Thank goodness! Finally! The ‘truth’ is out there. And the truth is… Roll on the drums…
We just don’t know!
But that’s a good start, and much better than the perceived wisdom we’ve grown up with.
What am I talking about?
Food!
Healthy food. What are we supposed to eat? No one knows!
Lots of studies are bringing us closer to the truth, but we still don’t know what we should be eating.
At least now, more people are acknowledging what we shouldn’t be eating. And what’s that?
A low-fat diet!
Not only does it not lower cholesterol, heart disease, stroke and weight, after all – it’s positively lethal, and actually increases all those risks!
Over the years I’ve read an enormous number of articles, reports and books attempting to cut through the marketing messages of the last 40 years of so. To my mind, the problem is twofold:
First, it seems, food companies are purely focused on selling their stuff, instead of doing the right thing, and second, when we hear the same message over and over and over again, we begin to believe it.
I challenge you:
Make a list of the adverts for stuff you’re meant to put in your mouth and swallow. (I hesitate to call it ‘food’ as I’m working on the assumption that food is meant to support and nourish us. Did I get that wrong?)
Then find out what’s in it and whether it’s good for us, bad or neutral. Finally, decide whether you want to put it in your body.
I bet, if we had the time and inclination to do that, most ‘food’ adverts would be pointless – no one would buy the stuff.
After all, you don’t need adverts to sell food we recognise – fruit, veg, meat, dairy.
To make a packet load of dosh, ‘food’ manufacturers first have to make the packet – the fancy wrapping around the product, and then SELL the stuff to us – make us believe that it’s good for us.
Check out ‘fortified with iron’. For one company, that’s incorporating iron filings – totally useless to the body.
I kid you not! I have a friend whose company analyses the composition of such products – and that’s what he found.
Is that OK with you? It’s NOT OK with me! I’m a mixture of furious and incredulous!
How very dare they?
How come we allow it?
I guess the answer is that we didn’t know. I suppose we need to start taking a lot more responsibility for what we ingest. We can no longer assume the food companies are on our side, nor give us what’s best for us.
So over the next few weeks, I’m going let you know what we do know.
Then it’s up to you what you do with the information.
Thank you Dr Michael Mosley, and the gorgeous twins, Drs Chris and Xand Van Tulleken for making us think again.
Going Vegetarian
Going vegetarian doesn’t mean ‘absence of meat’ or you’ll be malnourished. Did you know that here in the UK, we’re now eating so badly, that malnourishment is a rising problem, which costs the NHS £7.3 billion per year?
Red meat, such as beef, lamb and pork gives us the essential protein we can’t do without, along with micronutrients such as iron (and I don’t mean iron filings!) for healthy red blood cells which carry the oxygen round our body; zinc for healthy hair and nails and repair of body tissues; B12 for the brain, blood and the nervous system; vitamin A for growth and development, for the immune system and good vision and contains essential fatty acids too. (Your brain is 60% fat. The myelin sheaths surrounding, protecting and insulating your brain cells depend on your eating enough, and the right sort of fat to maintain their integrity.)
It’s difficult to get all these essential nutrients without meat.
In fact, I have a friend who ‘went vegetarian’ and ended up with rickets!
However, there’s some good news for vegetable lovers.
Fibre i.e. fruits and vegetables help to protect against the damaging effects of a high meat diet.
A recent 12-year study by University College, London, examining the eating habits of 65,000 people in England between 2001 and 2013, concluded that you begin to get beneficial effects by eating more than 7 portions of fruit and vegetables each day (42% less likely to die from any cause), not the much-touted (by the World Health Organisation and backed by the Government and NHS) 5 a day, which only 30% of the population manage to achieve.
What’s more the study found that canned and frozen fruit increased the risk of dying by 17 per cent.
Fruit juice was found to have no significant benefit. In fact we know that the high levels of fructose, without the accompanying fibre, found in the whole fruit, but not in the juice, is positively harmful.
Vegetables are better than fruit
Each portion of vegetables lowered the risk of death by 16 per cent. However, each piece of fruit only lowered the chance of death by 4 per cent. That’s why the Australian Government advises “two plus five” a day – two helpings of fruit and five of vegetables.
What’s meat ever done for us?
Per 100g
Protein
- Beef mince 26.4g
- Cheese 25.4 g
- Pork or Veggie sausages 14.4-14.9g
- Tofu 8g
B12
- Beef 3 micrograms (µg)
- Cheese 2.4 µg
- Veggie options 0 µg
Saturated fat
- Cheese 21.7g
- Bacon 8.1g
- Sausage 8.0g
- Beef mince 7.6g
- Tofu 0.5g
But is saturated fat the danger we’ve been led to believe it is? We don’t really know. Not yet, anyway.
More next week…