WE ARE WHAT WE EAT

[EileenDavid]

Thanks for the advise. I will pass your messages on but she has been taking 20+ but worth the cost as it has definately worked. Eileen

[Tizer]

From the newsletter of the Institute of Food Technologists, 25 July 2012
Cheese, yogurt may help prevent diabetes
"A study published in the `American Journal of Clinical Nutrition' shows that consuming cheese or yogurt may help prevent diabetes. Researchers hypothesized that fermentation of cheese could trigger a reaction that protects against diabetes. British and Dutch researchers looked at the diets of 16,800 healthy adults and 12,400 patients with type 2 diabetes from eight European countries, including the United Kingdom. The study found that those who ate at least 55 g of cheese a day—around two slices—were 12% less likely to develop type 2 diabetes. The risk fell by the same amount for those who ate 55 g of yogurt a day.

"These finding go against NHS guidelines, which advise against eating too much dairy, cake, or red meat as they are high in saturated fat. This is thought to increase cholesterol and raise the risk of diabetes. But the researchers say not all saturated fats are as harmful as others, and some may even be beneficial. One theory is that the so-called ‘probiotic’ bacteria in cheese and yogurt lower cholesterol and produce certain vitamins that prevent diabetes. And cheese, milk, and yogurt are also high in vitamin D, calcium, and magnesium, which may help protect against the condition."
(Am J Clin Nutr, August 2012, vol. 96, no. 2, 382-390)

[Whyperion]

Cheese definately seems to make me fat(ter)

[Stanley]

I watched a recording of 'The Food Factory' and they were making dog food. In the course of the programme they gave the impression that the meat content was all fit for human consumption. I suppose it all depends on what your definition of 'fit' is! If they had, like me, seen the horrible fly infested meat processing industry waste that went into making 'protein granules' for use in pet foods I suspect they might have been a bit less enthusiastic. Look at the label, if you see 'protein granules' or 'meat derivatives' you can be sure that you wouldn't want to eat it!
Another thing that cropped up was the use of 'cheese analogue' to bulk out the 'cheese' content of commercial pizzas. It has nothing to do with cheese! I remember also working at a processing plant where out of date cheese was taken in from supermarkets, processed and extruded and went out as mozzarella cheese for pizza topping with a sell by date of 6 months. Not everything is what it seems!

[Stanley]

Watched the Horizon programme on intermittent fasting as a prophylactic against 'The Western Diseases' last night. Interesting stuff and well worth watching if you can get it on I-player.

[Stanley]

My butcher is on holiday this week so I got Jack's mince from the Cathedral of Choice, Two 400gm packs of 'minced beef'. I knew it would have more fat in it, 20% according to the label. However, what struck me was the fact that I put some water in with it just as I do usually and when it started cooking I was surprised to see how much the proportion of water had increased. It was quite evident that the 'minced beef' has a far higher proportion of water than Stewart's. I examined the label and there is no way of getting an idea of the percentage of water. Further, if the proportion of fat is calculated on the total weight, as appears to be the case, the fact that there is excess water means that the actual proportion of fat in the meat is higher. Is there a cunning wheeze at work here. I tend to think that we are being sold water at £6.25 a kilo!

[Tizer]

They are not required to state the water content of foods or food products on labels. For cuts, slices or joints of meats and fish they must state the amount (%) of `added water' if it is above 5% - but there are loopholes which allow them to get away without this on many such products.

[Tizer]

One of my scientist friends in New Zealand went to the Auckland Food Show and found a company promoting their `extra-virgin coconut oil' as being the healthiest oil available, which is complete rubbish (his description was `spinning a snake oil story'). Not only that, it's label details didn't meet NZ regulations. He bought a tub of the oil "at an exorbitant price" and analysed its contents. The oil proved to be refined,bleached and deodorised (RBD) which means it definitely isn't `extra-virgin' and should not be described as such. Extra-virgin oils are untreated and therefore retain all the antioxidants and vitamins that would otherwise be removed by the RBD process. Unfortunately for the company he writes the newsletter of the oils & fats group of the NZ Institute of Chemistry, so the news has been spread widely! Perhaps the company executives will learn a lesson - yet another company that thinks it's OK to tell blatant lies.

