WE ARE WHAT WE EAT

[Stanley]

You mean you had to destroy the tin and couldn't slice the beef? Shades of 'Three Men in a Boat'.

[Tizer]

Press release from US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 21 Feb 2012.
Majority of dairy-related disease outbreaks linked to raw milk
CDC Report Shows Higher Rates of “Raw” Milk Outbreaks in States Where It′s Legal

The rate of outbreaks caused by unpasteurized milk (often called raw milk) and products made from it was 150 times greater than outbreaks linked to pasteurized milk, according to a study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The 13-year review also revealed that the States where the sale of raw milk was legal had more than twice the rate of outbreaks as states where it was illegal.
http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2012/ ... break.html

[Whyperion]

Tizer , I find the US research to be at the extremes of expectation, mind you if you are consuming all those calories ( and not excercising them off ) will you actually get to 70 years of age ?

Raw milk - I wonder how far away from the production area to consumption area the distance in time and space is. Old farm I was on , Cow 5am , Pail 5.15am Fridge 5.25am , Me down for Breakfast 7am milk in tea and on cornflakes 7.05am.
Cow shared with two calves (one bought in for fattening up for market ) .

Wife just asked me what sized beans I wanted - I said the small ones - meaning tin contents - she thought I meant tin size.

[catgate]

P
Majority of dairy-related disease outbreaks linked to raw milk

Well it wouldn't be related to haddock or tomatoes or ingrowing toe nails would it?

[Stanley]

Tiz, there is little doubt that the introduction of pasteurisation for raw milk was one of the most efficient public health reforms because much milk carried infection. However, if you knew the source, the cows were healthy and the production done under clean conditions raw milk was perfectly acceptable and tastes far better than processed milk. For the greatest modification try old-fashioned sterilised milk. (We called it 'Paralysed Milk!) Raw milk sale is still legal but subject to stringent quality controls. The freshest mi9lk of the lot was straight from the cow and when I was doing early turn milking before breakfast a can of warm milk kept me going till breakfast time. However, while I was dealing with raw milk at West Marton Dairies I picked up a nasty attack of Brucellosis, Contagious abortion in cattle and Undulating Fever in humans. I was off work for six weeks and am still infected, that's why they won't take my blood as a donor. Brucellosis was the occupational disease of vets but was eradicated in the 1960/1970s. The effects are like malaria or flu snd the legacy was that every now and again you'd run a high temperature. I haven't had an episode for years.
Funnily enough, they are talking about the growing popularity of raw milk in Farming Today as I write. The expert is saying that raw milk is actually safer and better for you because the standards are so high. One of it's greatest advantages is that it is a live food, like the pro-biotics.

[EileenDavid]

I too was brought up on raw milk. We had tt at home but when my brother and I went to the farm to help with milking I didn't drink it warm (never liked warm milk) but thought it delicious after it had been through the cooler prior to bottling. My mother used to say I was a connoisseur of milk loved it, took me to her friends once and was given a glass of sterilised milk which I have never been able to palette when asked why I wouldn't drink the milk I said it was cats milk. (our neighbour gave sterry to the cat). Jersey gold top was a real treat. I now drink skimmed milk surprising what you can get used to, I went to this when I could no longer buy tt milk as I also thought pasturlised milk was never quite the same although it did remind me of school.

Eileen

[Tizer]

The Food Standards Agency is reviewing the controls on sales of raw milk but this is because it's now being sold on the Internet and from vending machines and this is more difficult to monitor. Raw milk may be OK from `good' farms but on farms with lapses in hygiene it could be dangerous, especially for infants, pregnant women and the elderly who have lower resistance to infections. Farms producing raw milk have to be inspected more frequently than those producing only pasteurised milk.

[Stanley]

I see there is another 'initiative' from the government to try to reduce calorie intake. It includes important changes like making chocolate packaging re-sealable...... Brilliant!

[EileenDavid]

I think what bugs me in all of these directives on what we eat is that the rulings are instigated by Europe. Lets get back to ruling ourselves I say do you think we could have a revolusion comrades pensioners (if I ever get mine) against bureaucracy. Eileen

[Stanley]

Eileen I have long advocated a new 'Grey Power' political party.
The bottom line is that the food processors and the supermarkets are so powerful they can resist any attempts to curb their manipulation of food in order to get maximum profit. The only defence we have is to refuse to buy their products. Unfortunately the level of education in nutrition is so low that the public buy on price and advertising instead of actually reading the label and avoiding bad food. There is little doubt these days that this is the major cause of the 'Western Disease'.

[Tizer]

An example of how bad things can get is shown by news I've received from a New Zealand friend, a food scientist who makes visits to China. This is what he tells me...

"The Chinese government has concerns over recycled cooking oil, or `gutter oil', which is refined from kitchen waste, gutters, drains, and animal fat, as well as oil that has been repeatedly used to fry foods. Illegal gutter oil can be cleaned up enough to meet the sanitation standards of cooking oil and sold to low-end restaurants and small canteens. As a result, low-income people are major consumers of recycled cooking oil.

"Why does recycled cooking oil make it back to the table? Significant profits are the major reason. Since the price of edible oils surged three years ago, a processor can easily sell one short ton of recycled cooking oil at half the price of fresh oil at a huge profit. For example, waste cooking oil can be purchased for about 3,000 renminbi (RMB), or $470 per ton. After a preliminary extraction, including deodorization, dehydration, and decolorization, the raw oil can then be re-sold at a price of 5,000 RMB per ton, while the retail market price of the end product is about 8,000–10,000 RMB per ton. Such huge profits lure greedy people to take part in this illegal practice, making it difficult to manage and control. Inadequate inspection, difficulties in identifying recycled cooking oil, and consumer habits, such as over-ordering at restaurants to show respect to guests, might also contribute to this phenomenon.

