tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84248243949302423542024-03-13T04:05:19.422+00:00Food IssuesThere are five things that we require from food. It should be cheap, taste good and be healthy. Its production should not harm the environment or cause suffering to animals. This blog is about all of these.Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-37602000577862999802022-10-30T14:55:00.005+00:002022-11-14T15:10:02.563+00:00hedonic escalation<div>I listened to an episode of the radio show 'One Dish' about cheese. I heard something in there that seemed at first to contradict what I believed about processed food. It is the idea of 'hedonic escalation'. The idea is that the more flavours that a food contains then the more it will be enjoyed.</div><div><br /></div><div>By 'more flavours' I mean things like sweet, sour and salty. It doesn't seem to mean the flavours of herbs and spices, which are as much to do with our olfactory sense than the four of five tastes from the tongue.</div><div><br /></div><div>For a long time I have believed that processed food lacks flavour, and to make up for it they add sucrose, glucose syrup, citric acid and salt. Sucrose and glucose have the same function, but they like to add glucose even though it is more expensive because then both come further down the list of ingredients. That makes it look better for them. It doesn't look good to have 'sucrose' at the top of your list of ingredients.</div><div><br /></div><div>People are so used to everything tasting sweet, sour and salty that they don't know or want anything else. Their food doesn't taste of vegetables, herbs and spices because these subtler flavours cannot be retained well for months in a can or a plastic tray. Most people now in Britain and America would think there was something missing if their food wasn't both sweet and sour.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have always felt that sugar spoils the flavour of any savoury food. I dislike an aftertaste of sucrose and citric acid. So I didn't like this idea of hedonic escalation. The show seemed to be saying that sweet and sour are something people naturally crave.</div><div><br /></div><div>However, on doing some research I realise that it doesn't mean this. Research shows that it is salt, sugar and fat which enhance each other's flavours. Another one of my long-standing beliefs is that there is a problem with combinations of sugar and fat. It seems to me that when they are combined you can't really taste all of the sugar and fat. So you will eat more before it becomes unpleasant.</div><div><br /></div><div>Some people say they have a sweet tooth. Yet few people will eat sugar from a sugar bowl. Neither will people eat scoops of butter. That would be disgusting. Put them together in a cake though and people will happily eat lots of sugar and butter. Cake just doesn't seem that sweet or that fatty. This is one reason why we have so much obesity.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's not just cake, it is chocolate, donuts, ice cream and many other common foods that are like this. Combinations of sugar and fat. We are told by evolutionary psychologists that we keep eating because on the savanna where we supposedly evolved we were uncertain when we could eat next. I don't believe that though: sugar and fat were never encountered together by hunter-gatherers. Protein and fat yes, in a hunted animal.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think that is part of the reason why the Atkins diet works. Fat that hasn't been sweetened is less palatable. Sugar that hasn't been mixed with fat likewise. Perhaps you could have a diet where you have no carbohydrate one day and no fat the next. You will never encounter cake, chocolate etc.</div><div><br /></div><div>So I am quite happy to accept that salt, sugar and fat together are the problem. And I am happy to continue to believe that people should not accept their sweet and sour savoury processed foods. I think the traffic light system is a disaster. You can't complain about mayonaisse, taramasalata and hummus containing sugar because you will be told that it's a low-sugar product. But mayonaisse, taramasalata and hummus should be no-sugar products. Just as a cottage pie for an old person should be. If you eat low-sugar products throughout the day you end up eating a lot of sugar.</div><div><br /></div><div>Marks and Spencer had a brand of hummus that contained sugar. That's not usual, but I can't seem to buy mayonnaise or taramasalata anywhere that doesn't have sugar in it.</div><div><br /></div><div>This has an effect on blood sugar levels. They go up high then come down low. Obesity and type 2 diabetes are the result. The health service will become even more overstretched.</div><div><br /></div><div>Why should a cottage pie for an old person contain sucrose and glucose? These are not ingredients in a traditional cottage pie. I don't want a pizza with a sucrose and citric acid aftertaste. I want a pizza where I can taste the herbs, the vegetables and the dough. I don't want a curry that tastes sweet, I want one where I can taste the turmeric, the ginger and the coriander (chilli is one flavour that is retained but I don't want too much of that either).</div><div><br /></div><div>I know that chefs sometimes add sugar to a pasta sauce to counter the acidity of the tomatoes. That acidity though comes from citric acid added by the manufacturer. If chefs want to be clever then let them source tomatoes that have naturally ripened and have not had these quite large amounts of citric acid added. You would think that a can of tomatoes is a basic natural product: it could be but it's not.</div><div><br /></div><div>The first time I had pasta with a puttanesca sauce I liked it. I thought it tasted of seafood. That's because of the anchovy. Now all pasta sauces taste the same. You can't buy puttanesca that that tastes of seafood. It tastes of sugar and citric acid.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's not as if processed foods are cheap. You can buy a kilo of rice for about 45p. Dhal is just about the cheapest high-protein dish you can make. Especially if you make it with yellow split peas. Suitable for vegetarians and vegans. I've had some delicious dhal but also some unpleasant dhal. Dhal and rice together with vegetables (in the form of subzi) is cheap and nutritious. Millions of people in India eat it every day.</div><div><br /></div><div>You wonder what effect added sugar and acid have on people's teeth. You can't expect a Conservative government to try to restrict companies, they would see that as red tape. Better to dose the water supply with fluoride. However a new study shows that <a href="https://dentistry.co.uk/2022/11/14/dental-inequalities-water-fluoridation-should-be-carefully-considered-with-other-options/">fluoridation has little benefit for children</a>. We have always known that it has no benefit for adults.</div>Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-79893059682931930432022-03-24T14:17:00.004+00:002022-03-24T14:17:48.552+00:00wheat shortage<p>I read an interesting article in a recent New Scientist magazine which said that there is an easy way to make more food available considering that the war in Ukraine will mean shortages of wheat. The article said that governments around the world can easily stop converting grains into alcohol. This is done so that alcohol can be added to vehicle fuel. It means we use less fossil fuels.</p><p>Palm oil is also used in fuel.</p><p>Many countries will experience food shortages especially Egypt, which is heavily dependent on imported wheat. The problem though is that if we convert less grain into alcohol then we become more dependent on fossil fuels - crude oil converted to petrol and diesel. That would mean more global warming.</p><p>We could get around that by having fewer car journeys. That would suit me just fine, fewer cars on the road and more public transport. Even just stopping the increase in the numbers of cars would be good. We seem to have more and more cars on the road and they are getting bigger - more SUV types. That's why we have the problematic smart motorways, we are running out of space on the roads.</p><p>However, there is another easy way to free up grain to feed people. That is to breed fewer farm animals such as chickens, pigs and cattle. There are billions of them and they eat vast quantities of grain and soya. Fish such as anchovies too.</p><p>Farmers are dependent on subsidies. Governments should ask farmers to breed ten or twenty percent fewer animals for the next year or two. They can withhold subsidies or offer financial incentives.</p><p>You might say that this would mean less food available. Not so, animals do not efficiently convert plant calories and protein into animal calories and protein. You might say that people don’t want to eat maize and soya but many people in poor countries like Egypt will want to. I don’t care so much about the affluent countries. Other grains and pulses are available. People should be eating more plants and they don’t need as much protein as they think they do.</p><p>So less global warming, especially because there will be fewer cattle to produce methane. Also less animal cruelty and less slurry.</p><div><br /></div>Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-4124827231516552452020-01-18T16:14:00.000+00:002020-01-18T16:14:20.011+00:00balanced for you<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In papers are full-page ads for the Marks and Spencer range of foods 'Balanced For You'. They are advertised as 'High Protein Healthy Meals'. What is healthy about high protein? High protein is a fad that began with athletes who thought they could get bigger muscles by eating protein at certain times such as after a workout.<br />
<br />
There is no evidence that for ordinary people eating more protein improves health. People already eat more protein than they need. Extra protein is just extra calories and is only going to make people fat. It seems that Marks and Spencer are happy to confuse people about their health to make a profit.<br />
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The three examples all contain animal protein. The main one illustrated is Pulled Pork Ramen, which contains sugar. High Protein Healthy Food, it says on the packaging, the other two examples say High Protein with Balanced Carbs. The word 'balanced' is nutritionally meaningless.<br />
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I get the feeling that there are a lot of people who wish to confuse the public about their health to get their way. They are not honest. I heard someone on the radio say that some people can't afford to eat less meat of better quality. I think she hasn't understood what this means. If you eat half the meat you used to, then you can buy meat at up to twice the price while still saving money.<br />
<br />
It's not difficult to understand. Did she really not understand, or did she just want to confuse people?<br />
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What some people can't afford is to eat more protein than necessary, and to eat animal protein which is the more expensive type of protein. People have been persuaded to munch their way through vast quantities of cheap chicken, pork sausages and cheap cheddar because they think they need the protein and because they think that's all they can afford. They are wasting their money.<br />
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People with vested interests, such as farmers and retailers, have to stop trying to confuse people.<br />
<br />
Here are other examples:-<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>vegetarians and vegans eat lots of avocados, which means more forest cut down</li>
<li>we will have to grow more soya to feed vegetarians and vegans, which means more forest cut down</li>
<li>if we grow trees on pastureland it will decrease biodiversity</li>
</ul>
<br />
Vegetarians and vegans don't eat more avocados than anyone else, when we cut the number of farm animals then people can eat the grains and pulses we currently feed to animals, if you plant native trees eg oaks and not one species of conifer there will be greater biodiversity.</div>
Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-45784775613928237732019-10-23T15:28:00.000+01:002019-10-23T15:28:46.536+01:00glucose in artificial sweeteners<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've just been looking at the list of ingredients on a sachet of artificial sweeter. I found it is a coffee shop. The first two ingredients are dextrose and maltodextrin. If someone is trying to cut down on their sugar intake, is it not worse to have dextrose - also called glucose? It's going to have the same effect, making your blood sugar (blood glucose) levels go high. Then a drop in blood sugar level. What about diabetics? I realise that maybe there's not a great deal of dextrose and maltodextrin, with most of the sweetening coming from the two artificial sweeteners, but even so it can't be a good thing.</div>
Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-79040594227243180842016-06-03T16:20:00.000+01:002016-08-08T15:48:04.680+01:00obesity, calories, starch and saturated fat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The National Obesity Forum have criticized Public Health England and their Eatwell Guide. There are two polarized opinions expressed here. One side says that obesity is about calories in (from food) and calories out (through exercise). The other side say that calories have nothing to do with obesity.<br />
<br />
One side says all starchy foods are good. The other side says all starchy foods are bad.<br />
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One side says all saturated fats are bad. The other side says all saturated fats are good.<br />
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I think both sides should be ashamed of themselves. The public are confused. Both side are treating all starchy foods as if they are the same. They aren't. Pasta has a low glycemic index, and potatoes have a high glycemic index. That means that pasta eaten in moderation is unlikely to contribute towards the development of diabetes. The starch in potatoes is digested quickly into glucose and pushes up blood glucose and insulin levels soon after eating.<br />
