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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted -  22/06/2007  :  10:00
WE ARE WHAT WE EAT 2007

 I have shifted the intro to the body of the topic.


Stanley Challenger Graham




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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 23/03/2008 : 07:45
Very severe Mags but you've got to have some sympathy with them.....  There was a move to instituting tests on immigrants but I think it was dropped on the grounds of cost and 'discrimination'.  If they did it to the poor they'd have to do it to the rich!  That's why I say it should be the responsibility of the owner of the food processing plant to make sure all the workers, temporary or otherwise, have been screened for contagious diseases.  Seems like common sense to me.


Stanley Challenger Graham




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mporter
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Posted - 24/03/2008 : 12:11
Every single person migrating to Australia has to undergo those tests it doesn't matter how much money you have and if you fail it is simple you do not get in.


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belle
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6502 Posts
Posted - 25/03/2008 : 12:57
What astonished me, having school age children, is that I have received a letter recently to say the Govt is not innoculating children against TB anymore, so they won't get there BCG's this year! Given the increase of incidences of TB in this country I would have thought it is a bit potty to stop innoculating against it!


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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 26/03/2008 : 06:48
Belle, we live in a world where rickets, TB and measles and rubella are on the increase.  I rest my case.......


Stanley Challenger Graham




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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 29/07/2008 : 07:30
Did anyone watch the Dispatches Report on sandwiches on C4 last night?  Overall good but some comments and ommisions got me going.  The blanket assumption that all saturated fats are bad for us was particularly misleading.  There is much research now which shows that on the contrary, it's the unsaturated and modified fats that are the problem.  Another thing that struck me was the narrow focus of the programme on Fat and Salt.  No mention of where the ingredients were sourced from and any problems assopciated with them.  ie. Thai chicken, imported salad leaves reared in highly suspect conditions and known problems with the bread itself.

Well worth being suspicious about the sandwiches and the final conclusion, that the only way to be certain about what was in your lunch was to make it yourself couldn't be faulted.


Stanley Challenger Graham




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Tizer
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Posted - 29/07/2008 : 12:19
"The blanket assumption that all saturated fats are bad for us was particularly misleading."

I missed the programme, but it's sad that they haven't got the message about saturated fats yet. Danish scientist Uffe Ravnskov has been crusading to get the truth about saturated fats aired for many years but it's a fight against an entrenched view. You can see what his views are on his web site:

http://www.ravnskov.nu/cholesterol.htm

Malcolm Kendrick has also written on the topic and he has an essay on the "Spiked" web site:

http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAE78.htm

A quote from Kendrick says it all: "In fact, no clinical trial on reducing saturated fat intake has ever shown a reduction in heart disease."

 


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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 29/07/2008 : 17:14
The Industrial Revolution was fuelled by saturated fat.  I have long been of the opinion that you can eat as much as you want as long as you dow physical exercise and burn it off.  The problem comes when this isn't done.  The presenter kept referring to them as 'Sat Fat' in a pejorative manner.


Stanley Challenger Graham




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Tizer
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Posted - 29/07/2008 : 20:40
It's running away from "saturates" that has led us to eating trans fats. Saturated fats have always provided a desirable and characteristic physical texture to many foods. Hydrogenated fats (which usually contain trans fats) were invented as an alternative to saturated fats to give this texture. But it's a case of "Out of the frying pan and into the fire" if you'll excuse the pun!

Ironically, if fats are "fully" hydrogenated they become fully saturated and by definition cannot be trans fats. The word "trans" refers to a particular type of double bond between the atoms in the carbon chain. Saturated fats have no double bonds which is why they are called "saturated".

Sorry about all that technical stuff - bit late in the evening for that! 


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tripps
Senior Member


1404 Posts
Posted - 29/07/2008 : 23:29
Tizer - no need to apologise. Good to hear from someone who sounds like they know what they are talking about. Good link - makes me feel less guilty about having butter on my toast. And a quote from HL Mencken to support it as well.  Wonderful.


