WE ARE WHAT WE EAT

[Stanley]

I think you are right Tiz and while I can't remember the date I know that the USDA funded a programme to 'prove' that saturates were bad for us but couldn't find any evidence so after I think it was seven years, stopped the programme. The fault of course lies with the food processors who swallowed the bad research on saturates and heart attacks hook line and sinker and threw their resources behind the change to other fats, including transfats, that gave longer shelf life and better profits. They did this by confusing the fact that over indulgence in any fat with lack of exercise leads to obesity and the heart problem not the type of fat. I often wonder how many deaths have been caused indirectly by this big lie..... It could dwarf the war dead.

[Stanley]

See THIS for an encouraging result from Rothamstead of vegetables that have been modified genetically to produce long chain Omega3 oils. There will be the usual screams from the dinosaurs but this is important. We can't get enough fish oil from the sea to fulfil the world's needs. I firmly believe that one of the most important things I have learned in my reading of lipid research is that the balance between long chain Omega3 and other fats is a crucial factor. The more that is available the better!

[Stanley]

See THIS for a BBC report of the warning issued by dentists about tooth decay in children caused by sugar. (Worst in the NW according to some reports) Nothing new here of course, we have known about the dangers for as long as I can remember. The question is, have we collectively gone mad? We have allowed the food processors and manufacturers to use sugar and other ingredients to fuel addiction. There are hysterical demands for 100% tax on sugar which of course will come to nothing. It is high time the whole power of the food lobby was attacked not only on sugar but on all the other matters we have been nattering on about for years in this topic. If we can see the problem why don't the legislators ignore the lobby and act on behalf of the children and the rest of the customers....? The medical profession is right, this is ridiculous.

[Tizer]

For a couple of decades now scientists have been recommending that we eat a diet with a high long-chain omega-3 to omega-6 ratio for optimal health. The implication was that raising your omega-3 intake would outweigh the adverse effects of the omega-6. However evidence is now accumulating that raising omega-3 intake is not enough and that we still need to reduce omega-6. Perhaps it isn't surprising that this information has been slow to trickle out when you take into account that omega-6 oils are the preserve of the major vegetable oil (corn/maize oil, sunflower oil) companies while omega-3 (fish oil) has been promoted by smaller businesses. A reflection of the power of vested interests once again. But we'll begin to see efforts to get us to reduce omega-6 oil intake - look instead for rapeseed oil, olive oil, palm oil or high-oleic versions of sunflower.

For anyone wanting a scientific review of the role of omega-3 in nutrition and the development of plant sources of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids this is available free of charge on the Web and is written by world renowned experts in the subject: LINK

[Stanley]

Good link and sound evidence. I agree on the balance question entirely. Mt reading persuaded me that apart from natural animal fats, I only use the very best olive oil. The one I settled on was 'Il Casolare'. Cold pressed unfiltered, a lovely olive green colour and thick sediment in the bottom of the bottle. If you take some neat on a piece of dry bread it tastes good as well! Still swigging my cod liver oil each morning.....

[Tripps]

Here we go again.

I changed from sunflower oil to 'vegetable' oil on Tiz's recommendation - as I recall it. Now I'll have to seek out rape seed oil. I think the Americas don't like that name, and call it Canola?

After reading about on here - I bought a bottle of Il Casolare recently, and it's exactly as described - problem is, it costs £7.50 per litre at Tesco, which is a lot for someone with my respect for money..

Not a big problem though - I don't use much oil, so I doubt it will affect my lifespan.

[Stanley]

David, Tiz will give the specifics no doubt but some 'Canola' Oil has been modified and isn't as good as it sounds so be careful.

[Tizer]

Tripps, in my post in November 2013 I recommended using rapeseed oil instead of sunflower oil: LINK In the UK, rapeseed oil is often labelled as simply `Vegetable oil' in the supermarkets because they shy away from the `rape' word. If you look at the ingredients listing on the label you'll see whether or not is says `Rapeseed oil'. As you note, America and Canada hide it under the trade name Canola but that isn't normally used in the UK. (By rights Canola should only be used to describe rapeseed or rapeseed oil grown from the Canadian Canola Council's seed.)