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We now know that the fat in cheese, despite being saturated fat, is unlikely to contribute towards heart disease. That's good for me because I like cheese. If I liked burgers though, the news is not so good. We are unsure if beef fat will contribute towards heart disease. All fat can contribute towards obesity though because it is calorie-dense. Now I realize that not all calories are the same. 100 calories-worth of sugar will be treated differently by the body that 100 calories-worth of olive oil. To say though that obesity has nothing to do with calories can't be right.<br />
<br />
Why do both The National Obesity Forum and Public Health England have so little to say about the glycemic index? Perhaps they think ordinary people can't take it in. Maybe it seems counter-intuitive (why would starch from pasta and potatoes be so different?). If you like to think of food as something natural and not worry about the science too much then don't like to talk about indexes.<br />
<br />
It's not rocket science. They should both get their act together.</div>
Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-6491989514175109062015-12-29T14:14:00.000+00:002016-04-29T13:49:45.935+01:00A Meaty Problem<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On Sunday I listened to the repeat of the Radio 4 documentary 'A Meaty Problem'. In it Henry Dimbleby said he was guilty about not being able to give up meat altogether. I think he was being a bit hard on himself though because he said he mostly eats meatless meals and has meat once a week or so.<br />
<br />
Henry was talking to Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University London's Centre for Food Policy. Henry said that he'd been talking to an intensive chicken farmer who had said to him that "to farm free range chicken is actually immoral" because intensively-reared chicken uses fewer resources.<br />
<br />
That's wrong, for three reasons.<br />
<br />
Firstly, although intensively-reared chicken is more efficient in terms of converting animal feed to meat than free-range chicken (or intensively-reared pork or beef), it will always be most efficient for people to eat the grain and pulses that go into animal feed. So, using the logic of this chicken farmer, if it's immoral to buy free-range chicken then it must be immoral to buy any kind of meat. The moral thing to do is to eat bread, pasta, cous cous, polenta, beans, peas and lentils.<br />
<br />
Secondly, even intensively-reared chicken is not the most efficient animal protein. Fresh water fish (I'm not sure about farmed salmon) such as carp is better. So are crayfish. Because they are cold-blooded creatures they don't waste calories on keeping warm the way chickens or pigs do. Some have suggested growing and eating insects, but they're not necessary and it would be difficult to persuade people to eat them.<br />
<br />
Thirdly, nobody is saying we can't have luxuries sometimes. We're not going to grub up the vineyards of France and Italy and plant potatoes. That might provide more food, but luxuries sometimes are good. We should regard meat as a luxury. Eat something that tastes nice, but not every day. Obviously we can't ever have 23 billion chickens raised free-range. That's just impossible. But if there were let's say 10 billion chickens instead of 23 billion then we could raise them much less intensively than now.<br />
<br />
If I eat one free-range chicken per week, am I being less moral than someone who eats meat every day? Especially when that meat is more often pork or beef, which are less efficient converters of grain and soya? Why didn't this chicken farmer say that it is immoral to eat free-range chicken and any kind or pork or beef?<br />
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Morality has to be more than just feed conversion rates; chickens are clean animals that enjoy dust baths, if you keep them in a shed without ever cleaning the shed during their lifetimes (as happens with intensive rearing) they breath ammonia, they walk on their own faeces and their skin is burned with the acidity of what they have to lie in.<br />
<br />
<b></b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>In the brutally unnatural surroundings of a factory farm, “broiler” chickens live the entire 45 days of their lives on urine- and manure-soaked wood shavings, unchanged through several flocks of 30,000 or more birds in a single shed. Excessive ammonia levels in the litter and air cause severe skin burns, ulcers, and painful respiratory problems, as well as pulmonary congestion, swelling, and hemorrhage. A Washington Post writer who visited a chicken shed wrote, “Dust, feathers and ammonia choke the air in the chicken house and fans turn it into airborne sandpaper, rubbing skin raw.” Excretory ammonia fumes often become so strong that chickens develop a blinding eye disease called ammonia burn, so painful that the birds try to rub their eyes with their wings, and cry out helplessly. </b></blockquote>
from <a href="http://woodstocksanctuary.org/factory-farmed-animals/chickens-for-meat/">this site</a>.<br />
<br />
Dr Annie Gray food historian said on the programme about chicken "today we regard it as really cheap protein". It isn't. Animal protein will always be more expensive than plant protein. Chicken and rice is a boring food. It looks bad, it smells bad and it tastes bad. Dal and rice however is wonderful. Dal (also spelled daal or dahl or dhal) is usually made with lentils but can be made with yellow split peas (which is the cheapest of the high-protein foods). If you like Indian food you'll like dal.<br />
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Cheap chicken is neither one thing nor another. It is neither cheap protein nor a luxury. I think people should get most of their protein from plants and have meat and cheese sometimes. Have something that you enjoy the taste of, even if it's a bit more expensive. That might sound a bit like Marie Antoinette saying 'let them eat cake' but in fact it's just the opposite. Neither is it being self-denying, just the opposite: people will enjoy their food more.<br />
<br />
It saddens me that poor people munch their way through quite large quantities of cheap chicken, cheap pork sausages and cheap cheddar. They are wasting their money, usually quite large amounts of money. I'm sure this chicken farmer wants people to believe that he is providing cheap protein for poor people. Retailers and food manufacturers want us to believe that too. Governments want to support the British meat industry. But British people eat far more protein than they need, don't understand that you can get substantial amounts of protein even from low-protein foods (pasta is 11% protein), and as I've said before ANIMAL PROTEIN IS ALWAYS MORE EXPENSIVE THAN PLANT PROTEIN. So if you want cheap protein buy yellow (or green) split peas.</div>
Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-86096371222220336922015-10-02T15:36:00.000+01:002015-10-05T14:04:29.533+01:00belvita soft bakes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I saw the adverts for Belvita soft bakes recently so I thought I would try them. At the top of the pack it says <b>'slow release carbohydrates'</b> with an asterisk and <b>'4h'</b> which I guess stands for '4 hours'. The asterisk refers to the statement <b>'belVita Soft Bakes with proven slow release carbohydrate ...'</b>.<br />
<br />
On the other side of the pack it states <b>'Energy for the whole morning'</b> with two asterisks. They refer to the statement <b>'belVita Soft Bakes have a high content of slowly digestible starch, which is a slow release carbohydrate. Consumption of foods high is slowly digestible starch raises blood glucose concentration less after a meal compared to foods low in slowly digestible starch.'</b><br />
<br />
If you look at Nutritional Information there are three asterisks that refer to the statement <b>'Contains minimum 15 g Slowly Digestible Starch per 100 g.'</b> You would think that all this would mean that this product has a low glycemic index (GI). However, if you look at the list of ingredients on the base of the pack it contains sugar, glucose syrup, dextrose and isomaltulose (a source of glucose and fructose).<br />
<br />
From a list of ingredients it's difficult to know how much of these sugars go into the product. If we go back to Nutritional Information however, each 100 g of the product contains 21 g of sugars (for the Choc Chips version). Compare that to 0.8 g of sugars per 100 g of Sainsbury's rough oatcakes, which have no added sugars at all.<br />
<br />
There's something seriously wrong here. Just because a product contains some ingredients which will be low GI, it doesn't mean that the product itself is low GI. The addition of these sugars means that it's not going to be low GI. No mention is made of GI on the box, so I expect they would say that they are not making the claim that they are low GI. But that is what they seem to want people to believe. Also, the 'traffic light' label isn't colour coded as with other products so you can't tell at a glance if it's high in sugars.<br />
<br />
Oatcakes are much cheaper than soft bakes and seem to be a genuinely low GI product. Oatcakes would raise blood glucose concentrations less after consuming them, but that cannot be true of soft bakes. This will increase someone's risk of developing diabetes. It can also increase risk of obesity because people will feel hungrier sooner and more likely to want to snack. People are being misled in matters concerning their health and I think that's wrong.<br />
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We know from the recent Volkswagen scandal that big companies are happy to mislead the public. This shouldn't be happening. It's like Marks and Spencer who had a range of ready meals that they called 'Fuller Longer'. I have copied-and-pasted from <a href="http://www.wildcard.co.uk/tag/marks-spencer/">here</a>.<br />
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"In 2010, Marks & Spencer launched their ‘Fuller Longer’ range of products, where each dish is designed to contain the right balance of proteins and carbohydrates to increase satiety and therefore reduce the desire to snack in-between meals. Consumers certainly bought into the concept, with it being a big seller for Marks & Spencer.</div>
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However, it has now emerged that Marks & Spencer have been asked to change the title of their range, in light of Trading Standards discovering that they are in breach of EU law on health claims.</div>
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Health and nutrition claims are perhaps a point of confusion for many brand marketers. They know that health statements sell products but they are perhaps unaware of the legal red tape that surrounds their use. Under EU law, a health claim must be authorised by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and included in the list of authorised health claims in the EU Register before they can be used. Nutrition claims on the other hand, can only be used if they are listed in the Annex of the EU Regulation and meet the specific conditions stipulated."</div>
What Marks and Spencer could have done is to remove all the added sugars from this range. They were all savoury dishes but they all contained added sugar. The could have taken out the high GI starches and replaced them with low GI starches. Long-grain rice could have replaced short-grain rice. New potatoes could have replaced ordinary potatoes. But they didn't want to do that.<br />
<br />
Instead they left the ingredients the same as before but just rebranded the range 'Balanced for You'. Which doesn't mean anything nutritionally. Having a more meaningless name gets them off the legal hook. This has decreased my respect for M&S. They just want to cash in on a premium range of foods by confusing people about their health.</div>
Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-38006659325517826852015-03-27T13:48:00.001+00:002015-03-27T13:48:50.636+00:00a world without chickens?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">In this week's New Scientist magazine (21/03/15) is an interesting article called 'A world without chickens'. There are 22 billion chickens in the world, three for every person. I have engaged in a thought experiment where I imagined what would happen if the 1 billion pigs in the world were to be killed by a virus. This article does the same thought experiment with chickens.<br />
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The scientist Olivier Hanotte says we would face "a starving world". He also says 'Pandemics and riots could ensue, unleashing a crisis of enormous importance'. The article mentioned street protests in Mexico, Egypt and Iran when eggs or chicken meat was in short supply.<br />
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Chickens eat vast quantitites of grain and soya. Animal feed consists of maize and soya, together with wheat and barley, and fish especially anchovy. They convert plant and fish protein into eggs and chicken meat which we can then eat. But they do it inefficiently, although they are more efficient than pigs and cattle.<br />
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If all the chickens died there would be vast quantities of maize and soya available for people to eat. Far from going hungry, there would be more food than we know what to do with. We could grow crops less intensively and stop overfishing. Maize and soya in the form of polenta and tofu, tempeh and miso will give us enough calories and protein. There are other grains and other pulses we could grow more of. There's an interesting chart in the article 'Henhouse to greenhouse' which shows that tofu and beans don't generate as much greenhouse gas as chicken or the meaty alternatives.<br />
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People don't need to eat as much protein as they think, and animal protein is always more expensive than plant protein. Plant protein from soya, yellow split peas or other pulses give people all the lysine and other amino acids that they require. We don't need alternative forms of animal protein, but carp or crayfish would seem the best alternatives. No need to consider insects.
