I said in this topic on Monday: "If you take a cooked starchy food, cool it, then cook it again a portion of the starch is changed to resistant starch and acts like dietary fibre, so it doesn't contribute to calorie intake." It applies to all starchy foods and occurs because the starch molecules recrystallise during cooling. You'll find this Wikipedia page on resistant starch interesting. Resistant starch

Here's an interesting fact about the sweet potato but don't let it put you off eating them. Research in 2015 showed the sweet potato to be the first food plant known to be naturally transgenic. It's genome contains sequences of DNA from bacteria, known as Agrobacterium. You probably won't hear that information from the anti-GM protesters.

I shall give it a go, I like sweet potato anyway.....

A good, clear, informative article on gluten and coeliac disease from the BBC: LINK

A good clear article Tiz with useful sub sections. I admit to having got lazy lately with my bread, using commercial oven bottoms because they are small and I eat less. (Don't ask me why I don't simply eat less of the home made.....) Reading that has convinced me that it's time I went back to home made even though I am following in Cameron's footsteps!
Tomorrow I shall have fresh pullet eggs from Wendy, I can see an egg fest coming on!

Have a look at THIS Guardian report on the massive amounts of sugar in some drinks sold on the High Street. I simply don't understand why this is not illegal!

It sounds like some of them have a lot more sugar than even Coca Cola, which has 9 teaspoons in a 330ml can.

Quite! How can people be so ignorant about what they are ingesting?

One reason they're ignorant of how much sugar they ingest is that the extreme sweet taste can be hidden by making the food or drink acidic. Manufacturers can juggle the balance between sweetness and acidity so that a product tastes the same but has several times as much sugar and acid.

This has some useful data and graphics on how the UK diet has changed...
`10 ways the UK's eating habits have changed' 18th Feb 2016, BBC Diet

Not many surprises there. One thing worth mentioning about the switch by the public from whole milk to skimmed and semi-skimmed is the rise of the yoghurt. Skim milk was almost given away for animal feeding in the 1960s but I think Nestle were the first company in 1963 to realise that what was a waste product could be a profit-maker and Ski Yoghurt was born closely followed by fromage frais, 'Cottage Cheese' etc, all ways of using skim milk and heavily promoted. At the same time efforts were made to shift buying patterns away from full fat milk because they needed more skim to make the new products. They were so successful that they had too much skim and so ironically went back into the animal food market with spray dried skim milk powder.

There's another major factor in milk economics: fat. If you can persuade folk to switch from full fat to skimmed milk you can sell the skimmed milk at the same price as full fat and sell the milk fat as an ingredient or export it to other countries where it's more highly valued. Who wants to sell full fat milk to UK supermarkets when you can split it up into individual components that are more valuable?

The sugar tax bandwagon is rolling again...
Sugary drinks tax 'would stop millions becoming obese' Sugar tax
I don't believe it will work. My nutrition professor friend in Minnesota always tells me to look at the price of cigarettes and how many people still smoke. Sugar, like nicotine, is addictive. People will soon get used to paying 20p more and regard that as the `normal' price.

I agree Tiz. I heard the discussion on R4 yesterday and reflected that taxing sugar was a blind alley, the only cure is to educate children from a very early age. I laughed when the man from the in industry said that the amount of sugar is on the labelling. How many kids look at the label when they are given or buy a soft drink?

Perhaps this should have gone under the Cunning Wheezes thread!

"Britain's farmers have said Tesco's fresh produce labelled with "fictional farm" brands may be misleading. Despite the British sounding names, the "farms" do not exist and the produce is often sourced from abroad. The National Farmers' Union (NFU) says the labels may give customers a false idea of where the produce is sourced."....BBC

There's a bust up going on between Public Health England (PHE, the Government's official advisory body on diet) and nutritionists. PHE says we must drastically reduce milk and cheese intake if we're to cut obesity levels. I'm with the nutritionists on this, the PHE is wrong.

BBC report: "People should halve the amount of dairy foods they eat, the Government's dietary adviser has said in a radical move to cut obesity. Public Health England (PHE) says men should have only 200 calories of dairy per day while women should have just 160cal, meaning that just one large latte coffee could put a woman over her recommended daily limit. The move was heavily criticised by nutritionists, MPs and the dairy industry, who accused PHE of putting public health at risk with its “baffling” advice. They say the new guidance does not provide for enough calcium or iodine in people’s diet, essential for healthy bones and brain development." LINK

Couldn't agree more Tiz and in addition, the dairy industry has enough problems at the moment without the armchair nutritionists in Westminster sticking their oar in. I get through a pint of milk a day and am not obese, how does that compute? A far bigger problem is food processing and the fast food industry, their fire should be concentrate on them and not the best complete foods we have!

Here's a good example.... Have a look at THIS description of the 'Oreo' biscuit and tell me how it contributes to healthy eating. It has always seemed to me to be a triumph of brand marketing over common sense! They are sold here as well now......

There is yet more emphasis on starchy carbohydrates...up to 37% from 33%. "Base every meal on starchy carbohydrates". It's just as bad as eating sugar if you aren't burning it off, and all the excess is stored as stomach fat. Grrrrr....

I think you are right Wendy. Following your experience I have cut back on carbohydrates and I'm sure I am controlling my weight better now. That seems to be the key to my Type 2 history and I watch it like a hawk! If I have a fault at the moment it's that I am not eating as much veggies.....
I refuse to cut back on dairy but I have to say that white Stilton with ginger and mango ought to be banned. It is as addictive as nicotine!

Good news for Stanley!
`Tests find trees tolerant to olive tree killer pathogen' LINK

Good news indeed! I love Olive oil and the good stuff tastes nice if you simply dip a piece of dry bread in it.....

We've mentioned coconut oil on OG before. It's being promoted around the world as having special, almost magical, nutritional or medical properties but it's all hokum pokum. Now a review has been published explaining how many of the claims of nutritional benefits for the oil are based on shaky foundations. A lot of it relates to people in developing countries who take in the oil through eating coconut flesh or squeezed coconut rather than the pure oil as sold to us; they are taking in fibre as well as oil and possibly other nut constituents. Also, due to large differences in dietary and lifestyle patterns, these findings cannot be applied to people on a typical Western diet. Furthermore, many claims are based on the assumption that coconut oil fatty acids are the same as those in `medium-chain trigylcerides' (MCT) which are known to be beneficial when the truth is that they are different. So, the moral is don't be taken in by health claims for coconut oil!

`Coconut oil consumption and cardiovascular risk factors in humans'
Laurence Eyres, Michael F. Eyres, Alexandra Chisholm, Rachel C. Brown
`Nutrition Reviews', DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nutrit/nuw002 267-280 First published online: 5 March 2016 LINK

[I have to admit a connection here. The first author is a good Manchester-born lad, now in New Zealand, and a long-time friend of mine. He has a wealth of experience in the science and technology of oils and fats...and he doesn't like snake oil salesmen!]

Thanks for that Tiz. I read the summary and conclusion.... the rest was a bit too complicated for me! I'll trust research like that and thank God it still going on. One thing that did strike me in the body of the paper was that when Hydrogenated the oil is totally different than the natural product. You'd hardly know it was related from the analysis.