Food - Fads and Fashions?

[Patrick]

Interesting to hear just now on "The Food Programme" that the fashion for Omega oils in food is leading to an imbalance in our chemical make up. Mainly because food manufacturers are so fond of putting ingredients high in Omega 6 into foods - be it margarine or cakes or biscuits that many people now have too much Omega 6 and not enough Omega 3!

Omega 3 and Omega 6 are essential fatty acids that we can only obtain from our food. Scientists say, ideally, they should be in balance in the body, at a ratio of 2:1 for Omega 6 to Omega 3. But the average in the UK is around 10 : 1.

Some scientists believe this imbalance is caused by a deficit of Omega 3 and excessive consumption of Omega 6 vegetable fats and oils which are widely used in food processing. There is an argument that this may have implications for our health. What is the evidence? Does it matter?

The implications are apparently as far flung as increases in arthritis through to an increase in mental health problems.

In the same way that you could say that you don't follow fashion - but by default - buying clothes regularly puts you at the beck and call of the latest designs - the fact that our food manufacturers are working to the latest scientific data means that we cannot avoid some "fashionable" ingredients when just buying everday food.

In a similar thing - I have heard that the "Good Bacteria" ideal is a bit bunkum too. In that the likes of Yoplait etc may well prove scientifically beneficial in the uber-hygienic conditions of a laboratory, but in the real world and your intestines - it doesn't make a bit of difference! All just a big propaganda exercise to get you to buy more yoghurt!

Another question this raises; If our diet and our metabolism can be so easily manipulated - without us realising - How long would it take for Genetically Modified foods cause permanent damage before it was actually noticed?

[everso]

True Pat.

Fashion doesn't just apply to what we wear and what you've reported is quite worrying really.

[stephan]

You are what you eat says some psuedo Dr?-I`m a slimy salty git who satisfies for a moment if one swallows

I`m not cheap though

Yes I`m an oyster

[Alpha Hooligan]

I take flax-seed oil capsules and I generally eat junk, so I'm probably pretty ballanced out.


AH

[everso]

Mar 29, 2009 16:06:35 GMT stephan said:

You are what you eat says some psuedo Dr?-I`m a slimy salty git who satisfies for a moment if one swallows

I`m not cheap though

Yes I`m an oyster

Mmmmmm, oysters.

[Flatypus]

I think good and bad food is wildly exaggerated. Not so long ago potatoes and pasta were Works of the Devil like white bread. Then came a 'Mediterraneaon' diet (meaning that part of the Mediterranean that speaks Italian ) and pasta's good for you. No doubt so is salami stuffed so full of nitrates (or is it nitrites?) that it might be a terrorist suspect. Kebabs however, originating from the Eastern Mediterranean, are not good for you at all. Neither is Pizza, which has Italian roots as far back as a sort of Welsh Rarebit found in a Pompeii take-away.

Exactly why? Kebabs are greasy certainly but they are meat, they are full of salad and they have the fibre of bread. Pizza is essentially bread and cheese with tomato (I wonder if the Romans used plums or some other fruit?) and various other bits and pieces. I used to like one with baby octopus about two inches across which I'm sure must be illegal.

Could it be that it's not the kebab or the pizza or even the burger - which I'll have to admit, for all its soggy hot salad is an abomination - but the cans of lager and the lolling about in front of the TV that is the culprit?

We like blame and 'magic'. You eat the right thing or the wrong thing and get karma accordingly. That absolves you from actually having to bother about anything else. Exotic is usually good for you. When it ceases to become exotic it usually turns out to be bad for you. I'm sure that when I first had one, avocadoes were practically the Elixir of Life.