Rapeseed oil is known as a `high-oleic' oil and it's the presence of predominantly oleic acid that makes it a healthier choice. There is beginning to be some high-oleic sunflower oil used but it tends to be more expensive and is used more as an ingredient (e.g. in potato crisps) than sold as a frying oil. Olive oil is also high-oleic but the extra-virgin olive oil has extra healthy ingredients such as antioxidants. Buying Il Casolare is a bit like buying wine - keep an eye open for the `special offers' and then snap up a bottle. Sainsbury's reduce it to about £4 now and then; that's the time to buy!

[Tripps]

Thanks for that. I think I've got it now. The distinction between vegetable and rapeseed oil gave me the confusion. Actually since I don't use a lot of oil, I could change to Casolare, and still remain solvent. You're right - I did see it reduced to £6.50 recently.

I'm trying to lose weight - it's a struggle this time. Might try Stanley's steak pudding diet - seems to work for him.

[PanBiker]

Not right for everyone but this is a straight calories in out / exercise regime, all done online. My lad lost 6st on this, Sally has lost in the region of 2st and I have done about 1.5 stone by monitoring what we eat. I have 5lb to go to reach my target. You can just use it to monitor what you are eating if this helps. It's amazing when you see the raw breakdown of various foods and can see how easy it is to put on weight. It's free to register.

MyFitnessPal

[Stanley]

David, the reason my steak pudding diet works is because I suspect I am very active for my age. As for 'dieting', I don't do it.... I just try to east less at each meal and nothing i9n between. I also suspect I am slightly peculiar in that I only eat two meals a day, one at 11AM and one at 5Pm. Theoretically this is all wrong but I never have hunger pangs or snacks between meals. I doubt if any nutritionist would recommend this! However, I was just under 14 stone for years and and now 2 lbs over 12 stone and still losing weight very slowly.
The weight seems to have come off fairly evenly but the biggest change is my belly fat, the bit they tell us is most dangerous. I'll be interested to see what my bloods are at my next diabetes assessment! My blood sugar has been slightly elevated, that's what triggered them off to declare me diabetic but I have always questioned this, we are all different....
So my advice is to eat the things you enjoy including good fats. Just eat less and remember that sugar belongs to the devil! You can't avoid it completely, so many foods including raw natural ones have sugar in them. The only sugar I buy is for my bread, the yeast works better if it has a bit of sugar to work on!
Oh, and cook everything for yourself.......

[PanBiker]

Utilising MyFitnessPal is not a diet either, it's just a very efficient way of watching what you eat and sorting out the checks and balances from food intake versus activity and exercise.

The basic deal is this, an average male requires about 2400 calories per day to fuel a normal lifestyle. This will very slightly depending on how active you normally are during the day. So, you input your existing weight and height set the target weight you want to achieve and the application will set you a calorie tariff for each day that will result in the weight loss you are aiming for. You enter what you have to eat for the three main meals of the day, breakfast, lunch and dinner plus any snacks, the aim is to keep under your daily tariff. The food database built into the application is extensive and I have yet to find anything that the system cannot calculate the nutritional value of. Bar coded products can be scanned from the smartphone application that you can download and registered against any meal. You build up a food database as it remembers all the stuff you have consumed so staple stuff can retrieved very easily. You can copy meals about if you have regular favorites and you can also construct recipes and divide them into portions.

It's a change of lifestyle application really as it encourages you to take more exercise. You can enter exercise manually or the application integrates with a number of sports fitness trackers. I use Endomondo for tracking walking and cycling. Data produced by the tracker on my phone is automatically transferred into MyFitnessPal and the calories gained are added to your daily intake allowance.

My start weight was 13st which at my height of 5'9" is slightly overweight my BMI was slightly high but not obese. Coupled with this my BP and Cholesterol were also slightly high, none in any danger zone but could be better. I set myself a goal of 11st which is what I used to weigh until I was about 50 years of age. Part of my weight gain I attribute to giving up smoking but also a change to less manual work in an office based environment.

I start each day with and allowance of 1550 calories which allows me to consume three meals a day plus the odd snack. If I go for a walk or a bike ride I gain calories depending on the intensity or duration of the workout. A walk of 3 to 5 miles will gain between 200 and 500 calories, even more if I put a hill in the way. Cycling is even better 18 to 20 miles on the bike is 1000 to 1200 calories, the 35 miles I did the other day gained over 2,200 calories. Of course during exercise you may well be eating to fuel what you are doing so any intake there is just recorded in the snacks section of the application. On a decent bike ride I may well eat my way through 600 calories just to keep the legs and stamina going, quite easy to do with oat biscuits, mars bar and a banana or other fruit to help you along.