</div>
Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-46391459993072536742015-02-09T17:30:00.000+00:002015-02-13T12:20:00.134+00:00chicken breasts: cheap protein?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On Woman's Hour today (BBC Radio 4) presenter Jane Garvey and contributors Laura Gardiner
and Emma Hogan
were talking about the cost of living. Jane said this:-<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i>So if you’re on the average (or in fact well below average) income
(as one of the women there illustrated) you actually have to make this work.
You have to be able to feed your family with a couple of cheap defrosting
chicken breasts, don’t you, that’s as good as it’s going to get.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
To which Laura replied:-<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i>That’s absolutely right. Emma’s mentioned wages have been
stagnant for far longer than we thought and it’s not just energy prices that
have been rising faster than inflation. We know that other essentials such as
food and transport have gone faster than the average inflation rate and these
are the things that low income families particularly those with children tend
to spend more of their incomes on.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
So it seems that people think that chicken breasts are cheap food. First of all, chicken thighs are cheaper than chicken breasts and have more flavour. Secondly, meat is an expensive form of protein. Pulses, and especially yellow split peas, are much cheaper in terms of cost of protein than meat or cheese. Thirdly, people overestimate how much protein they need. They are wasting their money buying chicken breasts.<br />
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Linda Geddes in the New Scientist magazine last month (24/01/15) wrote about meat '<b>The Raw Facts</b>'. She started the article with this:-<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i>Meat is a one-stop shop for essential amino acids - the ones the body needs to build proteins but can't make on its own. It is also a rich source of vitamin B<span style="font-size: x-small;">12</span>, iron and protein, all of which are often lacking in plant-based foods.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
She is implying that there are some essential amino acids missing from plant based foods. That's not true. In plants the amounts of each of the amino acids aren't ideal. Grains, for example, don't have as much lysine as we would like. Pulses, however, are rich in lysine. So vegetarians don't normally have a problem, especially because if we have more protein than we need then we'll be getting enough lysine even just from grains. Most people eat far more protein than they need.<br />
<br />
On page 33 it compares different sources of protein. Salmon has the most B<span style="font-size: x-small;">12</span>, about double that of meat. Eggs have it too, more than meat. Kidney beans have the most iron. So it isn't true that iron and protein are 'often lacking in plant-based foods'. If you eat marmite you can get both B<span style="font-size: x-small;">12</span> and protein.<br />
<br />
Another misleading thing she writes is:-<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i>As well as vitamins and the like, meat contains a lot of protein for its calorie content, so although other foods give us protein too, meat is the most efficient source. Avoiding it could make it harder to get a healthy, balanced diet.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
The word 'calorie' has a negative connotation because if we have too many calories we tend to put on weight. However, we need to get at least a couple of thousand calories per day. She implies that if we try to get all the protein we need from plant sources then that will tend to take us over the couple of thousand calories we need. That is not true at all, just the opposite. It's very easy to get enough protein.<br />
<br />
Even if you take a relatively low protein food such as pasta, if you eat enough of it to get enough calories then you will be getting enough protein. You need about two thirds of a kilo of pasta to get the number of calories an average person needs. Pasta is 11% protein so that means more than 70g of protein. We only need 50g of protein per day, so - even allowing for less than the ideal amount of lysine - you will be getting enough protein. So it doesn't make any sense to say 'meat is the most efficient source'.<br />
<br />
If you buy cheap pork sausages, you might suppose that they would be cheap protein. However, they can be just 12% protein, which is only just above pasta. Also, according to the information on the back of the back, that's after grilling. I would expect them to lose water during the grilling process, so they could be lower in protein than pasta. Neither cheap sausages nor cheap chicken breasts offer as good value in terms or grams of protein per penny as pasta or (if you want a high protein source) yellow split peas. The same with calories per penny.<br />
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Also last month, The Times published an interesting article (28/01/15) and editorial '<b>Save the world? Give beef the chop, travel less and eat more vegetables</b>'. A report from the Department of Energy and Climate Change suggests eating less beef. Beef requires a lot of resources to produce, 28.5 square metres of land to produce one kilo of beef per year. The article doesn't make it clear if they are talking about cattle grazing outdoors or cattle eating maize and soya.<br />
<br />
It doesn't require as much land to produce chicken, pork or grains. The article seems to be suggesting that chicken and pork production should be increased, which I don't think is such a good thing. I would prefer it if people eat a lot less beef, but also less chicken and pork.<br />
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Another thing I don't agree with in the article is that beef production should be more intensive. If you have an area of land where you can't grow crops but there is grass then you can have cattle or sheep on it. So a hillside in Wales, for example. Also where you have fields left fallow for a year. There shouldn't be any cattle kept indoors and fed on grains and soya. Some chickens for their meat and eggs perhaps, but we should be eating more grains and pulses and feeding much less of them to farm animals.<br />
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Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-82135203823461402452015-01-28T17:26:00.001+00:002015-01-28T17:26:51.610+00:00The Road to Wigan Pier: Orwell on food and poverty<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
George Orwell is often quoted by people who say that poor people can't afford to eat healthy food.<br />
<br />
George Orwell The Road to Wigan Pier Chapter 6<br />
<br />
<strong>"Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like
oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter
to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it
would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do
such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on
brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less
money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A
millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an
unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of
the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say
when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to
eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is
always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you."</strong><br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Orwell was talking about unemployed miners' families before the war, so what he says is hardly applicaple to today's unemployed. Benefits were low and families were big.</li>
<li>He seems to be confusing healthy food with health food. Where I live now, Liverpool, there is a healthy cheap food called scouse. Scouse has some meat in it, quite a bit of potato, and loads of different vegetables. It's a healthy cheap food, but it's not 'health food'. It's not dull either. Other regions have similar foods, in Scotland they have Scotch Broth where barley is the cheap starch instead of potato.</li>
<li>I can remember when brown bread was regarded as a health food and quite expensive. Today in supermarkets it's the same price as white. Brown (or wholegrain) bread has sustained populations in Europe and the Middle East for thousands of years; it's only in the past 100 years or so that white bread became cheap.</li>
<li>There are about 800 million people in the world who are starving. Do you think that if you offered any one of them a loaf of brown bread they would say 'No thanks, I would rather starve'? We know what people are prepared to eat when they are starving because of accounts of life in concentration camps. So it's nonsense to say 'The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots'.</li>
<li>Who gave Orwell the right to put words into the mouths of unemployed miners and their families in the 1930s? I don't believe that they would say that they would prefer to starve than eat brown bread.</li>
</ol>
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Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-22524389561709227612015-01-27T18:25:00.000+00:002015-01-28T13:53:27.557+00:00potassium salts and osteoporosis<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Last week on <i>Woman's Hour</i> (19/01/15) Dr Helen Lambert came on the show to tell us about her research into osteoporosis. As Helen explained, osteoporosis causes 1 in 2 women and 1 in 5 men to get a fracture due to poor bone health over the age of 50. She says studies show us that we can significantly reduce osteoporosis by having more potassium salts (potassium bicarbonate and potassium citrate) in our diet. These are found in fruit and vegetables.<br />
<br />
For some reason they also had GP Clare Gerada on the show. She was quite dismissive of the importance of Dr Lambert's work. She seems to have accepted the ideas of Gyorgy Scrinis and Michael Pollan. They believe that there is something they call 'nutritionism', which they oppose. Nutritionism is when individual nutrients such as vitamins and minerals are examined in isolation from other nutrients in normal food and said to be healthy or unhealthy. This is what Clare Gerada said.<br />
<br />
"<b>So I think the important thing for all of us is to demedicalize all of this, in other words take doctors out of the equation, take the health professionals out of the equation and start to look at inviduals in society and why we're not doing things that our grandmothers knew we should be doing, eat and apple a day, walk a little bit, get exposed to sunshine and I think (and Helen's research sounds fantastic) but I think we've got (in a way) to start giving some simple messages not from doctors not from nurses ...</b>"<br />
<br />
In saying "<i>we've got to start giving some simple messages not from doctors</i>" Clare Gerada is saying that no one should pay any attention to this research. This shows the danger of talk about nutritionism. People can use the research to reduce the amount of discomfort in their lives. Not live in pain like 'our grandmothers' did. Dr Lambert suggests we eat more fruit and vegetables, but even that suggestion is dismissed by Dr Gerada. She said something like '<i>Do I want to eat 10 bananas a day?</i>'.<br />
<br />
The research is another reason why we should eat more fruit and vegetables. Potassium salts found in fruit and vegetables make our bodies slightly more alkaline. That has an effect on bone health but it probably has an effect on other aspects of health too. It's not just potassium salts that do this though, calcium, magnesium and sodium salts do too. I take calcium citrate and magnesium citrate in a tablet. I know Clare Gerada and Michael Pollan wouldn't approve of this, but I think I am being sensible in doing it.<br />
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Last year Michael Pollan gave a lecture on BBC Radio 4's <i>Analysis</i> (03/09/14). As well as his ideas about fat and carbohydrate (he seems to believe that all fats are good and all carbohydrates are bad) and his ideas about poverty (poor people are unhealthy because they have to eat cheap unhealthy processed foods) he talked about individual nutrients in general and beta-carotene in particular.<br />
<br />
He said that someone had done some research where smokers were given beta-carotene to see what effect it had on their health. Beta-carotene is used by the body to make vitamin A which is an antioxidant. People expected it to decrease the incidence of cancer. The test was suspended when the beta-carotene group started developing cancer at higher rates than the control group. Pollan's analysis of this is that any individual nutrient by itself will act differently from when it occurs in nature and in food.<br />
<br />
This is at best a generalization. It could be true of some nutrients. We don't know why smokers who took beta-carotene got higher levels of cancer. Part of the reason could be the large amount taken. Another reason could be that the body can use oxidants to tackle cancerous cells, and so anybody who has an increased risk of cancer shouldn't have high levels of antioxidants (whether they come from tablets or from a diet high fruit and vegetables). This is the antioxidant paradox, but it only applies to people who have a higher than usual risk of cancer, and it can't be used to suggest that single nutrients are of no value.<br />
<br />
I also take a vitamin D tablet each day, because there is now a lot of research to show that vitamin D in significantly higher levels than can be achieved through diet or exposure to sunlight has an important role in human health. I don't take a mega dose of vitamin D or anything else. Pollan wouldn't agree with this, just as he wouldn't agree with me getting most of my calories from long-grain rice and pasta (cheaper than any processed food, cheaper than sugar in terms of cost of calories). But the evidence is that my bone health will be better than his in old age. He might want to end up like his grandmother but I don't.<br />
<br />
