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Healthy Eating

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby Suelle » Thu Jul 15, 2021 8:43 am

KeenCook2 wrote:I found the article itself very interesting

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... our-health

but nothing new in the 7 keep things healthy pointers at the end.


It's hard to eat 30 different fruit, veg, seeds and nuts a week when you're only shopping for 1 and watching your weight! Seeds, nuts and dried fruit have to be limited and even eating more than 5 portions of fresh fruit and veg a day, I find it difficult to get more than 15 different varieties a week.
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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby Pampy » Thu Jul 15, 2021 9:13 am

Completely agree, Suelle. Even harder if, like me, you have diabetes and have to be careful how much fruit you eat because of the fruit sugars!

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby Stokey Sue » Thu Jul 15, 2021 10:47 am

You may have heard on broadcast news that Henry Dimbleby has produced a food strategy report

Here’s the Times feature (not currently paywalled)
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/call ... 01034951e7

Here’s the BBC’s slightly more user friendly version that interestingly pulls in the Broken Plate report

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57838103

Interesting that both articles are by environment correspondents not health

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby Earthmaiden » Thu Jul 15, 2021 11:13 am

I think, following on from the Broken Plate report and those involved, that the highlighting of high streets in less affluent areas where every shop is a fast food joint and you can't buy an apple anywhere is an interesting thing and something I had not considered enough before listening in on various webinars. Such places also serve as meeting places for young people because there's nowhere else to go.

There is so much social stuff tied up with the consumption of foods which, when eaten alone do not constitute a balanced diet (not to mention advertising to create want). I have no issues with trying to curb advertising, sugar and salt. Manufacturers of highly processed foods should spend some of their profits on doing that and more. It's annoying that the social issues linked to the accessibility of a balanced diet v unbalanced are not really front page news. Even travelling these past few days and eating out have reminded me how poor choices can be, even if you can afford it.

Re 30 a day. I think we just have to do our best. You have to be pretty affluent to be able to manage that regardless of the practicalities (which on one's own I agree, are pushing it somewhat!).

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby scullion » Thu Jul 15, 2021 3:07 pm

i'm not sure it's quite as difficult as you think. i've just read the ingredients on a pack of lidl muesli and there are fourteen (or fifteen) types of grain, fruit, nuts and seeds in just that. my partner adds in some more mixed seeds and other nuts to ours which takes it up to twenty, or more.
add a meal of a jacket potato, salad and coleslaw and you're sort of there. bung in a cheese and kimchi sandwich for lunch and you're quids in.

according to all the figures our diets are really limited compared to the hadza tribe in tanzania. they are hunter gatherers and so other than the diverse (and possibly smaller) amount of animal protein, they eat seasonally and on a far more diverse plant content (about 600 different plants in a year - i think the 'western society' eat maybe 50).
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/how-to-boost-your-microbiome/

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby Suelle » Thu Jul 15, 2021 4:11 pm

My regular fruit intake is apples and satsumas daily, and a couple of bananas a week when I need a breakfast. I might cook gooseberries, rhubarb or something similar for weekend desserts

Lunch is a salad of tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, peppers, carrots and celery.

Evening meal would typically, during a week in summer, add onions, cabbage, broccoli, green beans, broad beans and courgettes. Possibly a slightly bigger variety in winter as root vegetable keep longer, so I can have more variety to hand

The issue isn't my unwillingness to eat a bigger variety, but if I buy 500g of strawberries that's at least 3 servings, and if I'm eating strawberries, then I'm not eating melon or grapes. If I buy all three, then there will be wastage as they won't keep long enough.
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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby scullion » Thu Jul 15, 2021 8:37 pm

Suelle wrote:but if I buy 500g of strawberries that's at least 3 servings

shows what piggies we are - we have a 400g punnet each for 'pudding' when i buy strawberries (plus the clotted).

all i pointed out was that it doesn't need to be just fruit and veg. if you have even a small bowl of a good muesli sometime during the day (i eat a small ramekin sized portion) you are half way to the required diverse 'fibre food' in a day. it doesn't need to be a large amount, just enough to feed a wider range of gut bacteria than a more restricted diet would do.
we also now have a teaspoon of inulin in a mug of cocoa of an evening.

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby dennispc » Fri Jul 16, 2021 5:35 pm

Suelle wrote:…there will be wastage as they won't keep long enough.


Made worse when Sainsbury’s BB date is the following day after delivery! Even with two of us, it gets difficult though, if it goes in the compost it’s not entirely wasted.

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby karadekoolaid » Fri Jul 16, 2021 6:39 pm