The beauty of the application is that it shows you exactly what the nutritional value is of what you are eating so you also get a very good idea of what to avoid. It also encourages you to be more creative on the cooker.

[Tizer]

It sounds like an excellent tool for improving health, Ian. You wrote "My start weight was 13st which at my height of 5'9" is slightly overweight my BMI was slightly high but not obese." An active person like yourself, doing a lot of walking and cycling, will have greater muscle mass which is what tends to `fool' the Body Mass Index calculation, giving the impression that you have more fat than you really have. In other words, you should be allowed a higher BMI if you're more active.

[PanBiker]

Yes, BMI is not necessarily the best indicator but it is part of the overall picture. My doc uses the calculation as part of his survivability algorithm that he uses to assess the likelihood of developing something nasty in the next 10 years.

I have to say that since I had the suspected TIA thing just after Christmas it does tend to focus your mind somewhat. All my tests came back OK but there was clearly room for improvement. Following the new regime has brought my cholesterol down dramatically between the blood test done at three months interval, my BP is also down. My weight is currently 11st 5lb from 13st so it's working. I would like to lose a little more off the middle, 2" gone there it would be better if I could get back to a proper 32", my target 11st might get me there but standard cardio vascular workouts such as walking and cycling will not target fat to muscle there. You get used to recording all your food each day and when you sign off your daily intake after your last food entry the system tells you what you would weigh in 5 weeks if every day was the same, each day doesn't pan out like that of course but it does give constant encouragement.

It would be interesting to plumb Stanley's two walks per day in to see exactly what benefit he gets from them. I could manually enter them in Endomondo and it would give a breakdown. I could enter then in MyFitnessPal as well, it has various activities built in that it can calculate calorie loss from.

[Stanley]

If something works for you it's good. lots of exercise is good as well if you're body can stand it. As a doctor once told me, the best start in life for a young person straight out of school is to work like a horse and eat like one as well. That way you put bone mass on and it stands you in good stead for the rest of your life. I don't see gentle walks and activity as calorie burners, just as sensible and enjoyable. My body is worn out now and heavy exercise would be damaging so food intake is the only effective route.
The big danger today is poor quality fast food in terms of chemical content and quality of ingredients. I hate the campaign 'Just Eat'. As for BMI. a friend of mine who was definitely obese, Danny Pateman, always said there was nothing wrong with his weight, it was just that he was too short.....

[Tizer]

Here we are again, back at the `which oil is best' question! BBC2 has a TV programme on Wednesday evening titled Trust Me, I'm a Doctor looking at different frying oils and a web article about it titled `Which oils are best to cook with?'... LINK

It's all interesting stuff and fits with our OG advice to avoid polyunsaturates like sunflower oil and use monounsaturates such as olive and rapeseed oil. But I have some reservations. First, note that the study done for the BBC was restricted to one aspect - the amount of chemical toxins formed during frying with the different oils - and it doesn't fully address the important subject of the relationship between fatty acid composition and health. If you use your oil as a salad dressing it won't form the toxins but it's fatty acid composition will nevertheless govern its effects on your health. Second, it makes little mention of rapeseed oil except to specify cold-pressed rapeseed oil. It included an unnamed`vegetable oil' in the test but we don't know if this was rapeseed oil (unless they enlighten us in the TV programme).

Having said that, the conclusions of the report are in line with our own advice. Avoid sunflower and go for olive or rapeseed oil. Interestingly, the report also says:

`Prof Grootveld generally recommends olive oil for frying or cooking. "Firstly because lower levels of these toxic compounds are generated, and secondly the compounds that are formed are actually less threatening to the human body." His research also suggests that when it comes to cooking, frying in saturate-rich animal fats or butter may be preferable to frying in sunflower or corn oil. "If I had a choice," he says, "between lard and polyunsaturates, I'd use lard every time." Lard, despite its unhealthy reputation, is actually rich in monounsaturated fats.'

