Ra 4 Food - Health and Nutritional Tips

This article is part of an occasional series taking a basic look at each of the major food groups. This week we look at the foods we know as carbohydrates & their effect on our health.

Carbohydrates are a group of foods often referred to as ‘starchy’. They are our main source of energy providing the fuel we need for physical activity & functioning organs, & they should make up about one third of our total diet.

Under this category come some of our most commonly consumed everyday foods: bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, cereals, vegetables, fruit & beans As you can see many of these foods come from grains of one sort or another. Grains can either be refined (having had the outer husk & inner germ removed) or unrefined (whole grain). Foods made from refined grains include white bread, rice & pasta. Whole meal bread pasta & brown rice come from the unrefined grain.

Foods made from the whole grain contain far more nutrients. The outer husk provides fibre & the germ provides protein, minerals & vitamins. They contain antioxidants & phytochemicals which give protection from cancer, diabetes & heart disease. Fibre - which is also found in fruit & vegetables – assists the digestive process & helps to lower blood cholesterol & control blood sugars. It also helps to regulate the bowel reducing the risk of irritable bowel syndrome, diverticulitis, diabetes & cancer.

It is often indicated that someone trying to lose weight should avoid carbohydrates, but the reality is that what is important is the source of these carbs.  It is the refined carbohydrates that come from highly processed foods such as white bread, white rice and other refined grains, pastries & fizzy drinks that contribute to weight gain, & promote diabetes & heart disease. These items are obviously best avoided.

A more recent way of looking at carbs is to use their glycaemic index - GI – to determine how quickly & strongly they increase blood sugar levels. Foods with a high GI are thought to increase the risk of various diseases & to promote weight gain, while foods with a low GI are slow releasing & help to reduce the risk of disease & control weight gain.

The popularity of seaweed – a staple part of the diet in Japan & China with more than 170,000 tons of it being consumed each year - is on the up.

Seven out of the worlds ten top restaurants feature seaweed on the menu, including the Danish eatery Noma - 2nd year in a row winner of the San Pellegrino survey of the 50 world’s top restaurants - & its use by top chefs is raising its profile. The Greenhouse in Mayfair & L’Enclume in Cumbria both include seaweed.

Heston Blumenthal has long been singing the praises of seaweed recently calling for it to be “taken more seriously”. One of his creations for the Waitrose supermarket chain - a steak, ale and kombu pie – is said by them to be one of its most popular ‘ready meals’.

London restaurateur Aldo Zilli says that “Seaweed has had a bad name, because it is wild and people do not want to eat something called a weed, but it is under-rated and very versatile.”

British producers of seaweed who are mainly located round the islands in Scotland & Ireland are delighted at the prospect of growing sales & the hope that it might become popular for use in the home kitchen as well as restaurant dining.

The most commonly eaten red seaweed – Nori – has a world market value of over $1bn but at the moment less than 100 tons is consumed in Europe & a third of that by the French.

Around 650 varieties of edible seaweed grow along the 11.000 mile coastline of Britain. Little used on the whole, some parts of the country have been collecting it from the shoreline for centuries. Wales, for example has been cultivating laver since the 17th century.

The salty flavour of the algae has been likened to samphire – another up & rising culinary star. However the benefits of eating seaweed are not confined to its flavour or culinary uses. Seaweed helps lower the levels of cholesterol & reduce blood pressure. It tends to be high in protein & low in fat as well as being a rich source of minerals & vitamins. Kilo for kilo it contains more iron than sirloin steak, more calcium than cheese & more fibre than bananas or prunes.

More information about the health giving properties of seaweed & some ways to use it at home will appear in another article in the near future, so if you’re interested in learning more about seaweed check back soon!

Approximately five million tons of edible food worth £6bn is estimated to be thrown away in the UK each year!

The government is hoping to put an end to this by simplifying the dating labels on food. The current system of ‘sell by’ ‘best before’ & ‘display until’ labels as well as the ‘use by’ ones is thought to cost the average family almost £700 a year – a figure ridiculous at any time but even more so in these times of financial hardship. In addition, much of the disposed of food ends up in landfill.