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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 30/07/2008 : 08:29
David, your body is equipped to deal with butter but not modified fats.  Tizer, I seem to remember hearing once that in order to digest un-saturated fats such as natural vegetable oils and fats, our bodies have to convert them to saturated first.  Any truth in this?


Stanley Challenger Graham




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Tizer
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Posted - 31/07/2008 : 12:56
Stanley, no, our bodies can use unsaturated fatty acids directly. In fact this has to be possible because some types of these unsaturates are the so-called "essential fatty acids" - our bodies cannot make these and we have to get them from the diet, as with most vitamins (they were once called Vitamin F).

It is complicated though because the body can do several things with fatty acids absorbed from the gut:

1. Incorporate them directly into body tissues.

2. Break them down to smaller molecules then build these up into different fatty acids which can be used in cell membranes or in fat reserves.

3. Break them down to smaller molecules and use these to make energy to keep the body warm or to power our muscles and brain.

All of these will be going on and the degree to which one predominates over the other will depend on what the body needs at the time. If you are eating more than you need for energy, then your body will shuttle more of the fatty acids into adipose tissue. If you are out in a bitter cold wind without your coat, then the fats will get "burned" to make heat. Of course, the body will try to preserve the "essential fatty acids" because it needs these for important things like the cell membranes, the nervous system and for making hormones.

You might notice that I've use the words "fatty acids" above instead of "fats". This was to simplify the explanation. Each fat molecule is made up of one, two or three fatty acids. When we talk about saturated and unsaturated we are really referring to these individual fatty acids. So a fat molecule might have two unsaturated and one saturated fatty acids, for instance.

When talking about foods, fats and oils are the same thing - whether you call it a fat or an oil depends on whether it is a liquid (oil) or a solid (fat). Palm oil is a fat in cold countries like the UK but an oil in the tropics where it is grown. Unsaturated fatty acids have lower melting points than saturated acids and therefore fats rich in unsaturated acids will be more likely to be liquid.

Each fat/oil molecule consists of several other molecules combined together. There is always a glycerol "backbone" which we imagine as being like a letter E. Then each of the three arms of the E can have a fatty acid attached, so there can be one, two or three fatty acids in a fat molecule. Just to make it more complicated there are several different types of fatty acid, with names like palmitic acid and oleic acid. As you can see, this allows lots of different fat molecules to exist!

When we digest fat, the molecules are partly broken down in the gut and the products are absorbed into the blood. Some of these products are fatty acids broken off the glycerol backbone. Another major product is the glycerol backbone with one remaining fatty acid and this product is known as a monoglyceride. So it is monoglycerides and fatty acids that are absrobed into the blood rather than intact fatty acids. It might have been confusion with this process that led to Stanley asking if it was true that "in order to digest unsaturated fats such as natural vegetable oils and fats, our bodies have to convert them to saturated first?" No, it doesn't have to convert them to saturated but it does have to partly break down the molecules to make them small enough to pass through the gut wall and into the blood.

Edited by - Tizer on 31/07/2008 13:01:00


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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 31/07/2008 : 17:53
Lovely bit of explanation.  Thanks Tizer.  I am even more in awe of my body and what it is capable of doing.  Even more reasons why we should stay as close as possible to natural food and avoid that which has been modified for commercial reasons.


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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 28/01/2009 : 16:27
Martha sent me this today:
January 27, 2009
Personal Health