Another comment from the professor was:

"When it comes to cooking it doesn't seem to matter whether the olive oil is "extra virgin" or not. "The antioxidant levels present in the extra virgin products are insufficient to protect us against heat-induced oxidation."

This is where I would want to emphasise the distinction between frying with the oil (heat treatment) and using it as a dressing oil (no heating). In the latter case we ingest the antioxidants, they pass into our bloodstream and help prevent deleterious oxidation in our body tissues.

[Stanley]

Interesting post Tiz and, from my reading, I agree with the Professor. I use olive oil for straight frying but clean the pan frequently. For deep frying I use pure beef dripping and have always suspected that it has a longer life in the fryer than any of the oils.
However, I think it's as well to say that in statements about the dangers of the break-down of some oils under heat treatment, we are talking about very low levels of risk, you won't die if you transgress occasionally. My view is that it's the cumulative effect over the years which eventually makes the difference. I think our way is good and sensible. Our advice is good but shouldn't frighten anyone, it is a collection of guidelines based on reading the research and I will be continuing to practice what I preach....
A parallel example of how we can survive far greater dangers is the barbecue. There is good evidence that this way of cooking definitely produces high levels of carcinogens. Incense smoke in RC churches carries much the same danger. Imagine legislating against that!

[Tripps]

There does seem to have been a sea change in public attitudes to fats in recent weeks. On the advice of this site - I changed from sunflower oil to 'vegetable' oil with some olive oil. The term 'vegetable' oil is a bit generic, and I've found that the last two bottles I got are in fact rapeseed oil, (so that's OK then), but you have to read the very small print on the back of the bottle.

I think 'extra virgin' (wonderful phrase), rapeseed oil is just a marketing concept, copying olive oil.

It seems that sugar has replaced fat as public enemy number one - so much so that it was reported recently that a lot of the sugar beet crop (25% ?) in East Anglia has been taken out of production.

As a result of my research - I now have enough oil in the cupboard to last me about two years.

[Tizer]

As a result of my research - I now have enough oil in the cupboard to last me about two years.

Let's hope those pesky scientists don't change their mind again during the next two years!

Stanley's hit the nail on the head with his phrase `you won't die if you transgress occasionally'. This is fundamental to nutrition. One of the main reasons for today's nutrition health problems is that we transgress too frequently...every day in the case of some people!

[Stanley]

I watched 'Trust me I'm a doctor' last night and it was interesting. I would have liked to have seen pure beef dripping included in the fats tested. I have always had this hunch that the harder the fat, the better it is for you. Good beef dripping is almost a solid!
My remark about transgressing occasionally is largely based on my belief that variety in diet is very important. For instance, many microbiologists have pointed out that occasional ingestion of 'dirt', like garden soil, can be a wonderful stimulus to the immune system of a growing child and could reduce the incidence of things like allergies. This is why I attach such importance to the maintenance of trace elements and microbial activity in soil used for growing food. We know so little about the effects and it wouldn't surprise me if this isn't a breakthrough whose time may be approaching.....

[Tizer]

More information on sugar...
`Sugar: Can we trust industry?' LINK

[Stanley]

'Pure white and deadly'. The only added sugar I use is molasses sugar in my bread....

[Tizer]

One for Maz and Cath, a BBC news story today about a CSIRO study which states"...of 40,000 Australians found, on average, people consumed 32kg of chocolate a year." LINK

Can this really be true? I viewed the CSIRO's own press release and it says the same, 32kg a year. How bizarre. The latest figures for the UK are 11kg a year and here we are usually said to consume a lot more chocolate than the Aussies. Other European countries consume much less than us, 8kg for Belgium and about 4kg for France. But 32kg a year for Australia? That's chocolate eating on an industrial scale - 32kg is 32000g which is equivalent to 640 bars of chocolate a year which is just under 2 bars every day. I can't believe the claim. Not everyone in Australia will be eating so much chocolate so it would mean some folk must be stuffing themselves with 3 or 4 bars day! It makes me wonder if CSIRO has messed up and has confused figures for`chocolate' with those for `chocolate confectionery' (which includes cakes etc).

[Stanley]

I agree Peter, sounds bizarre! Especially when you factor in people like me who probably eat four bars a year!

[Tizer]

Maz and Cath are noticeably silent on this...could it be they've eaten too much chocolate?