According to Wrap - Waste & Resources Action Programme -1.3million unopened yoghurt pots, 440,000 ready meals, 5,500 whole chickens, 4.4million apples, 5.1million potatoes & 1.6million bananas are dumped every single day!

The government plans to do away with all but the ‘use by’ labels which will be maintained to provide guidance on when food is no longer safe to eat thus safeguarding health.

New labels drawing attention to the danger to health of keeping certain foods for excessive periods of time have also been muted. Fish, seafood, eggs & meat carry a risk of food poisoning so may carry extra warnings.

Food wrapping that changes colour if the contents are going off has been developed by scientists at Strathclyde University & could be on the shelves within two years.

Fruit & vegetables for example are often marked with best before stickers yet are perfectly fine to eat. A survey carried out by Morrisons found that 55 per cent of people throw away food that is past its ‘best-before’ date even though it is safe to eat.

A Defra spokesman said: ‘By law, pre-packed food must show a “Best before” date, even though many foods are still safe to eat after that date.

‘This is very different from the “Use by” date that shows when food is no longer safe and should be thrown away.’

‘Being clear on the difference between the two could help us all to reduce food waste.’

Part of the problem is thought to be due to the widespread ploy of supermarket deals such as “buy-one-get-one-free’’ which often apply to products with a short shelf life.

A change in the current system can’t come soon enough. Its not there for the benefit of our health & it’s certainly not good for the health of our present or future society.

Ways to use up left over & excess food can be found at:

http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/

They are one of the most nutritious foods that money can buy: a natural source of many nutrients including high quality protein, vitamins and minerals. & now they’re available in all sorts of varieties.

In 1953 eggs ceased to be rationed & 4 years later we were being encouraged to consume them with the ‘Go to work on an egg’ advertising campaign. Our egg consumption peaked at 5 eggs per person in the sixties but then concerns began to be raised about the possibility of harmful effects on our health with dietary cholesterol in eggs being linked directly to an increased risk of heart disease. In 1988 there was a further egg crisis with sales dropping by 60% overnight when Edwina Currie – then Health Minster - warned that most UK egg production was affected by salmonella.

It is now known that it is saturated fat that affects our blood cholesterol levels rather than the dietary cholesterol that we consume, so once again eggs can be eaten as part of a healthy diet. Sales went up by 2.6% in the UK last year, though we tend not to eat as many eggs as other countries

Nowadays not only are eggs popular once more, but there’s an ever growing demand for speciality eggs. Consumers on the lookout for interesting alternatives to the hens egg are buying duck, goose, quail, ostrich eggs & rhea eggs, with turkey eggs available this week on the supermarket shelves for the first time.

According to Waitrose who will be selling the turkey eggs they are the speciality eggs most requested by customers. Up ‘til now they haven’t been available at retail because they lay far fewer eggs than hens & most of these are used for breeding the turkeys we eat at Christmas. Now they will be on sale ‘til the laying season ends in late August at a cost of £1.99 for a pack of 2. Eggspensive as this may seem it’s a bargain compared to the price of rhea eggs which the store will be selling later this month at a cost of £25 each! Eggstravagent!

Selfridges who stock a whole range of speciality eggs will even be selling gull eggs later this month. A buyer from Selfridges said: “We’re also seeing a big spike for quail’s eggs at present – up 20% on this time last year. Goose eggs have only just come into store, but they’re performing about 20% above expectation at the moment.”

With the constant promotion of healthy eating & the importance of healthy eating, more & more consumers are opting for healthier drinks instead of the traditional canned fizz but is this really the healthier choice?

Over the last 2 decades there has been a significant change in our preferences in the drinks market. For example between 1990 & 2005 sales of bottled water quadrupled.

More recently our taste for bottled water has seen the development of water with added ingredients – flavours, minerals & vitamins - designed to persuade us that here is an even healthier, even tastier option. There are drinks that promise to aid energy levels, concentration, sleep & relaxation.