Babies Know: A Little Dirt Is Good for You

Ask mothers why babies are constantly picking things up from the floor or ground and putting them in their mouths, and chances are they’ll say that it’s instinctive — that that’s how babies explore the world. But why the mouth, when sight, hearing, touch and even scent are far better at identifying things? When my young sons were exploring the streets of Brooklyn, I couldn’t help but wonder how good crushed rock or dried dog droppings could taste when delicious mashed potatoes were routinely rejected. Since all instinctive behaviors have an evolutionary advantage or they would not have been retained for millions of years, chances are that this one too has helped us survive as a species. And, indeed, accumulating evidence strongly suggests that eating dirt is good for you. In studies of what is called the hygiene hypothesis, researchers are concluding that organisms like the millions of bacteria, viruses and especially worms that enter the body along with “dirt” spur the development of a healthy immune system. Several continuing studies suggest that worms may help to redirect an immune system that has gone awry and resulted in autoimmune disorders, allergies and asthma. These studies, along with epidemiological observations, seem to explain why immune system disorders like multiple sclerosis, Type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, asthma and allergies have risen significantly in the United States and other developed countries. Training the Immune System “What a child is doing when he puts things in his mouth is allowing his immune response to explore his environment,” Mary Ruebush, a microbiology and immunology instructor, wrote in her new book, “Why Dirt Is Good” (Kaplan). “Not only does this allow for ‘practice’ of immune responses, which will be necessary for protection, but it also plays a critical role in teaching the immature immune response what is best ignored.” One leading researcher, Dr. Joel V. Weinstock, the director of gastroenterology and hepatology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, said in an interview that the immune system at birth “is like an unprogrammed computer. It needs instruction.” He said that public health measures like cleaning up contaminated water and food have saved the lives of countless children, but they “also eliminated exposure to many organisms that are probably good for us.” “Children raised in an ultraclean environment,” he added, “are not being exposed to organisms that help them develop appropriate immune regulatory circuits.” Studies he has conducted with Dr. David Elliott, a gastroenterologist and immunologist at the University of Iowa, indicate that intestinal worms, which have been all but eliminated in developed countries, are “likely to be the biggest player” in regulating the immune system to respond appropriately, Dr. Elliott said in an interview. He added that bacterial and viral infections seem to influence the immune system in the same way, but not as forcefully. Most worms are harmless, especially in well-nourished people, Dr. Weinstock said. “There are very few diseases that people get from worms,” he said. “Humans have adapted to the presence of most of them.” Worms for Health In studies in mice, Dr. Weinstock and Dr. Elliott have used worms to both prevent and reverse autoimmune disease. Dr. Elliott said that in Argentina, researchers found that patients with multiple sclerosis who were infected with the human whipworm had milder cases and fewer flare-ups of their disease over a period of four and a half years. At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Dr. John Fleming, a neurologist, is testing whether the pig whipworm can temper the effects of multiple sclerosis. In Gambia, the eradication of worms in some villages led to children’s having increased skin reactions to allergens, Dr. Elliott said. And pig whipworms, which reside only briefly in the human intestinal tract, have had “good effects” in treating the inflammatory bowel diseases, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, he said. How may worms affect the immune system? Dr. Elliott explained that immune regulation is now known to be more complex than scientists thought when the hygiene hypothesis was first introduced by a British epidemiologist, David P. Strachan, in 1989. Dr. Strachan noted an association between large family size and reduced rates of asthma and allergies. Immunologists now recognize a four-point response system of helper T cells: Th 1, Th 2, Th 17 and regulatory T cells. Th 1 inhibits Th 2 and Th 17; Th 2 inhibits Th 1 and Th 17; and regulatory T cells inhibit all three, Dr. Elliott said. “A lot of inflammatory diseases — multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and asthma — are due to the activity of Th 17,” he explained. “If you infect mice with worms, Th 17 drops dramatically, and the activity of regulatory T cells is augmented.” In answer to the question, “Are we too clean?” Dr. Elliott said: “Dirtiness comes with a price. But cleanliness comes with a price, too. We’re not proposing a return to the germ-filled environment of the 1850s. But if we properly understand how organisms in the environment protect us, maybe we can give a vaccine or mimic their effects with some innocuous stimulus.” Wash in Moderation Dr. Ruebush, the “Why Dirt Is Good” author, does not suggest a return to filth, either. But she correctly points out that bacteria are everywhere: on us, in us and all around us. Most of these micro-organisms cause no problem, and many, like the ones that normally live in the digestive tract and produce life-sustaining nutrients, are essential to good health. “The typical human probably harbors some 90 trillion microbes,” she wrote. “The very fact that you have so many microbes of so many different kinds is what keeps you healthy most of the time.” Dr. Ruebush deplores the current fetish for the hundreds of antibacterial products that convey a false sense of security and may actually foster the development of antibiotic-resistant, disease-causing bacteria. Plain soap and water are all that are needed to become clean, she noted. “I certainly recommend washing your hands after using the bathroom, before eating, after changing a diaper, before and after handling food,” and whenever they’re visibly soiled, she wrote. When no running water is available and cleaning hands is essential, she suggests an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Dr. Weinstock goes even further. “Children should be allowed to go barefoot in the dirt, play in the dirt, and not have to wash their hands when they come in to eat,” he said. He and Dr. Elliott pointed out that children who grow up on farms and are frequently exposed to worms and other organisms from farm animals are much less likely to develop allergies and autoimmune diseases. Also helpful, he said, is to “let kids have two dogs and a cat,” which will expose them to intestinal worms that can promote a healthy immune system.


Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company  


Stanley Challenger Graham




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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 28/01/2009 : 16:31
This is the original intro.

I must stop buying books…….. Fat chance actually, I have this compulsion to buy books that interest me and soak them up. You’ve got to be careful of course, not all books are honest, well researched and objective and you need to be fairly alert to sort out the chaff. I think you can see what is coming, I’ve just read a book that has triggered me off, James Fergusson’s ‘The Vitamin Murders’. 
I wonder how many of you recognise the name Sir Jack Drummond or realise what an impact he had on our lives during WW2. In 1939 he published a book called ‘The Englishman’s Food’ which is a wonderful survey of diet through the ages. It’s long been one of my stand-bys and is full of wise and wonderful information. During the war Drummond worked at the Ministry of Food under Lord Woolton and was responsible for making decisions about rationing and diet which resulted in the amazing outcome that at the end of the war, overall, the British were better nourished and fitter than they had been in 1939.
In August 1952 Sir Jack, his wife Ann (who had co-authored the book) and their young daughter Elizabeth were horribly murdered while camping for the night on the side of a quiet road in southern France. The chief suspect, Gaston Dominici was eventually gaoled for life but ‘The Dominici Affair’ as it is known in France is still the subject of speculation and conspiracy theory. Mr Fergusson examines this and comes to his own conclusions but this is not my primary interest. If you want the full story get the book from the library, it’s a good read.
What really interested me was the quality of research that has gone into the book and the results which in some cases surprised me and in others confirmed some long held prejudices of my own. In 1953 I left school and went to work on a farm in Warwickshire. I was to do a year there on practical farming and then go to Prees Heath agricultural college to get a qualification. In fact this was all ruined when Her Majesty took me into the army for two years and I never got to go to college. What I didn’t realise at the time was that I was going into agriculture during a period of revolution in farming methods. The government, taking the lessons of the war, had decided that Britain would never again be caught out relying on imported food to feed the nation. The whole weight of modern technology was thrown into the industry, in 1942 there were 100,000 agricultural tractors, a massive rise from the pre-war years. By 1953 there were almost 350,000. Modern machinery like combine harvesters, balers and milking machines were introduced and the use of chemical fertilisers and pest and disease control became commonplace. Between 1947 and 1951 the production from the farms doubled. In political and economical terms the policy was an astounding success.
Unfortunately, their was a price to pay. According to the government’s own data, between 1940 and 1991 the British potato lost half its copper and iron content, both of them essential trace minerals in our diet. Carrots lost half of their magnesium and broccoli three quarters of its calcium. It was the same for vitamins, potatoes lost all of their vitamin A and over half of their vitamin C. Oranges lost more than three quarters of their vitamin C. The list goes on and the bottom line is that quantity was obtained at the expense of quality in all the products of the industry. Jack Drummond would be appalled if he were still alive. His nutritional standards were based on fresh healthy food supplying all the vitamins and trace elements we need for health. It was this policy that was the basis of his work at the Ministry of Food during the war.