Interesting reading, Sue, but there are so many issues involved, I wonder where any government would start to try and change the habits of a lifetime? So many complexities.
The first point: sugar tax and salt tax. Well governments always like to tax things we enjoy: alcohol, tobacco, luxuries, cars - so there´s nothing new there, I suppose. It would at least make people think twice before purchasing processed food vs fresh. Industries, I imagine, would quickly come up with some devious methods to avoid the taxes, but they´d still get hit, so prices would probably rise.
Getting GPs to prescribe fresh fruit and veg? I think that´s a cranky idea, shifting the burden on to already overworked and understaffed health workers. A wild idea occurs to me, however. Give people an incentive to consume more fruit and veg ( something daft like 10% off your supermarket purchases if you purchase more than 75% fruit & veg?) . A bit more stimulating than threatening them with dire health warnings.
Cooking classes at school? Absolutely. Make them obligatory, just like maths and science. Everyone should learn how to cook. You can´t survive without eating, you have to do it every day of your life, so it´s logical. I´ve seen how kids love work in cookery classes. Doesn´t need to be complicated or technical; just get them in there and have fun while learning something useful. Extend that idea to communities on a massive scale. I know it already exists, but push it further.
I also wonder ( I´m doing a lot of that recently, with far too much spare time on my hands 8-) 8-) :lol: :lol: ) how many people consciously calculate how many different food items they consume per week. I don´t; I just assume that I´m doing ok because I prepare something different every day. I can´t imagine sitting down at the start of each week and planning out " ok, 30 gms of nuts, 40 gms seeds, 10 gms each broccoli, cauliflower, kale, 6 tsps sugar per day..." I´d give up before I started. How many of us here on this forum consciously plan our weekly food intake?
I can see the point of the report, of course. Obesity is a huge problem nowadays, not to mention all the environmental issues the report implies, and if we can´t get it right at some stage in the future, we´re probably going to irreparably damage our planet.
OK - I´ll go back to sleep now. Time to watch the England v Pakistan T20. :gonzo

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby Stokey Sue » Fri Jul 16, 2021 7:32 pm

There's an ethical conundrum in applying a salt tax - salt is an essential nutrient for most of us, can one ethically tax that?

And since Boris is so fond of history he might like to remember that calls for repeal of la gabelle, the salt tax, were one of the drivers of the French Revolution (it was reinstated and continued until 1946, I looked it up)

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby Pepper Pig » Sat Jul 17, 2021 10:42 am


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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby Stokey Sue » Sat Jul 17, 2021 10:50 am



No, I have a brain and a few vegetarian cook books.

I can entirely see the point of using a generic menu planning app if you are catering for a family and it suits your way of doing things but I think a meat reducing app is a gimmick too far

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby Earthmaiden » Sat Jul 17, 2021 12:03 pm

Apps seem to motivate people quite well. If this one has got the author's children off highly processed meat then that's a plus. To make people feel guilty about eating large amounts of meat not so bad unless it turns into an obsession. I've forgotten the whole article already but hope it advises on balanced alternatives.

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby Pampy » Sat Jul 17, 2021 2:04 pm

Think it depends on the type of people - apps certainly don't motivate me at all. I really don't like being lectured about what I should and shouldn't do, particularly if it's from someone who has often no more knowledge than I have and also has no knowledge of my medical issues.

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby dennispc » Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:14 am

You can stay asleep KK, the government’s not going to implement the report. I was quite looking forward to asking our surgery for a prescription for fruit and vegetables, as according the NHS BMI I’m obese and need to lose a few pounds, despite weighing just under 11 and a half stones.

Then I thought of the endless debates there would be about how to count variety. Yesterday I made a carrot salad using five different herbs - do herbs count as one or five in the variety stakes? Adding raisins, and salted peanuts, sugar and salt there. Certainly I need salt, levels in A&E recently were at 129, average should be 136. Some years ago I was put on a 24hour drip because of my lack of salt. Certainly agree with Pampy, apps are generic and won't help me or OH.

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby Stokey Sue » Sun Jul 18, 2021 12:33 pm

Let’s go back a few reports. In the UK we have the five a day. I think this is brilliant because you can ask someone who doesn’t pay any attention to food if they’ve had their five a day and they know exactly what you mean and probably the answer

However some people will tell you this is not based on science. This isn’t really true, there was an international committee that said that what you need for health is 400 g of fruit and vegetables a day with as much variety as possible

So each national committee went away and came up with a translation of this that would work in their local food culture and would improve nutrition locally from baseline. It’s because of the cultural differences and the different starting points they are all different.

It might be time to revisit five a day, I don’t entirely follow it myself; I bear the original recommendation in mind and probably eat less than 80g of some things but more than 5 varieties quite often, I doubt that’s a problem

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby Badger's Mate » Mon Jul 19, 2021 9:24 am

I'd agree. There are enough data for the WHO to tentatively conclude that 400g per day of fruit & veg (not including your staple) is of benefit for preventing, delaying or ameliorating various conditions such as cardiovascular problems, gut cancers & type 2 diabetes. The evidence for some diseases was stronger than others.

'It stands to reason' that the more varied the diet the better, but the evidence for any of the interpretations - 5-a-day, 10-a-day, 30-a-week, whatever they are - is necessarily weaker. They're also subject to prejudice and marketing manipulation. It's probably best not to fret too much over how many grams of this or that you have eaten, or indeed whether this or that 'counts', but aim to eat an average of 400g plant matter per day (plus your staple) with as much variety as possible. :D

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby dennispc » Sat Jul 24, 2021 8:19 am

Saw this at some point in the week, hardly new health news, but might be of interest.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/j ... ifth-bacon

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby Earthmaiden » Sat Jul 24, 2021 10:39 am

It surprises me that processed meats are still so popular after all the bad publicity they have had. You have to take a lot of interest in the process it has gone through and/or eat very sparingly. That said, some people live on them and live to a ripe old age.

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Re: Healthy Eating

Postby jeral » Sat Jul 24, 2021 11:49 am

I still don't know how researchers establish "links"other than empirical or self-reported diet via cholesterol level since artery evidence is by autopsy. Alternatively, heart disease in some countries is low even with a high intake of sat fat and salt. I thought it was that other thing (nitrates) in the brining/curing that was the problem hence new versions in EU and Ireland (NI I think) exclude it. Confusing.

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