I also have a healthy diet with lots of fruit and vegetables, and little fat, sugar or salt. One of the messages of people like Pollan and Gerada is that people get confused over health messages. However, the simple message for a long time has been eat less fat, sugar and salt, and more fruit and vegetables. I don't eat as much protein as most British people, because I know people overestimate the amount of protein they need but also protein is one of the foods that tends to make the body slightly more acidic.<br />
<br />
If you believe Michael Pollan you will believe<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>if you're poor, don't even bother to try and eat healthy food because you won't be able to</li>
<li>you can eat at any amount of any type of fat that you want</li>
<li>you should avoid carbohydrate, don't distinguish between sugars and starches, or low GI starches and high GI ones</li>
<li>don't take a multivitamin and multimineral tablet each day, and don't take vitamin D or calcium citrate because they can't do you any good and may do you harm</li>
</ol>
I think he's wrong about all of these things, and that will have an effect on the future health of anyone who pays attention to him.<br />
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Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-15633434315682255032014-10-21T18:04:00.000+01:002014-11-18T16:32:59.207+00:00trust me, I'm a doctor<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Last night I watched episode 2 of <b>Trust Me, I'm A Doctor</b>. Part of the programme was about pasta. It stated or at least implied that pasta is unhealthy, then showed a way of making it healthier. As it says on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3LncBcDcCXKgtpFvrDZVnNQ/can-my-leftovers-be-healthier-than-the-original-meal">this page</a>:-<br />
<br />
'<span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Although starch is an important part of a healthy diet, it’s easily broken down. As soon as we consume starch the body very quickly starts to digest it, releasing sugars into the blood which in turn causes our bodies to release the hormone insulin. It’s a boom and bust cycle that can take a toll on our health.'</span><br />
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That's very much a generalization. Starch is of two types, amylose and amylopectin. Amylopectin is easily broken down but amylose takes longer. Pasta is already a healthy starch, especially when it is cooked for a shorter time (al dente) and of a type that is thicker. If you want to lower the glycemic index even more you can combine it with protein, or add a mild acid such as lemon juice or vinegar, or add fat or oil. The programme was saying that if you allow cooked pasta to cool then it becomes 'resistant starch'.<br />
<br />
So they're saying that pasta is unhealthy, but they have found a way to make it healthy. I'm sure these sorts of statements make the show more sensational, but it gives a distorted picture of what people should be eating. It's a pity because pasta and long-grain rice are the cheapest of foods, cheaper than sugar and processed foods. If you make starch too resistant to digestion then some people suffer bloating. I think it is possible that bad bacteria (and other micro-organisms) will thrive and not beneficial bacteria.<br />
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There are types of carbohydrate that are collectively known as FODMAP. This is an acronym used for substances that don't get digested well in the small intestine. They are consumed by bacteria in the large intestine and can cause health problems.<br />
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Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-43944895290520230552014-10-10T14:18:00.000+01:002014-10-10T14:18:13.687+01:00new study shows healthy foods more expensive?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There is <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0109343">a study published this week</a> that claims to show that more healthy foods were consistently more expensive than less healthy foods, and have risen more sharply in price over time. There have been a number of studies that claim the same thing and the problem with them is that they have ignored foods such as pasta and rice which are both cheap and healthy.<br />
<br />
This new study doesn't do that. It includes a group of foods 'Bread, rice, potatoes, pasta'. The graph below, from the survey, shows that this group is not only the cheapest (in terms of the cost of calories) but hasn't been rising.<br />
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So how do they come to the conclusion that healthy foods are more expensive? It all depends where you get the bulk of your calories from. One healthy option is to get most of your calories from pasta, long-grain rice, porridge and other low-GI starchy foods. These are cheap. Pasta and long-grain rice are 40p per kilo form Aldi or Lidl which makes them even cheaper in terms of cost of calories than sugar.<br />
<br />
Yellow split peas are the cheapest source of protein. They are also a cheap source of calories. Other pulses are too. People don't need as much protein as they think, and they don't realise that they get a lot of their protein requirements from relatively low-protein sources such as pasta.<br />
<br />
Plants such as pulses are always the cheapest source of protein. However, it is good to have some meat, fish and eggs. Also some milk, cheese or other dairy foods. Variety is good because you will be getting more of a range of micronutrients. You don't need much of these though, and if you're poor you can cut down on them.<br />
<br />
There's something a bit daft about measuring the cost of high-protein foods in terms of cost of calories, which is what this study does. You don't eat meat, cheese, fish or eggs for the calories. It's even dafter measuring the cost of fruit and vegetables in terms of cost of calories. We should eat very little of things like meat and lots of vegetables.<br />
<br />
Vegetables bulk out food, add flavour, and provide micronutrients (vitamins, minerals and things like lutein). The fact that most of them don't come out well in the £s per 1,000 calorie stakes is irrelevant. A 1 kilo bag of mixed frozen vegetables cost about 75p. Poor people can afford them.<br />
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I have a problem with their choice of categories. They have five categories of foods. With the 'Bread, rice, pasta, potatoes' category, they're probably averaging prices. Rice and pasta can be incredibly cheap, but there are also expensive brands. Bread, in the form of a sliced loaf, isn't particularly cheap. Flour, however, can be incredibly cheap. Potatoes are cheap if you buy them by the sack from Morrisons but they can be expensive too. So the really cheap calories are even cheaper than what is shown in their graph.<br />
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Yellow split peas, other pulses, and animal protein all go into the same category. Yet there is an enormous difference in price, both in terms of cost of calories (which is their criterion) or in terms of cost of protein. There are also big differences between vegetables such as carrots and cabbage, and vegetables such as frozen peas (potatoes although a vegetable are in a different category).<br />
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If you eat the average nutritionist's conception of a healthy diet it would include quite a bit of some expensive food items. It doesn't have to though. Vegetarians would argue that meat isn't necessary and vegans would argue that eggs and cheese aren't necessary. So you can eat cheaply and healthily. They've got their facts right but they've interpreted them wrongly.</div>
Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-13159858443214457612014-09-30T10:04:00.000+01:002014-09-30T10:04:37.546+01:00Michael Pollan, poor people and healthy food<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Last night on BBC Radio 4 I listened to the Analysis programme with Michael Pollan. There are many things that he said that I can agree with, but there was one issue where I know that he has got it completely wrong. The issue of poverty and healthy food. This is what he said:-<br />
<br />
<strong>"...we have created a system in which the cheapest calories are
the least healthy calories. So because of the kind of subsidy system I described earlier where we subsidise these commodity crops like soy, corn or maize, and
wheat, these are the ones that are turned into sweeteners and starchy foods and
processed foods.
</strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>And so there have been studies done. There was a great
economist at Washington State who sent his graduate students into the supermarket
with a dollar. Buy as many calories as you can with that dollar and he wanted
to see what they’d come back with. And then buy as many calories of a drink
with that dollar. Because this is what the poor are doing. They’re on some kind
of assistance plan and they are trying to get through the month without their kids
getting hungry. So they’re trying to maximise the calories.
</strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>And you won’t be surprised to see that they found that they
could get 850 calories of chips with a dollar or 250 calories of carrots with
the same dollar. In soda they could get something like a 1000 calories for a
dollar and only a couple of hundred calories of milk or juice. So we’ve created
a system in which it’s rational to eat badly if you’re on a fixed budget. That’s
what we need to change from a policy point of view. Since 1980 the price of
soda has gone down 7% and the price of fresh produce has gone up 40% and with
changes in our subsidy system we can reverse that. And that’s really where we
need to go."</strong><br />
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The only way you can get this result is by ignoring lots of different foods such as long-grain rice, pasta and porridge. What happens is that people have preconceptions about the two extremes, healthy food and unhealthy food. So they only look at these two options. They think healthy food is carrots, and unhealthy food is chips.<br />
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The cheapest foods of all, in terms of cost of calories, are long-grain rice, pasta and flour. These are cheaper than any processed food, even sugar. This is not my opinion, if you don't believe me, go into the supermarket, get the data and do the calculation. It's not rocket science.<br />
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Long-grain rice and pasta may be the starchy foods that Pollan derides, but they have a low glycemic index and so are healthy starches. They don't contribute towards the problem of diabetes that Pollan talks about when eaten in sensible quantities. Flour is variable, some is low GI and some high: I expect the cheapest flour tends to be high GI. That's why I don't recommend people using it as an everyday staple.<br />
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So you've got 'a great economist' and his graduate students who come to a completely wrong conclusion because instead of trying to find the truth they merely wanted to confirm their preconceptions. Carrots and most other vegetables aren't going to be a great source of calories. Potatoes can be cheap calories, but chips (we call them crisps) are in fact quite expensive calories. People can drink water and get their calories from food: all this talk about soda versus milk or juice is just stupid.</div>
Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-62668082640001537682014-07-25T15:53:00.002+01:002014-08-11T15:36:23.572+01:00cheaper than anywhere else but tasting better?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We're all familiar with the idea that cheap food probably isn't going to taste too good and that we have to pay a premium for the yummiest, but just occasionally you can get food that tastes better AND is cheaper. It doesn't happen often, but for example Waitrose now have shortbread that tastes like shortbread should do but is only £1. Proper shortbread tastes divine but you can't find it often. When I go to Liverpool I often go to the cafe of the Museum of Liverpool where they have good shortbread but it's a lot more than £1.<br />
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Also when I go to Liverpool I go to Eat 4 Less at 3 Richmond Street. They do baguettes there which are incredibly cheap but taste better than anyone else's. I think they're 99p or £1 but they are generous with the numerous fillings which taste great. Their baguettes seem to be freshly baked too. I get the egg mayonnaise with cress baguette and also the brie baguette. I ask them to do the brie one without cranberry and they make that for me. The brie always seems nicely ripened too.<br />
<br />
ASDA do 4 egg custard tarts for £1. Some other supermarkets do too, but ASDAs custard tarts taste wonderful. The pastry is lovely and they put lots of nutmeg on top.<br />
<br />
My favourite coffee is filter coffee and so I just love Pret A Manger filter coffee for 99p. Why would I spend more than twice as much on a latte or cappuccino that I wouldn't enjoy so much? I do get a latte from Waitrose when I go in for my shortbread because it's FREE. If you've got a Waitrose card it's free.<br />
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The other thing I love is <a href="http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/asda-compare-prices/Yogurts/Lancashire_Farm_Natural_Probiotic_Yogurt_1Kg.html">Lancashire Farm yogurt</a>. You can get this from a number of supermarkets. It's about £1.40 for a big 1kg tub. They call it Natural Probiotic which is what we used to call live yogurt. I think it tastes better than other yogurts. They also do a low-fat version, I've tried it but I can't say I like it as much.<br />
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If you've got any examples of foods that taste better than everywhere else and yet are cheaper than anywhere else please tell us about it and comment.</div>
Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-1659336311617660492014-07-25T15:28:00.001+01:002014-08-11T15:35:13.326+01:00Michael Mosley, the Daily Mail, and saturated fat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When I was listening to late-night radio recently they started to discuss <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2695030/I-wrong-feasting-FAT-says-The-Fast-Diet-author-DR-MICHAEL-MOSLEY.html">an article in the Daily Mail about saturated fat and heart disease</a>. The article was written by Dr Michael Mosley. The presenter said that he didn't realize that pasta and potatoes are bad for you.<br />
<br />
I took a good look at the article because I thought what he wrote is wrong. This is what he wrote.<br />
<br />
<b>"My response was to exercise more but it had little effect. I was eating less fat, but compensating with starchy pasta and potatoes. What I hadn't appreciated is the way these foods act on your body. A boiled potato will push your blood glucose up almost as fast as a tablespoon of sugar, since it is rapidly digested.</b><br />
<b>Ironically, we now know that if you eat that potato with butter, the fat will slow absorption and the blood sugar peak will be less extreme.</b><br />
<b>Rapid spikes in glucose force your pancreas to pump out insulin, which drives it back down, but can leave you hungry again a few hours later.</b><br />
<b>Carbohydrates are also less satiating than fat or protein. So you eat more and the weight creeps up."</b><br />
<br />
Pasta has a low Glycemic Index which means that it doesn't push your blood glucose up. So he's got that wrong. As for potatoes, some potatoes have a high GI and some a low GI. New potatoes have a low or moderate GI. Nowhere in the article does he mention the Glycemic Index. He doesn't seem to understand what it is.<br />
<br />
If you have potato with olive oil it will have a lower GI. Extra virgin olive oil from Lidl or Aldi are cheaper than butter. Despite the recent evidence about the relationship between saturated fats and heart disease, it still seems that olive oil is healthier than butter.<br />
<br />
It has never been the case that health advisors have said all fats are bad and all carbohydrates are good. We have known for a long time that olive oil is a healthy oil as is fish oil. So why is Dr Michael Mosley trying to make out that this is what people were lead to believe? Is it because he seems to want to make the opposite argument that all fats are good and all carbohydrates are bad? That is what he seems to be saying.<br />
<br />
It is true that protein can suppress appetite. It is not true though that low GI starchy foods like pasta and long-grain rice are less satiating than fat. So I don't agree that people are likely to put on weight by eating pasta, long-grain rice or porridge instead of butter. In any case they can have olive oil instead of butter. So butter is still not the best option.<br />
<br />
He mentions research that shows olive oil and fish oil are healthy, and then goes on to mention the<a href="http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/274166.php"> recent research funded by the British Heart Foundation</a> and published this year. Mosley says 'the researchers found no evidence that saturated fats cause heart disease'.<br />
<br />
What the evidence from this study seems to be saying is that we have to look at each individual fatty acid instead of looking at groups of fatty acids such as saturated, monounsaturated, omega-6 and omega-3. DHA and EPA, two long-chain omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil, are both linked to lower heart risk. No surprise there. But so is AA, which is an omega-6 fatty acid.<br />
<br />
At least, when these three fatty acids are found in good quantities in the blood, there is a lower heart risk. Yet the study <b>'also found no significant link between heart risk and intake of total monounsaturated fatty acids, long-chain omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids'</b>. Which is curious. If you have more of them in your blood you are less likely to die of a heart attack, and yet consuming DHA and EPA in the form of fish or fish oil doesn't seem to have a beneficial effect? What are we to make of this?<br />
<br />
<b>"They also looked in detail at saturated fatty acids. Here, they found some weak links between bloodstream levels of palmitic and stearic acids (predominantly found in palm oil and animal fats, respectively) and heart disease, but blood levels of the dairy fat margaric acid appeared to significantly reduce heart risk."</b><br />
<br />
It could well be that fat from most meat is bad for you but fat from milk isn't. Pork fat has more monounsaturated fat that beef fat and so is considered healthier. Goose fat might be healthier too. Coconut oil, despite being saturated, seems to be healthy. So the question is not fat versus carbohydrate. We should be consuming good fats and good carbohydrates and refraining from bad fats and bad carbohydrates. I get most of my calories from low GI starches such as long-grain rice and pasta. If people want to get most of their calories from both low GI starches and healthy fats such as olive oil, fish oil, and avocados then that's good too. The fat in cheese might be good, but I don't think burgers are something I would want to consume every day. But then I'm not going to consume margarine or sunflower oil either.<br />
<br />
It's not a question of fat v carbohydrate, and it's not a question of saturated fat v polyunsaturated fat. We know that lots of polyunsaturated fat if it is nearly all omega-6 isn't good for health. There should be a balance between omega-6 and omega-3 which means we should have less omega-6 (from vegetable oils like sunflower oil) and more omega-3 (especially long-chain omega-3 from fish). Now it seems that some saturated fatty acids can be good too.<br />
<br />
So when the research shows that cutting saturated fat per se doesn't do anything for our health and that consuming more polyunsaturated fat per se doesn't do anything for our health either, that doesn't mean that there aren't some saturates we should avoid or that there aren't some polyunsaturates we should have more of.<br />
<br />
There's an interesting <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329800.400-heart-attack-on-a-plate-the-truth-about-saturated-fat.html">New Scientist article</a> that says a lot of the same things as I'm saying.</div>
Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-59185496732557333522014-05-01T15:20:00.001+01:002014-07-16T14:26:07.462+01:00the cost of calories<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I came across <a href="http://www.foodcomm.org.uk/articles/calorie_cost/">this page</a> on the Food Commission site. They claim to be 'Britain's leading, independent watchdog on food issues'. They have a chart similar to <a href="http://farmyardanimal.blogspot.co.uk/p/table-comparing-cheapness-of-foods.html">my own</a>, except that they miss out the most important foods, the starchy staples. This gives a completely misleading impression, making it seem that it is the unhealthy foods that are the cheapest.<br />
<br />
They have fallen into the trap of the false dichotomy, talking as if the only two alternatives are fatty sugary foods on the one hand and cabbages and carrots on the other. As they say on this page:-<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Keeping hunger pangs at bay without stretching your budget is simple if you like fatty, sugary food. By comparison, cabbages and carrots are a very poor bargain - you can spend a small fortune on salad and fruit and still feel hungry. </b></blockquote>
This is what the table should look like, after the cheapest foods have been inserted and with the information updated from 2007 prices to 2014 prices, all from Lidl. They are using a different measure, the cost of 100 calories in pence, which is different from the measure I used of calories per penny. Anything cheaper than 14.5p per 100 calories (7 calories per penny) is deemed as affordable to low income families.<br />
<br />
<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"><tbody>
<tr bgcolor="#ffffcc"><td><div align="left">
<strong>Foodstuffs</strong></div>
</td><td><div align="center">
<strong>Cost of 100 calories in pence</strong></div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><div align="left">
Long-grain rice </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
1.2</div>
</td></tr>
<tr bgcolor="#ffffcc"><td><div align="left">
Spaghetti </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
1.3</div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><div align="left">
Vegetable oil </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
1.3</div>
</td></tr>
<tr bgcolor="#ffffcc"><td><div align="left">
Digestive biscuits </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
1.6</div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><div align="left">
Custard cream biscuits </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
1.8</div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td bgcolor="#ffffcc"><div align="left">
Sugar </div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffcc"><div align="center">
2.0</div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><div align="left">
Porridge</div>
</td><td><div align="center">
2.1</div>
</td></tr>
<tr bgcolor="#ffffcc"><td><div align="left">
Extra virgin olive oil </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
3.2</div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><div align="left">
Couscous </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
3.6</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><br /></b><b>How I worked out the cost of 100 calories</b><br />
<i>Long-grain rice</i>: 40p per kilo: 3,510 kcals per kilo: 40/35.1=<span style="color: red;">1.139</span><br />
<i>Spaghetti</i>: 46p per kilo: 3,500 kcals per kilo: 46/35=<span style="color: red;">1.314</span><br />
<i>Vegetable oil</i>: £1.09 per litre: 8,280 kcals per litre: 109/82.8=<span style="color: red;">1.316</span><br />
<i>Digestive biscuits</i> (Tower Gate): 31p per 400g pack: 4,990 kcals per kilo: 77.5/49.9=<span style="color: red;">1.553</span><br />
<i>Custard cream biscuits</i>: 35p per 400g pack: 4,950 kcals per kilo: 87.5/49.5=<span style="color: red;">1.767</span><br />
<i>Sugar</i>: 79p per kilo: 4,000 kcals per kilo: 79/40=<span style="color: red;">1.975</span><br />
<i>Porridge</i>: 39p per 500g: 3,750 kcals per kilo: 78/37.5=<span style="color: red;">2.08</span><br />
<i>Extra virgin olive oil</i> (Primadonna): £1.99 per 750ml: 8,210 kcals per litre: 199/61.575=<span style="color: red;">3.23</span><br />
<i>Couscous</i>: £1.35 per kilo: 3,750 kcals per kilo: 135/37.5=<span style="color: red;">3.6</span><br />
<br />
The next one in the original Food Commission table is Frozen sausages which costs 4.3p per 100 calories. I haven't bothered with all of the other ones lower down in the table because it would take too long to collect the data and do the calculations. The point is that there are plenty of healthy calories available at a cheap price. Rice and spaghetti are cheaper than biscuits and even sugar, with porridge and couscous not far behind.<br />
<br />
Other candidates for cheap calories are yellow split peas, polenta and chapatti flour. Lidl don't sell these and most people don't know what to do with them or they take some time to prepare. Chapatti flour at £4 for 10 kilos (or sometimes less) is as cheap as the rice, which is the cheapest in the table. Yellow split peas are probably the cheapest source of protein, cheaper than any meat or cheese, and also do well as a source of cheap calories.<br />
<br />
I might add that a 1kg bag of frozen mixed vegetables cost 75p, which doesn't come out well in the pennies per 100 calories stakes but you don't buy vegetables for the calories and they are still affordable. Salad and fruit don't give many calories, they add micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, lutein etc) and flavour, and bulk out food.<br />
<br />
Having said that, vegetables such as potatoes, frozen peas and frozen sweetcorn can compare favourably to many common processed foods even in terms of calories per penny or price per 100 calories. Only the sweetcorn is outside the target 14.5p per 100 calories and only just.<br />
<i>Potatoes</i>: £4.29 per 7.5 kilo: 820 kcals per kilo: 57.2/8.2=<span style="color: red;">7</span><br />
Frozen <i>Garden Pea</i>s or <i>Petit Pois</i>: 99p per kilo: 750 kcals per kilo: 99/7.5=<span style="color: red;">13.2</span><br />
Frozen <i>Supersweet Corn</i>: £1.40 per kilo: 910 kcals per kilo: 140/9.1=<span style="color: red;">15.4</span><br />
<br />
Tesco potatoes, peas and sweetcorn are considerably cheaper than Lidl. I couldn't find any frozen sausages in Lidl but I found some in Tesco. <a href="http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=263747831">Tesco Everyday Value 20 frozen pork sausages</a> work out at 6.8p per 100 calories. <a href="http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=259408260">Tesco Everyday Value White Potatoes 2.5Kg</a> work out at 5.6p per 100 calories. So it's cheaper to get calories from potatoes (healthy) than sausages (unhealthy). <a href="http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=282489715">Tesco Everyday Value Garden Peas</a> work out at 12.4p per 100 calories. <a href="http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=264336705">Tesco Everyday Value Sweetcorn 907G</a> works out at 9.5p per 100 calories.<br />
<br />
When it comes to protein, the sausages give 0.63g of protein per penny. <a href="http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=258465837">Tesco Everyday Value Chicken Breast Fillets</a> are even worse value for money providing 0.48g of protein per penny. <a href="http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=256533772">Tesco Yellow Split Peas</a> however provide 2.2g of protein per penny. Even allowing for the fact that plant protein is not as good quality as animal protein, it's clear that no matter how cheap and rubbishy you buy your meat it is never going to be cheap protein. Pulses are cheap protein. Tesco frozen peas provide 0.6g of protein per penny, almost as much as the sausages.<br />
<br />
It doesn't matter how rich you are, if you were stupid enough to try and get all your daily calories from cabbages and carrots then you would always go hungry. You should be getting most of your calories (whether you're rich or poor) from low GI starches such as rice and pasta. And they're the cheapest. But the Food Commission aren't going to tell you that. They should be doing that instead of misleading poor people about what they can afford to eat and their health.<br />
