potassium salts and osteoporosis

Last week on Woman's Hour (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.

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.

"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 ..."

In saying "we've got to start giving some simple messages not from doctors" 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 'Do I want to eat 10 bananas a day?'.

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.

Last year Michael Pollan gave a lecture on BBC Radio 4's Analysis (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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If you believe Michael Pollan you will believe

1. if you're poor, don't even bother to try and eat healthy food because you won't be able to
2. you can eat at any amount of any type of fat that you want
3. you should avoid carbohydrate, don't distinguish between sugars and starches, or low GI starches and high GI ones
4. 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

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.

trust me, I'm a doctor

Last night I watched episode 2 of Trust Me, I'm A Doctor. 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 this page:-

'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.'

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'.

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.

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.

new study shows healthy foods more expensive?

There is a study published this week 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Michael Pollan, poor people and healthy food

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:-

"...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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

cheaper than anywhere else but tasting better?

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.

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.

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.

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.

The other thing I love is Lancashire Farm yogurt. 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.

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.

Michael Mosley, the Daily Mail, and saturated fat

When I was listening to late-night radio recently they started to discuss an article in the Daily Mail about saturated fat and heart disease. The article was written by Dr Michael Mosley. The presenter said that he didn't realize that pasta and potatoes are bad for you.

I took a good look at the article because I thought what he wrote is wrong. This is what he wrote.

"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.
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.
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.
Carbohydrates are also less satiating than fat or protein. So you eat more and the weight creeps up."

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.

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.

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.

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.

He mentions research that shows olive oil and fish oil are healthy, and then goes on to mention the recent research funded by the British Heart Foundation and published this year. Mosley says 'the researchers found no evidence that saturated fats cause heart disease'.

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.

At least, when these three fatty acids are found in good quantities in the blood, there is a lower heart risk. Yet the study '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'. 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?

"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."

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.

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.

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.

There's an interesting New Scientist article that says a lot of the same things as I'm saying.

the cost of calories

I came across this page on the Food Commission site. They claim to be 'Britain's leading, independent watchdog on food issues'. They have a chart similar to my own, 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.

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:-

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.

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.

Foodstuffs	Cost of 100 calories in pence
Long-grain rice	1.2
Spaghetti	1.3
Vegetable oil	1.3
Digestive biscuits	1.6
Custard cream biscuits	1.8
Sugar	2.0
Porridge	2.1
Extra virgin olive oil	3.2
Couscous	3.6

How I worked out the cost of 100 calories
Long-grain rice: 40p per kilo: 3,510 kcals per kilo: 40/35.1=1.139
Spaghetti: 46p per kilo: 3,500 kcals per kilo: 46/35=1.314
Vegetable oil: £1.09 per litre: 8,280 kcals per litre: 109/82.8=1.316
Digestive biscuits (Tower Gate): 31p per 400g pack: 4,990 kcals per kilo: 77.5/49.9=1.553
Custard cream biscuits: 35p per 400g pack: 4,950 kcals per kilo: 87.5/49.5=1.767
Sugar: 79p per kilo: 4,000 kcals per kilo: 79/40=1.975
Porridge: 39p per 500g: 3,750 kcals per kilo: 78/37.5=2.08
Extra virgin olive oil (Primadonna): £1.99 per 750ml: 8,210 kcals per litre: 199/61.575=3.23
Couscous: £1.35 per kilo: 3,750 kcals per kilo: 135/37.5=3.6

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.

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.

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.

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.
Potatoes: £4.29 per 7.5 kilo: 820 kcals per kilo: 57.2/8.2=7
Frozen Garden Peas or Petit Pois: 99p per kilo: 750 kcals per kilo: 99/7.5=13.2
Frozen Supersweet Corn: £1.40 per kilo: 910 kcals per kilo: 140/9.1=15.4

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. Tesco Everyday Value 20 frozen pork sausages work out at 6.8p per 100 calories. Tesco Everyday Value White Potatoes 2.5Kg work out at 5.6p per 100 calories. So it's cheaper to get calories from potatoes (healthy) than sausages (unhealthy). Tesco Everyday Value Garden Peas work out at 12.4p per 100 calories. Tesco Everyday Value Sweetcorn 907G works out at 9.5p per 100 calories.

When it comes to protein, the sausages give 0.63g of protein per penny. Tesco Everyday Value Chicken Breast Fillets are even worse value for money providing 0.48g of protein per penny. Tesco Yellow Split Peas 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.

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.

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.

Supermarket	Foodstuffs	Cost of 100 calories in pence
Lidl	Long-grain rice	1.2
Lidl	Spaghetti	1.3
Lidl	Vegetable oil	1.3
Lidl	Digestive biscuits	1.6
Lidl	Custard cream biscuits	1.8
Lidl	Sugar	2.0
Lidl	Porridge	2.1
Tesco	Natco Fine corn meal (polenta)	3.2
Lidl	Extra virgin olive oil	3.2
Tesco	Yellow split peas	3.5
Lidl	Couscous	3.6
Tesco	Everyday Value White potatoes	5.7
Tesco	Everyday Value 20 Pork sausages (frozen)	6.8
Lidl	Potatoes	7.0
Tesco	Everyday Value Sweetcorn (frozen)	9.5
Tesco	Everyday Value Garden peas (frozen)	12.4
Lidl	Garden peas or petit pois (frozen)	13.2
Lidl	Supersweet corn (frozen)	15.4
Tesco	Everyday Value Chicken breast fillets (frozen)	39.9

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.

1. fatty and/or sugary food, often high in salt too
2. low starch vegetables such as cabbages and carrot, salad and fruit
3. low-GI grains and grain products such as rice, pasta, porridge and polenta
4. dried pulses such as yellow/green split peas, lentils and beans
5. higher starch vegetables such as potatoes, frozen peas and frozen sweetcorn
6. oil

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.

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.

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.