Our tendency is to associate words such as fruit & vitamins with a healthy diet & it often doesn’t occur to us that the product might contain other ingredients that are not quite so beneficial. We are attracted by the words used to advertise it such as the crudely named ‘Neuro Bliss’ with its claims that it is “designed to promote happiness and eliminate stress without affecting your energy levels” & that it “works immediately”.

So are these drinks actually healthier than fizzy drinks? It turns out that some flavoured waters contain more sugar than coke! The Advertising Standards Agency found an advert claiming the product Vitaminwater to be nutritious was misleading since it contained the equivalent of 5 teaspoons of sugar. A spokeswoman for the company said: “We have always been completely transparent that the drinks contain 23g of sugar in each 500ml bottle. It provides a convenient way to help people hydrate and get more of the vitamins and minerals they may require”.

Bridget Benelan from the British Nutrition Foundation explained how some of the many claims that appear on these products despite not meeting with EC regulations. “For these claims to appear on a label, they have to either comply with the European Commission approved list, or be going through the process of applying for that approval. But the EC regulation has only been in place since 2007, and since thousands of appeals have been submitted, it is understandably taking a long time to check them all.’’

“A lot of them haven’t got through. For example, some probiotics, as well as the link between omega 3 and cognitive function. But vitamin D’s link to bone health has been proved, and as long as there’s more than 15% of the recommended daily amount in the drink, they can make that claim.”

So while some of the drinks do contain things that may in themselves be good for us, the product as a whole may be far from healthy, especially if it is consumed on a regular basis. Benelan’s verdict - “If people are consuming large quantities of things with a high calorie content, then there is reason to worry. If we want something to drink, it’s usually because we’re thirsty, not because we need energy – and it’s unlikely to mean that later we don’t eat something because we’ve consumed calories from that drink.”

It sounds unlikely, but a recently launched range of cupcakes are proving to be both healthy & irresistibly scrumptious!

The cup cakes are the first of a range of foods being developed by the Paris based company Petit Pois which they describe as ‘food that is delicious, healthy, and full of fun’.

The cup cakes contain no butter & have half the calories and fat of ‘normal’ High-Street cakes as well as being both gluten- and lactose-free, but the really surprising ingredient – used as a substitution for the butter – is vegetables. Nor are the cup cakes smothered in the usual mound of sickly icing! Each cake has a thin layer of icing and is topped with a little green pea indicating that these are cakes that are good for you!

As well as doing away with the need for copious amounts of butter, the addition of vegetables improve the texture of the sponge cakes by giving them fluffiness, softness & moisture as well as contributing to a naturally longer shelf life of 5 days without the use of any nasty hidden additives.

Made by a family bakery in Wales, & currently on sale in Selfridges, the cup cakes are sold in boxes of two different flavours that complement each other & include: vanilla and courgette, orange and pumpkin, lemon and courgette, chocolate and beetroot, chocolate & vanilla, & lemon & orange.

Petit Pois is the brainchild of Harriet – Harry Eastwood – one of the presenters from Channel 4’s ‘Cook Yourself Thin’, & business partner Ashley Maddox. Eastwood’s latest offering for the kitchen bookshelf ‘The Skinny French Kitchen’ also features the ‘tinkering with ingredients to lower the fat’ mentality.

Speaking about her desire to solve the problem of unhealthy cake eating Eastwood said: “You have to be a bit Willy Wonka about which flavours you pair with which vegetable - some vegetables enhance the flavours they’re with, such as parsnip and ginger, for example.

“I took a bit of a gamble and came up with the beetroot chocolate fudge cake. You can’t taste the beetroot yet the moisture levels as well as the general gooey, gungeyness were much better than any other cake I’d made and it was much healthier,” she says.

Currently only available at one of the Selfridges’ Food Halls in London, Manchester, or Birmingham, Petit Pois hope to expand the range to national supermarket chains over the coming months. They are also planning to introduce a new line of healthy, delicious, and fun Petit Pois delights in 2012. Now there’s something to look forward to!

Eating cheese may not be the best thing for your waistline but the good news is that it can help us have healthy teeth!