<br />
Below is a table showing most of the foods I have mentioned above. It shows that rice and pasta are the cheapest, and also that some vegetables do well as reasonably cheap sources of calories. Only the Lidl sweetcorn and the Tesco chicken are outside the range of what is deemed affordable. The false dichotomy in use by the Food Commission and others is wrong, not only because they leave out starchy staples such as rice and pasta, but also because not all vegetables are low in calories.<br />
<br />
<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"><tbody>
<tr bgcolor="#ffffcc"><td><div align="left">
<strong>Supermarket</strong></div>
</td><td><div align="left">
<strong>Foodstuffs</strong></div>
</td><td><div align="center">
<strong>Cost of 100 calories in pence</strong></div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><div align="left">
Lidl </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Long-grain rice </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
1.2</div>
</td></tr>
<tr bgcolor="#ffffcc"><td><div align="left">
Lidl </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Spaghetti </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
1.3</div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><div align="left">
Lidl </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Vegetable oil </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
1.3</div>
</td></tr>
<tr bgcolor="#ffffcc"><td><div align="left">
Lidl </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Digestive biscuits </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
1.6</div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><div align="left">
Lidl </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Custard cream biscuits </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
1.8</div>
</td></tr>
<tr bgcolor="#ffffcc"><td><div align="left">
Lidl </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Sugar </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
2.0</div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><div align="left">
Lidl </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Porridge </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
2.1</div>
</td></tr>
<tr bgcolor="#ffffcc"><td><div align="left">
Tesco </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Natco Fine corn meal (polenta) </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
3.2</div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><div align="left">
Lidl </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Extra virgin olive oil </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
3.2</div>
</td></tr>
<tr bgcolor="#ffffcc"><td><div align="left">
Tesco </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Yellow split peas </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
3.5</div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><div align="left">
Lidl </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Couscous </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
3.6</div>
</td></tr>
<tr bgcolor="#ffffcc"><td><div align="left">
Tesco </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Everyday Value White potatoes </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
5.7</div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><div align="left">
Tesco </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Everyday Value 20 Pork sausages (frozen)</div>
</td><td><div align="center">
6.8</div>
</td></tr>
<tr bgcolor="#ffffcc"><td><div align="left">
Lidl </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Potatoes </div>
</td><td><div align="center">
7.0</div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><div align="left">
Tesco </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Everyday Value Sweetcorn (frozen)</div>
</td><td><div align="center">
9.5</div>
</td></tr>
<tr bgcolor="#ffffcc"><td><div align="left">
Tesco </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Everyday Value Garden peas (frozen)</div>
</td><td><div align="center">
12.4</div>
</td></tr>
<tr></tr>
<tr><td><div align="left">
Lidl </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Garden peas or petit pois (frozen)</div>
</td><td><div align="center">
13.2</div>
</td></tr>
<tr></tr>
<tr bgcolor="#ffffcc"><td><div align="left">
Lidl </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Supersweet corn (frozen)</div>
</td><td><div align="center">
15.4</div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><div align="left">
Tesco </div>
</td><td><div align="left">
Everyday Value Chicken breast fillets (frozen)</div>
</td><td><div align="center">
39.9</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Instead of talking about two types of food, as happens with this false dichotomy, we should be talking about five different types of food. We should compare their relative merits in terms of cost of calories and protein, and their healthiness. These are the five types of food we need to consider.<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>fatty and/or sugary food, often high in salt too</li>
<li>low starch vegetables such as cabbages and carrot, salad and fruit</li>
<li>low-GI grains and grain products such as rice, pasta, porridge and polenta</li>
<li>dried pulses such as yellow/green split peas, lentils and beans</li>
<li>higher starch vegetables such as potatoes, frozen peas and frozen sweetcorn</li>
<li>oil</li>
</ol>
Vegetable oil isn't particularly unhealthy. Any oil can contribute to obesity if you have too much of it. Vegetable oil is low in saturated fat but high in omega-6. This can cause health problems. Rapeseed oil is an exception to this. Refined rapeseed oil is quite cheap, and the unrefined rapeseed oil seems to be coming down in price. Olive oil is low in saturated fat and omega-6. If you buy Lidl Primadonna extra virgin olive oil it is surprisingly cheap. And it has won a taste test, along with Aldi EVOO brand of extra virgin olive oil. Extra virgin olive oil should not be used for frying food.<br />
<br />
Bread should be a cheap healthy source of calories. Supermarket sliced white bread doesn't come out well when you calculate the cost of calories. Chapatti flour is possibly the cheapest food of all in terms of cost of calories. I have read that Indian people often prefer to grind their flour at home when they need it because it's fresher and tastes better. It should be healthier too, the oil in the germ is retained but doesn't become rancid, and the particle size is larger which means it has a lower GI. Most people don't know how to make chapattis and wouldn't want the bother, the same applies to loaves.<br />
<br />
It looks as if there are eight cheap and healthy foods. Rice, pasta, porridge, polenta, olive oil, yellow split peas, couscous and potatoes. The only unhealthy foods that can match them in price are vegetable oil, biscuits and sugar. All the other foods in the Food Commission table, even cheap frozen pork sausages, can't match them. Even then the rice and pasta beat them.</div>
Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-81593920830750952612014-02-06T14:40:00.000+00:002014-02-10T14:33:56.236+00:00Arabella Weir talking rubbish about food and poverty<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>"If you're hungry, and your last 30p will buy you a whole packet of biscuits or one single apple, what would you choose? I believe it is IMPOSSIBLE to eat well if you're poor."</b></blockquote>
This is what the comedian Arabella Weir stated on the Food & Drink programme on BBC 2 earlier this week. You can see it <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03tz2tw/live">here</a>. I think she is completely wrong on this issue. Why does she think that biscuits or apples are the only two alternatives? You can buy <span style="font-size: x-small;">3/4</span> of a kilo of rice for 30p or half a kilo of pasta.<br />
<br />
I was in ASDA on Monday and because I knew she was going to say this I looked at the price of biscuits. I couldn't find any packets of biscuits for 30p. I'm sure if someone had the time to shop around they could find biscuits for 30p but the nearest to that in ASDA - which is not one of the more expensive supermarkets - is ASDA smart price Rich Tea biscuits for 31p. The packet weighs 400g and the information on the back says that there are 455 calories in every 100g.<br />
<br />
This means that there are 1,820 calories in a pack. Divide that by 31 and you find that the biscuits provide just under 59 calories per penny. Rice provides nearly 88 calories per penny and pasta provides just over 59 calories per penny. There are some supermarkets that sell pasta for less that 30p per half kilo. So rice and pasta are always a better bet because they are cheaper and because they are low GI sources of calories.<br />
<br />
One of the people she was debating with said you can buy pulses, rice and lentils cheaply. Lentils are one type of pulse. The quality of this debate is extremely poor - nobody seemed to know what they are talking about. Arabella's smug reply to that is "<b>Have you ever fed children lentils?</b>". What does she think that millions of parents in India feed themselves and their children on? She chose not to mention rice. Pasta is a favourite food for most children, and it doesn't cost much to make pasta palatable.<br />
<br />
Her argument doesn't make sense. If the argument is about affordability, then it doesn't make sense to contradict someone who says that lentils (and other pulses and rice) are affordable by saying that children won't eat them. Then it becomes an argument about British children refusing to eat healthy food and how parents respond to that. In most parts of the world children eat what they are given, they're not offered alternatives. If your children refuse to eat healthy food then it doesn't matter how much money you have. If you are poor and you can offer your children healthy food such as rice, pasta and pulses but your children don't like them then the problem is not affordability.<br />
<br />
Many people on benefits - pensioners for example - don't have dependent children. People with children receive more in benefits than people who are childless; it's people on Job Seekers Allowance and without children who are the poorest. People who go to food banks are usually people who have had delays in receiving their benefits.<br />
<br />
So I don't see why people can't eat lentils. Lentils aren't that cheap though, it's yellow split peas that are the cheap pulses. Both lentils and yellow split peas can be used for soup, for the Indian dish dal, and also for felafels although more often chickpeas are used for that.<br />
<br />
The family size frozen lasagna she mentions provides under 10 calories per penny. Iceland sell a 1.6 kg <a href="http://groceries.iceland.co.uk/iceland-meal-for-the-family-beef-lasagne-1-6kg/p/51603">family size frozen lasagna</a>. There's a bit of confusion on their site about how many calories there are in the pack because they state that there are 172 calories (kcals) per 100g but 635 calories per <span style="font-size: x-small;">1/4</span> pack. 172 x 16 is 2752 but 635 x 4 is 2540. So somewhere Iceland have put incorrect information of their site.<br />
<br />
Let's assume the higher figure of 2752. The pack cost £3. 2752/300 gives us the figure of just over 9 calories per penny. So to advise poor people to eat lasagna is extremely poor advice based on an ignorance of the facts. I'm aware that lasagna provides protein as well as calories but most poor people in Britain eat far more protein than they need.<br />
<br />
She's wrong in assuming that lasagna is an unhealthy food. The Iceland lasagna isn't particularly unhealthy. It has more pasta in it than the meat and cheese combined, so it doesn't contain that much saturated fat. It does contain some sugar, and it would have been better if it didn't, but it isn't the 50/50 combination of fat and sugar that is the real problem with much processed food.<br />
<br />
The recent BBC 2 programme <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03t8r4h">Sugar v Fat</a> was mostly boring but towards the end they showed the results of experiments with rats. Professor Paul Kenny fed rats either fat but no sugar or sugar but no fat. Both these groups restricted the number of calories they ate and didn't put on weight. When he fed rats a 50/50 combination of fat and sugar, however, they overate and became obese. There are two ways to interpret this. Either a 50/50 combination of fat and sugar is particularly alluring. Or when foods are combined we often can't taste all of the different ingredients.<br />
<br />
So I don't agree that people become obese because our ancestors on the savanna were always short of food and needed to eat everything they could. People don't actually crave a fatty food or a sugary food that much. They quickly become repulsive, tasting too fatty or too sweet. We do have an 'off' switch for them. The fat/sugar combination is not found in nature and we don't have an 'off' switch for it. This is the biggest problem with processed foods.<br />
<br />
Arabella finishes off her piece by saying "<b>So come on, you pretentious foodies, stop lecturing people with less cash than you about what they should be eating!</b>" I'm not a foodie and I live on benefits. Telling poor people - incorrectly - that their best options are biscuits and frozen lasagna is doing exactly what she accuses others of doing, lecturing people with less cash than her about what they should be eating.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7NkODL-Fpho/UVBnDczUZmI/AAAAAAAAARc/0M3ltj8h4ho/s1600/pasta.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7NkODL-Fpho/UVBnDczUZmI/AAAAAAAAARc/0M3ltj8h4ho/s1600/pasta.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">a children's favourite</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-35858646242275702552013-11-05T15:15:00.001+00:002013-11-05T16:14:33.307+00:00Institute for Fiscal Studies report on food and poverty"Struggling households are turning to cheaper, fattier food in the wake of the recession." So it says in <a href="http://metro.co.uk/2013/11/04/fat-and-sugar-on-the-menu-as-recession-takes-a-bite-4172040/">this newspaper article</a>. This comes from research on food and poverty done by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. However, if you look at <a href="http://www.ifs.org.uk/docs/man_rg_2012.pdf">the report</a> (Food purchases and nutrition over the recession), the facts don't seem so alarming.<br />