[Stanley]

Splendid! Google indexes us so fast these days that perhaps we should start deliberately inserting key phrases that relate to any searches like LIPID RESEARCH, over the years we have talked more sense on this site about the subject than any of the marketing companies.

[Tizer]

Here's some key phrases for google...omega-3 fatty acid, n-3 fatty acid, polyunsaturated, PUFA, monounsaturated, MUFA, saturated, linoleic, linolenic, oleic, oil, fat, lipid, medium chain triglycerides, vitamin, antioxidant, conjugated linoleic acid, CLA, trans fatty acid, TFA, protein, carbohydrate, sugar, amino acid, nutrition, diet, obesity, health, food.

[Tripps]

Well done - here's a reference for the pharmaceutical industry
.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012 ... sfeed=true

So - that's the bankers, the food industry, and now the drug companies that we can't trust.

[Stanley]

Bloody frightening isn't it! It reinforces my firm conviction that the less pills you take the better! I've done the best I can to research my Metformin and think I am reasonably safe but as soon as my doctor talks about things like statins I run a mile!

[Tizer]

Thanks for the link Tripps! It confirms what I've seen elsewhere and adds to my suspicions about the drugs industry. I've mentioned before how the industry promotes its drugs for application in diseases for which they have never been tested. It all seems money driven and is another example of mendacity becoming normal in our culture.

[Tizer]

According to Reuters, soft drink makers and a restaurant group filed a lawsuit on 12 October seeking to block New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s upcoming ban on large sugary drinks. They won't allow anything to get in the way of making a profit out of making people obese.

[Stanley]

The seeming immunity of the food industry to any regulation of activities proved to have an adverse effect on customers is one of the best examples of the power of big business due to financial clout and ability to lobby governments. I tears to come it will be seen as a human disaster on an enormous scale. How long until group actions in the US? The classic non-food example was the asbestos industry and it was a class action that eventually got a ban but not until they had caused enormous damage.

[Stanley]

Have a look at this LINK for a report on the enormous amount of food that is wastged throughout the world. It's a sad commentary in a world where so many go hungry.

[Stanley]

See this LINK for reports of horse meat found in burgers. Most likely source seems to be imported mechanically recovered meat used to bulk up the burgers and lower production costs. Moral? Go to a good butcher's!
Food labelling regulations will almost certainly mean that fresh milk will qualify for an amber warning because of its natural sugar content. Makes you wonder how we survived when we were ignorant.....

[PostmanPete]

See this LINK for reports of horse meat found in burgers.

I suspect there will be a Stewards Inquiry into this.....

[Tizer]

Don't joke Pete, be thankful that at least they've found some kind of meat in the burgers!
It's being described as `not a food safety issue, the meat is safe to eat' but this is misleading. It is a food safety issue because anything found in a food product that shouldn't be there raises questions of what else might be there, to what degree the food regulations have been broken, and where the weak link is in the food chain. If horse meat can get in then so can other, less safe, materials. The man on the Today programme said `it's only molecules', but so is botulism toxin...and anyway `only molecules' isn't how I would describe the 29% horse meat in a Tesco burger! He said this 29% was only one sample. That's misleading too - it's only one out of the set of samples taken, but the set was probably only a tiny fraction of all the burgers out there. Multiply it up and you might have thousands of burgers with 29% horse meat.

[Tripps]

Tesco PR people have been slow off the mark with this. I see from the Mail online that "Horse also found in Dunnes Stores, Lidl, Aldi beef products"
To read most of the media coverage of this matter you'd be forgiven for thinking that only Tesco were involved. I think the worry here is not that they contained horse meat - that won't do any harm, but that the retailers did not know what was in the product.