"The Chinese government is taking several steps to address these problems and eliminate recycled cooking oil from people’s dining tables. It has launched a plan to cut off the source of the recycled cooking oil by uniformly collecting kitchen waste and gutter oil. Harsh punishments have been introduced in an effort to deter unscrupulous traders and manufacturers. Restaurants that are found to purchase and use the harmful oils will be immediately shut down and subjected to heavy fines in accordance with the Food Safety Law of China."

[Stanley]

Little known fact that during WW2 fat was collected at sewage plants on lead plates in the flow, scraped off and re-rendered for human consumption. Still the major source of lanolin for lipsticks..... Recycled cooking oil was one of the subjects I touched on in my article for the Food Magazine.

[Whyperion]

theres quite a bit of fat in the Sewers of London , it needs scraping out , despite for restaurants grease traps being required in sinks etc.

Cannot quite understand why a diet of (homemade) beef dripping on stale bread crusts in childhood meant my Grandmother and Great Grandmother lived to 85 and 95 , their husbands would probably have made it to similar ages had not WW1 and WW2 killed them off.

[PanBiker]

Cannot quite understand why a diet of (homemade) beef dripping on stale bread crusts in childhood meant my Grandmother and Great Grandmother lived to 85 and 95 , their husbands would probably have made it to similar ages had not WW1 and WW2 killed them off.

Because they needed the fat to sustain the hard lives they probably led. The contra advice we get nowadays is only because we all lead comparatively sedentary lives. Nowt wrong with a fry up if you can work it off.

[Tizer]

What little waste fat there was in the old days would have gone for porcine processing. i.e. fed to the pig at the bottom of the garden!

Whippy, that argument is like "Uncle Joe smoked and lived to 103 so smoking can't be bad for us". The majority of folk died a lot earlier than your grandmother and great grandmother. Some of them would have eaten a better diet too. There are many variables involved in longevity and it's difficult to tease out the major factors. For instance, lack of vitamin D due to smog blocking our sunlight would have shortened lives through effects on heart disease.

[afridizaddi]

I really like your site.

[catgate]

I really like your site.

You are not proposing to eat it ....are you???

[Whyperion]

Great Grandma took in washing for about 75 years , Dolly Tub in back scullery. Paternal Grandfather had the short cut to death in London Smog of 1950s the breathing difficulties meant no need for Vitamin D worries, another relative was knocked down by a London Tram.

[Stanley]

Affridizaddi, welcome to the site. Don't be frightened of joining in.

[Stanley]

LINK
Which have done a survey and tell us that 1 in 5 chickens sold in supermarkets are infected. The first thing that comes to mind is that these chickens are perhaps the cleanest and best monitored on the market. What would the results be for the vast amounts of chicken joints imported from places like Thailand and used in the fast food and food processing industry? The only defence I know is to buy from a known source and cook till it drops off the bone. But then it was always like that so what's the point of these surveys?

[Tizer]

What doesn't get said is that Campylobacter in chickens in the UK was almost unheard of until around the late 1980s, although it was well-known in the Far East (and in Australia and NZ due to people there holidaying in Bali, Thailand etc). Once it got here it probably spread fast due to the modern style of chicken farming with dense populations.

[Stanley]

I often wonder what the results would be if someone was to come in and take swabs of my environment! I suspect they would tell me that I was in imminent danger of death! Truth is of course that it's my environment and I have an immune system adjusted to my standards and hence am perfectly healthy. I am also probably better protected against the outside environment.

[Stanley]

I see the doctors have gone public this morning questioning the government's handling of the obesity crisis. In particular they question fast food giants like Macdonalds and Coca-Cola being allowed to sponsor sports. See this LINK.

[Tizer]

I listened to a recording of the Radio 4 Food Programme about food allergies and food intolerance. It was interesting but I didn't agree with some of the claims made by people interviewed. One said we are seeing more gluten intolerance because more wheat is eaten nowadays such as pasta, but I think we ate a lot in the past too - think of all the bread that was eaten in sandwiches and as bread & butter accompanying meals, plus pastry, cakes etc. Another claim was that yeast intolerance is evident now because there is more yeast in our bread - but I thought less yeast was used in the modern Chorleywood Bread Process (I'd need to check to be sure) and there was a lot of yeast in our beer in the past and in the fermented soft drinks like real lemonade and elderflower wine.

[Stanley]

Tiz, I think the bottom line is that science hasn't yet cracked the reason why our reactions to the modern world seems to be changing. I don't think there's a single cause but I suspect that one big factor is the distance modern food production has created between food and the old micro nutrient rich environment of soils farmed in the old ways under mixed farming. The further we move from wild food the worse this gap becomes. Is a tomato grown on a modern soil-less system using hydroponics as nutrient rich as one grown on soil fertilised by animal dung? There's a book called 'The Vitamin Murders' by James Fergusson. Apart from the story of the murder of Jack Drummond, his wife and daughter in France it examines the changes in the soil and their effects on us. As for the canard of 'yeast intolerance', I don't believe it. Yeast permeates our environment. that's how Ian's recipe for sour-dough bread works. Look at the natural yeast on the skins of fruits, wine production wouldn't work without it. In the Chorley Wood process the process is speeded up by adding 'natural' enzymes and the proponents of it say that these are no different than the natural enzymes produced by the yeast and are destroyed in the baking. How come old-fashioned 'artisan' bread tastes so much better? There is too much partial reporting on food production driven by the deep ;pockets of the processors who need to justify their modifications which are aimed at one thing, extending shelf life and increasing profits.