<br />
The report says there has been an increase in the calorie density of food eaten by 2.6%, less for poorer people. Fat density has increased by 2.4%, less for the poorer people. Sugar density has increased by 2.1%. So we have increases of between 2% and 3%, which doesn't seem to be a big change. What's more salt density has decreased by 7.5% and fibre density has increased by 4.1%, which is quite a good thing. So the food we eat has become slightly fattier and slightly more sugary, but at the same time less salty and with a higher fibre content.<br />
<br />
At the same time people have been spending less on food and eating fewer calories. The amount of fat, sugar and salt eaten have been decreasing. One way you can interpret the statistics is to say that people are eating slightly less food overall, eating the same proportion of processed food, but eating cheaper processed food. Cheap processed food does seem to have more fat and sugar than the more expensive processed food.<br />
<br />
What people don't seem to be doing is turning to the cheaper less processed foods such as rice and pasta. The assumption that the Institute of Fiscal Studies are making is that calorie dense foods are cheaper. It might well be that a macaroni cheese from Iceland is more calorific and cheaper than the equivalent from Marks and Spencer. However, less processed foods such as rice and pasta are much cheaper than the cheapest processed foods. So to say that the poor have had no option but to turn to more calorie dense foods is wrong.<br />
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Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-53180946566352989612013-10-14T16:42:00.002+01:002013-11-05T14:35:23.251+00:00continent of the pigsI've been looking for accurate statistics for the number of farm animals for a while, and <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/07/global-livestock-counts">this page</a> seems to have them. I didn't know that for every one of the 7 billion people on the planet there are almost 3 chickens, 19 billion in total. Chickens are better converters of animal feed (maize and soya) than other farm animals, perhaps especially when they are used for egg production.<br />
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There are 1.4 billion cattle. Cattle can eat grass that we can't eat, and some areas can't be used to grow crops but produce grass. Many cattle, perhaps the majority these days, are kept in feed lots and fed animal feed. There are 1 billion sheep. As far as I know sheep only eat grass although they might get a supplement of feed.<br />
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There are 1 billion pigs on the planet. They are not efficient converters of animal feed like chickens, neither can they eat grass like cattle and sheep can. Traditionally, pigs were fed on food that we can't eat, waste food or stale food. Nearly all pigs today are fed on a high-calorie high-protein diet consisting mostly of maize and soya. Pigs are about the same size as us, and I think they are the best example of how crops are being wasted by being fed to farm animals.<br />
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A billion is a big number. If you think about the entire population of North America, Central America, the Caribbean and South America combined, that doesn't come to a billion. If you think about the 6 giant cities in the Americas, each of which is bigger than any city in Europe, it makes you think. The global population of pigs is bigger than the entire human population of the Americas.<br />
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Of course we do end up eating the pigs, and they do sometimes eat what we would not want to. Nobody would want to eat pig food, but people have been eating maize and soya for thousands of years and enjoying it, along with wheat, barley and fish. Fish, especially anchovies, form part of animal feed. This is no way to feed the world.<br />
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According to the Economist site, in China there are 0.35 pigs per person. So for every 3 people there's a pig. No wonder they have to import grain. That's 451,000,000 pigs. In Denmark there are 2.24 pigs for every person, the only country where there are more pigs than people. There is no geographical reason why this should be so. Denmark is nowhere near where maize and soya are produced. You could understand it if countries like America, Brazil or Argentina had that ratio of pigs to people. I imagine vast fleets of ships carrying animal feed from the eastern coasts of North and South America to northern Europe. It seems a strange way of doing things, but then the global agricultural system has never made much sense.<br />
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Imagine a maize and soya farm in Brazil. Imagine if most of the maize and soya was exported to feed people, but some of it kept on the farm to feed a relatively small number of free-range pigs. Pig slurry was put back onto the land. The pigs could be slaughtered on site. Livers could be frozen and exported. Ham and bacon could be made on site providing employment and exported. Seems sensible to me, so sensible that you kind of know that nothing like this happens or will ever happen.<br />
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Instead we have pigs, one of the most intelligent animals, kept in horrible conditions. Slurry that can't be disposed of. New viruses and antibiotic resistant bacteria breeding away. One eighth of the world's population starving while an equal number grow fat. It's crazy, and no amount of GM technology or badger killing is going to make it better.<br />
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<br />Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-23037291453856509012013-09-30T13:21:00.003+01:002013-10-19T15:19:42.035+01:00instant noodlesI listened to the recent episode of Thinking Allowed on Radio 4. Laurie Taylor was talking to Deborah Gewertz about her book on instant noodles.<br />
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She had this to say.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>"... they will allow poor people to be sustained in contexts of extreme poverty. I would very much like a world in which extreme poverty did not exist but it does and it looks like it's going to get worse as the population of the world increases to 9 to 10 billion by 2050 and the question that we contemplate in our book is how are these people going to be fed. Of course we would love it if people had healthy food to eat but since it's not likely that poverty will decrease instant noodles will remain a proletarian hunger killer."</b></blockquote>
The problem with this is that if you do the calculation and work out how many calories per penny instant noodles provide then it isn't much compared to other foods.<br />
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<a href="http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=255630848">Tesco Everyday Value chicken flavour instant noodles</a> cost 15p for a 65g pack that has 260 calories.<br />
Lidl long-grain white rice costs 40p for 1kg and has 3,510 calories.<br />
Lidl organic whole-grain farfalle costs 99p for 500g and has 1,685 calories.<br />
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<i>instant noodles</i>: about <b>17</b> kcals/p<br />
<i>rice</i>: about <b>88</b> kcals/p<br />
<i>organic whole-grain pasta</i>: about <b>17</b> kcals/p<br />
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This means that rice provides more than 5 times the number of calories per penny as instant noodles, whereas the very much healthier organic whole-grain pasta is slightly cheaper. So it is wrong for Deborah Gewertz to state that poor people can't afford to eat healthier food than instant noodles. It is not only wrong but it is misleading people into making poor choices about how to feed their families and keep them healthy.<br />
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It is possible that instant noodles may be cheaper in some parts of the world than in Britain, but I wouldn't expect the relative price of instant noodles and rice to be much different. I think since writing this the cost of Tesco noodles is now 20p which makes them even less value for money. Looking at the information on the back of packets of noodles, it does seem that there is some confusion over how many calories they have. I'm going on the information provided on the Tesco site. It may turn out that instant noodles may be a bit cheaper than organic whole-grain pasta, but there is no doubt they are more expensive than rice.<br />
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Deborah Gewertz is one of many people who believe that unhealthy food is cheapest, and that's why poor people eat it. They all seem to disagree on what it is that poor people are condemned to eat. She believes that it is instant noodles. Danish food writer Katrine Klinken believes that is it cheese and butter. Zoe Williams and some of her fellow Guardian journalists believe it is burgers and crisps. They have all got it wrong, and it is easy to show that this is true. Just by looking at the facts. If anyone deserves to be likened to Marie Antoinette it is these three women, not people like me.<br />
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They seem to believe that poverty in Britain today is the same as poverty in Britain decades ago or poverty in countries like India today. It isn't. Nobody today is in the same situation as mining families in the 1920s. The problem with all these people is that they have to believe in one extreme or the other. There are some people who believe that poor people are totally responsible for the situation they find themselves in. They tend to be on the right of the Conservative Party. Then there are others who believe in the exact opposite, that poor people have absolutely no control over what happens to them whatsoever. They tend to be on the left of the Labour Party. They think poor people are victims, and that to suggest there are ways to eat more healthily and spend less money is blaming the victim.<br />
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The truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. We can all learn more about nutrition. We can all learn what we need to eat and what we can cut back on.Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-70811407832173101352013-08-12T13:27:00.001+01:002013-08-22T15:23:25.745+01:00tuberculosis and the importance of meatThis weekend I listened to the BBC Radio 4 programme <b>Any Questions?</b>. Benjamin Zephaniah was one of the guests. He is a vegan and had some interesting things to say on the question of diet. This was prompted by a question about lab-cultured burgers.<br />
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Benjamin seemed very up to date on the subject of how much protein people need and the importance of meat. The other contributors continue to believe the old-fashioned idea that people need large amounts of protein and that the only easy way to get that is through eating meat.<br />
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I was especially perturbed by what was said by Hugh Pennington, Emeritus Professor of Microbiology at Aberdeen University.<br />
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<i>I believe that the biggest factor in getting rid of tuberculosis in this country ... has been that people can buy cheap chicken. And chicken is the big big protein source. Herbert Hoover ran an election campaign ... on 'a chicken in every pot' but it was successful. Now you may not like the way the chickens are grown but it is very cheap very good protein, and that has saved lots and lots of lives. And white meat from chicken is good for you. Beef is a bit of a luxury. So that's where I stand. Chicken, eggs, milk and that sort of stuff.</i><br />
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It is true that when people are trying to recover from tuberculosis, or many diseases, that they should eat good quality protein. But, as it says on <a href="http://health.sify.com/nutrition-to-prevent-and-heal-tuberculosis/">this site</a> under the heading <b>High quality proteins to repair the damaged tissue</b> <br />
<ul>
<li>The best and easily digestible proteins are from egg whites and milk. About 2 eggs and 3 glasses of milk are required in a day.</li>
<li>Other good sources of protein are chicken, fish, meat, cheese, nuts and seeds, pulses.</li>
</ul>
So it looks like vegetarians can very easily get the protein that they need to recover from tuberculosis. They can have egg whites and milk. Or cheese, nuts, seeds and pulses. It also looks as if vegans can easily get the protein they need too. They can have nuts, seeds and pulses. So I really don't know why Professor Pennington is going on about chicken.<br />
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Another guest on the programme, Matthew Sinclair said <i>It's hard to get the full mixed proteins you need without meat</i>. This is simply not true. This belief stems from the time when scientists overestimated the amount of protein that people need. Now the scientific recommendations for the amount of protein that people need is much lower. I know that plant proteins tend to be slightly deficient in one or more of the amino acids, but when you have protein from different plants - such as grains and pulses - they make up for each other's deficiencies. That's not so important anyway now that we know people's protein requirements are more modest.<br />
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The other thing that Matthew Sinclair said I didn't like is what the audience member who asked the question also said. They said that scientists have done wonders in breeding crops to benefit mankind, so isn't it wonderful that now they are turning their attention to proteins. As if proteins only come from animals. Farm animals do not create proteins, they can only take protein from plants and very inefficiently re-organize them into their tissues. Soya and other pulses are the cheap proteins. It's about time people realized that, because if they don't we're never going to be able to feed the world.<br />