There was worse to come. The war years had spurred technology on to find more effective ways of killing people. One of these was poison gas, most of which are based on organo-chlorine compounds. In 1940 an ICI chemist discovered that a natural plant hormone killed Charlock, a pernicious weed, when ploughed into the soil. This led to the formulation 4-chloro-2-methylphenoxyacetic acid or MCPA. By 1947 MCPA, branded as ‘Cornland Cleaner’ was one of ICI’s best sellers. The Americans developed 2,4D, an MCPA based compound which was one of the main ingredients of the infamous ‘Agent Orange’ used in Vietnam and now identified as the root cause of cancer, behavioural changes and birth defects. When I was on the farm in Warwickshire we used these compounds to spray the crops and I remember one in particular, ‘Denocate’ which when sprayed on young crops turned them yellow and the wild life as well. I know now that this was another chemical compound, 4,6-Dinitro-o-cresol. DDT is another case in point. These chemicals are banned on farms now but they all had a peculiar property, they were incredibly long-lived and tended to concentrate in the fatty tissues of animals that ingested them, including humans.
This was where I got the surprise. We are all contaminated with very low levels of these poisonous chemicals even though some have been banned for twenty years like DDT. The scientists assure us that the levels are so minute that they can’t possibly cause any problems but many people are now beginning to ask about a possible ‘cocktail effect’ of combinations of these chemicals. There’s nothing we can do about them and I have no evidence that they do me any harm but I’d be a lot happier if I wasn’t carrying them around. The lesson I learn from this is that there is no ‘safe level’ of poison I would willingly ingest and I’d be grateful if the scientists engaged in research today would bear this in mind. I don’t want vapour from flame retardants, plastics and paints contaminating my house and the air I breathe. I refuse to use ‘air-fresheners’ or insect sprays. Would they please apply the precautionary principle that no chemical compound is ‘safe’ unless proved to be so.
What can we do to minimise the risks? Ask questions. Wherever possible avoid all food that has been ‘processed’. Ask yourself if you are absolutely sure that vegetables haven’t been sprayed with chemicals before they got to you. In a recent TV program the researchers looked at the salad growing areas of Spain which are supposedly operated without using chemicals. They went to the local dump and found hundreds of containers that had held banned compounds. The only people you can trust are local allotment holders. Call me a cynic but I don’t trust anyone who is making profit from growing food or processing it for the mass market. I shall continue to read the labels and ask questions, I recommend you do the same. If we all did it customer power would in the end prevail.


Stanley Challenger Graham




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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 12/03/2009 : 06:10
I see that the labelling gurus are arguing again about whether chicken that has been frozen and then thawed can be called fresh meat. At the moment there is no way the consumer can tell and also if it is processed at all in this country or the EU it can be labelled in such a way that you can be given the impression that it is reared and grown in the UK. In fast food outlets selling chicken you have no chance of identifying the sourcing or treatment at all.

There is only one reason for this ambiguity, this is to allow chicken from any source to be sold to the public without alerting them to the fact it is many months old, reared under terrible conditions thousands of miles away and not the quality which any sensible person would rightly expect. 

I'm not interested in very carefully phrased arguments or techical points about marketing. I would like to see a label that states definitely that the chicken was reared and processed in the UK, has never been frozen and complies with all UK health laws including the ones on rearing and feeding. We would then be given the choice. As for price, if you were offered English chicken clearly labelled as above or some cheaper meat reared in Thailand, frozen and shipped over here, thawed out and processed and then used in a pre-cooked meal which had been frozen and perhaps thawed out again for resale, which would you take?

This ambiguity is designed to allow food processors freedom to use inferior meat and keep prices down. No wonder UK chicken farmers are squeezed out of business.


Stanley Challenger Graham




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