It helps a food to be recommended from some obscure village missing the point entirely that the people eat it because they have damn-all else (you don't dry tomatoes in the sun if you can get them canned) and look healthy because they are grubbing the soil from dawn to dusk with a break when it's too hot and those who couldn't stand it are fled to the Big City or dead. Besides which, the women (and it usually is) who gush over these rare finds (and can afford them from obscure London delicatessens) would rather be dead than look like the tough weatherbeaten pesants they've been extolling. Often, so would the peasants. That's why abandoned farmhouses in Tuscany or Provence are so cheap (And Normandy, but the climate and cidre brut don't hold quite the same cachet)

Fishy Omega oils are good for you of course but because they occur in traditional fish like pilchards-sardines, mackerel and herring (which I love) but the latter at least is associated with the cold Baltic climate and all are traditional poverty food, none will probably ever prove as good as mullet fed on the open sewers of an obscure Greek island. I doubt that sauerkraut and borscht will ever become Miracle Foods either, though it's always possible that sauerkraut's Oriental cousin Kim Chi might because Korea is far more exotic than Eastern Europe.

The worst culprit for dangerous magical thinking is the dieting industry. The only diet known to work is Atkins, who pioneered fibre and spudz iz good and oil, closely followed by wholefoods. I know this from an exhaustive study of one girlfriend who managed to slim from 18 stone to 15 stone between the ages of 15 and 18, at which point she became a wife, and was hovering around 13 stone by the time she ceased to be one at 22. Then again, maybe it was just a horrible home and puppy fat.

Diets operate on the magical basis that eating loses weight. Do not stop stuffing your face and exert yourself - nobody who needs it wants to hear that unless it is conspicuous expiatory exercise - magic again - in the gymn or jogging while you continue to use the lift to travel one floor and to let all your muscles flab for the rest of the time. You eat the right thing (and everybody knows that dieters cheat with treats to reward themselves for following the diet intended to feel like a penance) and that magically makes you 'healthy' so you can carry on as before.

But why did the bad habits set in in the first place? Why do some people crave sweet sticky snacks and fizzy drinks? They must have learnt it as children. Instead of being taught to address that, they are encouraged to feel that a temporary dietary penance of eating the Magic Substance will sort them out, without backing off from eating everything else. It will probably lose them, water fast and muscle. It might even put fat on but since fat is lighter than either, they still lose weight.

[stephan]

Mmmmmm, oysters.

I`ve still to learn my craft there-I can stick it in and wiggle-but they still do not open without a mess ;D

[housesparrow]

I agree with most of your post, Piffle, but would query this:

The worst culprit for dangerous magical thinking is the dieting industry. The only diet known to work is Atkins, who pioneered fibre and spudz iz good and oil, closely followed by wholefoods.

Are you muddling Atkins up with the F-Plan? I thought Atkins was based on eating protein almost exclusively, whereas the F Plan is so called for a reason...

[Flatypus]

Mar 31, 2009 7:06:31 GMT housesparrow said:

I agree with most of your post, Piffle, but would query this:

The worst culprit for dangerous magical thinking is the dieting industry. The only diet known to work is Atkins, who pioneered fibre and spudz iz good and oil, closely followed by wholefoods.

Are you muddling Atkins up with the F-Plan? I thought Atkins was based on eating protein almost exclusively, whereas the F Plan is so called for a reason...

I'm not sure of the relation between them but I think there is one. Could be that Atkins originally ignored the vegetable side. I can't see a high protein diet particularly good except for an Eskiom (but then Atkins was Canadian). Often I think the culprit isn't so much what we eat as the lack of variety and what we don't. I find great chunks of meat or fish quite hard to take actually.

What I remember from Atkins was the explanation that the [kilo]calory count doesn't matter compared to what it actually consists of, so oils and fats are fine, carbohydrate alright as long as it is vegetable with plenty else. What goes right out is sugars and starches. particularly refined. That knocked some the weirder diets of the time right out, like the grapefruit diet, because it's not much more than fructose and water. I don't think he cared much for salad either. I usually eat alternate days cold (I'm into raw broccoli at the moment - always turns to mush when I steam it), but only my grandmother ever managed to get fat living in Ovaltine made with cream and the doctor once put my mother on a diet to gain weight, so I have a kind of built-in advantage.