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People should not worry about whether they are getting enough protein. In Britain people, even poor people, get about one and a half times as much protein as they need. Even if they are recovering from an illness, such as TB, they wouldn't need to have more. Although, if they want to be on the safe side, they could have eggs and milk. If they want to worry about getting enough of any nutrients, it would make more sense if they worried about getting more vitamin D.<br />
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Vitamin D has been linked to TB, among other things, and it seems if you take more vitamin D then you are less likely to get TB or more likely to recover from it. It's difficult to get enough vitamin D from food sources or from sunlight, so I would take a vitamin D tablet. Not chicken. Eggs have got some vitamin D. Oily fish do too. So if you eat oily fish you get protein, omega-3 (another nutrient we could do with more of) and some vitamin D. Cod liver oil has omega-3 and some vitamin D. <br />
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The irony is that chickens are fed on animal feed that often contains anchovies. Anchovies are being overfished. <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/anchovy-is-king-in-peru-for-now-1845767.html">This Guardian article</a> is very interesting.<br />
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<strong>Betrand noted that despite accounting for the biggest stock in the world, anchovies are seldom used for human food, crushed instead into a fine flour to make animal feed for fowl, pigs and farm-raised fish.</strong> <br />
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If people fed less anchovies to animals like chickens and ate them themselves they would have cheaper protein, they would have more long-chain omega-3 and they would have more vitamin D. There would be less TB in the world. When anchovies are fed to chickens about half of the protein is lost, and nearly all of the omega-3 and vitamin D. It's not so bad if it is egg production and not meat.<br />
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Anchovies in the supermarket are expensive, but there should be a way of getting anchovies to people all over the world cheaply. You might say that people don't want to eat anchovies, but if instead of 'a chicken in every pot' for Americans we tried to get cheap protein in the form of soya and sustainably fished anchovies to everyone that would be a much better way of feeding the world.<br />
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Soya in the form of tofu and tempeh has a bland flavour but miso is delicious. Anchovies could combine quite well with miso, even in the form of anchovy flour, to make a tasty soup or stock. There may be other ways to use anchovies.<br />
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Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-40876447307570703072013-07-23T15:55:00.002+01:002013-07-24T17:42:14.209+01:00kidney stones and dietOn the BBC Radio 4 programme Inside Health on 16/07/13 Dr Mark Porter was talking about kidney stones. He said that they affect one in ten of the population and the pain can be worse than childbirth. Surgeon Bhaskar Somani said that to avoid kidney stones we should drink lots of water and have a diet low in salt and low in red meat. He also said that it can be a good idea to avoid plants high in oxalate such as spinach, beetroot and rhubarb.<br />
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This interested me because I have been reading about low-oxalate diets since reading <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2174474/The-GP-gave-fruit-veg-cure-aches-pains.html">this article in the Daily Mail</a>. I have tried a low-oxalate diet to see if it has an effect on me. I have suffered from tiredness and poor sleep all my life. It didn't seem to have any effect. Despite having a great interest in nutrition, I had no knowledge of the low-oxalate diet before reading the Daily Mail article, and I thought that not many people believed in it until I heard this episode of Inside Health.<br />
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Unfortunately, many healthy foods have considerable amounts of oxalate in them. Whole grains such as brown rice have. Some common vegetables such as cabbage do. Some nuts such as almonds do. I avoided these things for a while, but no longer. However, after listening to Inside Health I shall avoid spinach, beetroot, rhubarb and Swiss chard which are all particularly high in oxalate. I already have a diet low in salt and red meat. I intend to drink lots of water and drink it frequently. If kidney stones affect one in ten of us and the pain is worse than childbirth then it makes a lot of sense to do this.<br />
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I shall also take calcium and magnesium citrate in pill form. This helps to remove oxalate from the system.<br />
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Most people are not sensitive to oxalate but some people are. Most people don't have to worry about their oxalate intake, but it seems to make sense for all of us to avoid the very high-oxalate foods such as spinach. There's no point in taking any chances when it comes to kidney stones.Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-26815589944797080532013-06-04T14:34:00.000+01:002013-06-10T15:33:18.540+01:00eat less meat or face food shortage<strong>The Commons international development committee said farmers should rear more animals on grass because livestock is land and energy intensive and grain should be saved for humans.</strong><br />
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This is what it said in this <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2335424/Eat-meat-face-food-shortage-Nannying-MPs-astonishing-warning-unhelpful-say-farmers.html">Daily Mail article</a>. This is what I have been saying all along. The farmers seem to be up in arms about this statement. Nobody is saying that we shouldn't use land that can't be used to grow grain or other crops to grow grass for cattle or sheep. We're saying that we shouldn't import vast quantities of maize and soya to feed cattle, pigs and chickens. We should be eating more grain and pulses ourselves.<br />
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The article also said:-<br />
<br />
<strong>The committee raised concerns about the impact of biofuels – derived from plants such as sugar cane and maize – on the environment and on food prices.</strong><br />
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<strong>Vast swathes of agricultural land are set aside to grow fuel crops, pushing up the price of staple goods. By law, at least 5 per cent of petrol and diesel sold on British forecourts must be biofuel.</strong><br />
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<strong>The MPs called on ministers to consider using domestic stockpiles of food to protect against price hikes.</strong><br />
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<strong>As well as claiming grain should be fed to humans instead of animals, vegetarians and green activists tell steak lovers livestock farming is a major source of harmful greenhouse gases.</strong> <br />
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At the end of the article it mentions the Cranfield University research that seems to show that meat substitutes are not better than meat. I've looked at this research and it doesn't seem to make sense. It seems to be saying that if British people eat more soya, chickpeas and lentils then, because they are grown abroad, more land abroad has to be cultivated. So maybe forests abroad will have to be cut down to grow soya etc.<br />
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This seems to me to be complete nonsense. What we are saying is that vast quantitites or maize and soya are grown abroad and used to feed farm animals. If we eat less meat, then most of the maize and soya that is grown abroad will be available for human consumption. We could use that land for other crops too, such as chickpeas and lentils, and also farm less intensively. No extra land would be needed.<br />
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I'm annoyed with farmers and Cranfield University with trying to muddy the waters here. This is an issue of the global food supply and personal health. It's as if they want people to believe that when British people go to the supermarket and buy meat it will come from an animal that will have grazed on a Welsh hillside or something. The reality is that most farm animals are fed on maize and soya grown in tropical countries. If we used that soya for tofu instead of feeding animals then we would need LESS cultivated land and not MORE.<br />
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Another recent Daily Mail article says that <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2335444/Are-vegetarian-diets-secret-long-life-People-avoid-meat-better-health-lower-blood-pressure.html">recent research shows that vegetarians are healthier than meat eaters</a>. That doesn't necessarily mean that vegetarianism causes good health because it is a correlation not cause-and-effect, but it makes the vested interests of the farming lobby seem even more immoral in their attempts to make people believe that British meat is all natural and healthy.<br />
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In any case, the Cranfield University 'research' is talking about the value of meat substitutes. People don't need to replace meat with a substitute. They don't need as much protein as they think they do. I could agree with the statement below, found <a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/wales/ps/pdf/vegetarian_h4.pdf">here</a>.<br />
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<strong>Donal Murphy-Bokern, one of the (</strong>Cranfield University<strong>) study authors and the former farming and food science co-ordinator at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said: “<em>For some people, tofu and other meat substitutes symbolise environmental friendliness but they are not necessarily the badge of merit people claim. Simply eating more bread, pasta and potatoes instead of meat is more environmentally friendly</em>.”</strong><br />
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Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8424824394930242354.post-90106649014518883472013-05-20T16:02:00.000+01:002013-05-20T16:18:57.527+01:00Polly Toynbee playing at being poorI have been reading <strong>Hard Work</strong> by Polly Toynbee. Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee tried living on a council estate and tried different low-paid jobs. I was interested in Chapter 4 <strong>Spending</strong> where she recounts trying to buy food cheaply. She went to Lidl, seemingly for the first time in her life, and bought what she thought was cheap food.<br />
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Looking at the list of foods she bought, my first thought is that she's including rice, pasta and yellow split peas. That's good, rice and pasta are really the cheapest foods that you can buy, and yellow split peas are a cheap source of protein. There was something a bit strange about this list though. She wrote that 1 kg of rice cost 55p, even though it was reduced in price. However, in Lidl and a number of supermarkets cheap rice has been 40p a kilo for a number of years.<br />
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The other strange thing is that she wrote that Lidl doesn't sell lentils. She wrote that she went to Sainsbury's to buy lentils. Lidl do sell lentils, and have done so for years. I remember that they were 88p per half kilo for years, and now they are 90 something p. The book was published in 2003 but I find it difficult to believe that cheap rice was 55p per kilo and they didn't have any lentils.<br />
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She was quite pleased with her efforts. She wrote:-<br />
<br />
<strong><blockquote>
I add it up and it totals £8.05! How clever! I feel like one of those smug people who sometimes send me letters responding to pieces I have written about poverty, boasting about how they brought up family of six on lentils and home-made bread - and jolly good it was for them too.</blockquote>
</strong><br />
She doesn't comprehend that when someone sends her letters like this it's not because they are boasting, it's because they are angry. If a journalist writes something - that poor people can't possibly afford to eat healthy food - and a poor people knows that this is false, then they want to show that the journalist is wrong. It makes them angry that journalists are not helping poor people by telling them they are condemned to eating unhealthy food for the rest of their lives when they know damned well that this is not so. They know it's not so because they have been eating healthy food for years on little money.<br />
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Perhaps Polly Toynbee would think that Jack Monroe is smug too. Jack Monroe is a single mother who writes <a href="http://agirlcalledjack.com/">a blog</a> where she shows people how to cook for little money. There's <a href="http://agirlcalledjack.com/category/below-the-line-budget-recipes/">a section on her blog</a> detailing budget recipes. I think that Jack Monroe is more of a help to poor people than Polly Toynbee will ever be.<br />
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Polly Toynbee ends chapter 4 by saying that if you're poor you might as well go into debt because they've got nothing to lose. I suppose if I was to suggest to some of my neighbours in my council block of flats that they would be better off going to a credit union than a loan shark, she would consider that smug too.<br />
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In my estimation, there's nothing more smug than a middle class Guardian journalist who goes to Lidl for the first time in her life as material for her book but doesn't stick around for long enough to find out where the cheap rice and the lentils are.Bête de Nuithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03742878105695808899noreply@blogger.com0