It appears that there is an extensive body of research to substantiate

the claim that eating cheese can contribute towards dental health by acting to prevent or delay tooth decay.

Cheese contains alkali & eating it causes an increase in saliva which neutralises acid. Eating even a small bit of cheese after a meal can really help to combat acid erosion by neutralising acid left by some of the foods you may have eaten. Fizzy drinks, fresh fruit juice, cakes& biscuits are all particularly acidic so eating cheese after consuming any of these would be particularly effective.

Eating cheese has also been shown to actually harden tooth enamel & eating cheese as part of a meal increases the concentration of calcium in dental plaque which stops demineralisation & it is this that is thought to contribute to the prevention of tooth decay.

Some cheeses are thought to be more effective with some making little impact. Cheddar is thought to be best as it has the highest levels of alkali, while soft cheeses like feta or brie really won’t make much difference at all.

It is also thought that some cheeses contain a certain sort of bacteria which discourage the bacteria considered to be more harmful for teeth. Here again – as a rule - hard cheese comes out on top. In addition the fat in cheese also reduces the amount of bacteria on the surface of the teeth.

So while it is by no means being suggested that eating cheese is a substitute for dental hygiene – including regular brushing – it is a quick & easy way to improve the health of our teeth, & as it only needs to be a very small amount maybe it won’t be so bad on the waistline after all!

According to a Swiss study, breakfast cereals and other foods sold in recycled boxes could be contaminated by oils from printers’ ink.

Manufacturers confirm that they are considering altering their packaging following the revelation regarding health concerns, though the UK Food Standards Agency – the FSA – food safety watchdog for the industry - continues to insist that there is no risk.

They stated: “The FSA is not aware of any firm evidence to suggest that there are food safety risks related to mineral oils in recycled food packaging. The research [which examined products bought from German supermarkets] … is interesting, but due to incomplete data the results have not demonstrated that mineral oils in food packaging represent a food safety risk.” Further research was being carried out, the FSA said.

The Swiss researchers found that the mineral oils used in newspapers that were later recycled to make cardboard packaging for food stuffs, can leach into foods such as breakfast cereals, rice & pasta, even where protective inner bags are used between the cardboard & the food.

Kori Grob from the Food Safety Lab in Zurich spoke about the possible health risks. He said that toxicologists had linked the mineral oils to the inflammation of internal organs & cancer. He was quick to point out that meals would contain only a minute amount.

Grob stated that it would be too damaging to the environment to switch to using packaging that wasn’t made from recycled materials, & said that it would be necessary to find other solutions for e.g. inner food linings that would act as a barrier to the oils.

He said: “Our bodies already contain, on average, around one gram of mineral oil – that is by far the largest contaminant we have in our body. For some people it is 10 grams, which is a high value. We are obviously accumulating mineral oil over a lifetime. What the baby gets through human milk is probably staying over a lifetime.

“One month or less has no real effect, so there is no emergency – consumers should not make any rapid changes. We have to think about it.”

Jordans - producers of the Country Crisp and Crunchy Oats breakfast cereals - has stopped using certain kinds of recycled cardboard. Other manufacturers say they are taking action to reduce levels of mineral oils in packaging.

Jordans said: “We will be discussing improved supply of recycled board that avoids content from newspapers, with the industry and our suppliers.”

Kellogg’s made reference to consulting with suppliers regarding the development of packaging “which allows us to meet our environmental commitments but will also contain significantly lower levels of mineral oil”.

The company said: “We are also looking at alternative inner liners for our packets. Whilst there are strict regulations when it comes to the packaging of food, there is currently no direction from the UK government about mineral oils. We will immediately follow any such guidance once it has been given.”

The Department of Health is advising people to consume less red meat in a new report.

For some time there have been indications that red meat consumption is linked to cancer. Now it is suggested that no more that 70g a day should be eaten – the equivalent of  3 rashers of bacon or 2 sausages. It is claimed that potentially thousands of deaths from bowel cancer could be prevented each year by staying within the advised limits.

In the UK about 36,000 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer every year, and 16,500 die from the disease, the third most common cancer in the UK.