You can lose weight fast on a crash diet because it usually loses water and muscle, but fat is the last thing that gets lost and fat is light. High protein is all very well but expensive. But not as expensive as take-away.

[housesparrow]

"I don't think he cared much for salad either."

Rabbit food, my grannie used to call it. She wouldn't touch the stuff.

[Flatypus]

Ooh no. If we hadn't been able to get into the garden and pick dinner I reckon Mother and I would have starved! My grandmother's cooking was good on desserts and pot roasts leg of something and fish and that was about it. Since I disliked fish as a child and wasn't very keen on meat, especially lamb, I was at something of a disadvantage. Strangly, as an adult, fish and lamb (mutton if I can get it) are my favourite protein foods.

[Coffeepot]

I remember my Mum forcing cod liver oil down my throat when I was a lass. I always said when she's old and infirm I'm going to return the favour

ps - not really, although she says how bad would my joints have been, if I hadn't had it, lol.

[everso]

Mar 31, 2009 21:41:13 GMT Coffeepot said:

I remember my Mum forcing cod liver oil down my throat when I was a lass. I always said when she's old and infirm I'm going to return the favour

ps - not really, although she says how bad would my joints have been, if I hadn't had it, lol.

Oh, who remembers cod liver oil and malt that you used to be able to buy at school? I loved it!

[percyplum]

Apr 1, 2009 12:30:08 GMT everso said:

Mar 31, 2009 21:41:13 GMT Coffeepot said:

I remember my Mum forcing cod liver oil down my throat when I was a lass. I always said when she's old and infirm I'm going to return the favour

ps - not really, although she says how bad would my joints have been, if I hadn't had it, lol.

Oh, who remembers cod liver oil and malt that you used to be able to buy at school? I loved it!

Oh yes, my Mum gave us that.

[Flatypus]

Radio Malt and Halibut liver oil but not together. Radio Malt was gone by the time my brother was born and he only got an inferior product called Virol. I've used malt extract when I used to make my own bread occasionally and it was still a temptation beyond resistance not to glomph the occasional dessert spoon or two.

[Patrick]

Apr 1, 2009 12:30:08 GMT everso said:

Mar 31, 2009 21:41:13 GMT Coffeepot said:

I remember my Mum forcing cod liver oil down my throat when I was a lass. I always said when she's old and infirm I'm going to return the favour

ps - not really, although she says how bad would my joints have been, if I hadn't had it, lol.

Oh, who remembers cod liver oil and malt that you used to be able to buy at school? I loved it!

Dad used malt in his beer making - Always held out for a spoonful of that!

........and the beer - later!

[housesparrow]

I loved Radio Malt as a child.

Cranberry juice seems to be the current elixir. Does anyone at Stub Crouch drink the stuff and if so do you believe the claims made on its behalf?

I've just found this story saying that certain fruit juices can guard against Alzheimer's. Too late for me, I fear, for I go steadily more doolally every day!

drink juice- keep marbles

[percyplum]

I tried canberry juice but it tastes vile.

[trubble]

I don't like it either.

Pomegranate is a much better version of the same taste. Delicious!

[Patrick]

Apr 2, 2009 5:45:47 GMT housesparrow said:

I loved Radio Malt as a child.

Cranberry juice seems to be the current elixir. Does anyone at Stub Crouch drink the stuff and if so do you believe the claims made on its behalf?

I've just found this story saying that certain fruit juices can guard against Alzheimer's. Too late for me, I fear, for I go steadily more doolally every day!

drink juice- keep marbles

Not Cranberry, but I like Blueberry and Pomegranate - lots of claims are made for Blueberry - but I suppose when it comes down to it it's common sense - Fruit=Good For You!

Though both mine and BB's Mother have to stay away from Citrus juices these days as it inflames their arthritis