[Stanley]

Tiz and Tripps, both dead right. Did you hear the man representing the meat processors obfuscating like hell when asked what the 'foreign ingredients' used by the processors actually consisted of. He rabbited on about spices and herbs but made no mention of the disgusting paste that results from the mechanical recovery of meat from scraps and bones. This is homogenised to such an extent that only a genetic test will identify what it contains. It's attraction is that it is cheap and raises profit margins. The euphemism the trade uses to disguise this slop is 'Protein Filler'. Significant that it was the Irish authorities who identified the banned meats (including traces of pork) because they are world leaders in using genetic testing to identify exactly what is in a product. There is no way the processors want customers to know about MRM. This is almost certain to be the way the rogue meats got in. Another way of looking at it is that the cheaper the burger, the more chance of adulteration.
A lesser known but important use of genetics to analyse food was the tests on 'Basmati Rice', surprise surprise, only three brands were found that were pure genuine Basmati. One of them is Lubna Rice, stocked by Chowdrey's in Barlick and I use nothing else.

[Tizer]

It sounds like the problem here might have been more to do with the burger meat having been processed in the same place as horse meat and contaminated by tiny amounts of the latter, although that doesn't explain the 29% Tesco horse burger. The trouble is that meat is now often mixed, processed, packed and distributed in vast amounts so that a large amount of horse meat could have been diluted in a very large amount of beef. If it were thoroughly mixed then you would get the low level contamination; if it were not so thorough then you get that plus some packs with much more horse in them. There is lots of money to be made out of putting a relatively small amount of cheap material into an expensive material (twas ever thus) and the people who do it fraudulently have no scruples, observe no regulations and make so much money they can employ unscrupulous scientists and equip them better than the Food Safety Authority's labs.

[Stanley]

I've been listening to the spokespersons from the various people concerned and I've never heard so much obfuscation in my life. When asked if it could be guaranteed that burgers would have nothing in but beef the supermarket person went into melt-down avoiding the question. As Tiz says, it's an old problem. Read 'The Jungle' by Upton Sinclair, written in 1905 it exposed the corrupt practices of the big meat processors and when Theodore Roosevelt read it he instituted the first food laws in the US which later became the FDA. Fast forward to 2001 when Eric Schlosser wrote 'Fast food nation' in which he revisited the meat packing industry and found many of the 1905 ills were still being perpetrated. The bottom line is that the processors and the supermarkets are aiming for maxi8mum profit and their supply chains are complicated and largely secret. The government refuse to admit that the only thing that can protect against these things is more sophisticated testing such as the Irish use. Luckily there is a simple solution, find a good local butcher you trust and spend your money there.

[Tizer]

A couple of news items that should interest members!

No significant association between egg consumption and risk of coronary heart disease or stroke
A study published in the British Medical Journal shows that consuming eggs may not be linked to coronary heart disease or stroke. The researchers performed a meta-analysis of eight studies that included 263,938 participants for coronary heart disease (CHD) and 210,404 participants for stroke and followed them for 8–22 years. Among the participants, the researchers documented 5,847 cases of coronary heart disease and 7,579 cases of stroke during the follow-up period. Egg consumption was measured by food frequency questionnaires in all studies. This meta-analysis identified no significant association between egg consumption and risk of coronary heart disease or stroke.
Brit. Medical Journal, published 7 January 2013.
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Diet may not have any impact on certain health outcomes in older persons
Eating diets high in sugar and fat may not affect the health outcomes of older adults ages 75 and up, suggesting that placing people of such advanced age on overly restrictive diets to treat their excess weight or other conditions may have little benefit, according to researchers at Penn State and Geisinger Health System.
Pennsylvania State University, USA: http://live.psu.edu/story/63602#rssNutritional_Sciences

[Stanley]

The eggs. Exactly what we have been saying on here. I'll say it again, Read 'Queen of Fats' by Susan Allport!
As for diets, impossible to say with certainty obviously but I often wonder why so much attention is paid to particular elements of diet when anyone who has looked at nutrition in any detail soon comes to the conclusion that the basic fault is the over-processing of food by the largest component of the economy, the food industry. Like the banks in 2008 they are too big to be allowed to fail and there is no prospect of any improvement in basic diet without better education, reading the labels and a dedicated service giving proper nutritional advice. At the moment this is subsumed in other 'food watchdogs' and one can be forgiven for suspecting that they are in thrall to the major lobbyists, guess who? The only really independent organ is the Food Magazine and it has a very specialised distribution because it refuses funding and advertising in order to maintain independence. There is plenty of information published but you have to seek it out and unfortunately most people have no interest.