The reasons for the link is unclear, though red meat is known to contain substances that have been linked to bowel cancer. In some studies one chemical in particular, haem, which gives red meat its colour, has been shown to damage the lining of the colon.

Some experts feel that the advice should distinguish between red meat and processed meat, the consumption of which is thought to carry a higher risk of contributing to bowel cancer due to the formation of carcinogens resulting from the process. The World Cancer Research Fund is advising that processed meat is avoided altogether. Dr Rachel Thompson - deputy head of science for the fund – said: “We would suggest that people following this new report’s guidelines should try and make sure as little as possible of their 70g per day is processed.”

The charity Beating Bowel Cancer has welcomed the report. Its chief executive, Mark Flannagan, said, “A diet high in red and processed meat may increase your risk of developing bowel cancer but the good news is that red meat can still be enjoyed in moderation.”

Last year, experts from the Harvard School of Public Health in the US found that eating processed meats can increase the risk of heart disease and diabetes

Opponents of this latest advice have queried whether a reduction in red meat consumption would put people at greater risk of iron deficiency, but the report from the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition says such impact would be negligible.

Dr Carrie Ruxton, a member of the Meat Advisory Panel (MAP) on nutrition, which is funded by industry, said: “Given that current intakes, on average, are well within health targets, there is no reason to eat less red meat if you enjoy it.

“The British Nutrition Foundation recently published a review which highlighted that eating red meat in moderation is an important part of a healthy balanced diet.

“It also laid to rest many of the misconceptions about meat and health.

“Lean red meat is a good source of many vital nutrients and, thanks to modern farming methods, is lower than ever in saturated fat and calories, making it suitable for all the family.”

Many health experts would disagree. Obesity is also linked to cancer & even so called ‘healthy cuts’ of meat contain high levels of fat. One possibility for the harmful effect of red meat is the time it takes for it to pass through the body – approx 24 hours as opposed to 6 hours for a vegetarian diet. Fruit & vegetables are known to give protection against cancer & it is also possible that those who consume lots of meat may well be eating far less of these.

Cherry Juice is one of the latest in a long line of super foods. What is it that makes it so special?

The first somewhat spectacular claim being made for it is that drinking a glass of cherry juice is equivalent to consuming 23 portions of fruit & vegetables! So in theory, drinking a glass of it a day would do away with the need for your five a day!

Cherry juice is loaded with antioxidants, & research - led by Dr Robert Verkerk and published in Nutritional  Practitioner – discovered that 250ml of the cherry juice contained more antioxidants than 5 portions of peas, tomatoes, watermelon, carrots & bananas. Antioxidants are known to combat harmful free radicals in the body & can help prevent cancer, heart disease, & stroke. Cherries also have anti inflammatory properties & can be used in the treatment of arthritis & gout to relieve pain.

Research has suggested that eating cherries may not be as potent as drinking the juice.

Scientists in Canada found that drinking cherry juice can help alleviate the pain associated with long distance running. In an experiment sixty adults aged 18 – 50 drank cherry juice twice a day for 7 days prior to, & on the day of a long distance relay race. Following the race it was discovered that they had significantly less muscle pain than those who drank another fruit drink.

A not dissimilar conclusion resulted from research carried out at the Sports and Exercise Science Research Centre at London South Bank University. Ten trained athletes were given an ounce of cherry juice concentrate to drink twice a day for 7 days both before & after intense strength training. The athletes recovered muscle force to 90% in 24 hours compared with 85% without the concentrate. It is thought that the muscle damage that normally occurs at such times was reduced by the antioxidant & anti inflammatory effects of the concentrate.

The high levels of both antioxidants & anti inflammatory are due to the pigments which give the cherries their colour. These pigments belong to a group of natural dyes called anthocyanins which have been referred to as “Mother Nature’s all-natural chemotherapy agents”.

As well as their antioxidant & anti inflammatory, cherries also contain lots of vitamin A & have antibacterial properties.

And if all that is not enough to convert you, scientists have also discovered that due to the high melatonin levels found in the cherry juice, it can help you feel sleepy at night time & help you stay awake during the day!